China: Challenges and Opportunities

I have been home for almost two weeks now, things are getting back in order and I have had some time to reflect on my trip.  China was such an interesting place to visit within the context of Nuffield but it is hard to truly wrap my head around what will happen there in the next 10 years.  Their middle class is growing, this class includes farmers including the people I met.  With this growth there are greater demands put on the quantity and quality of food needed; at the same time cities are growing and overtaking quality farm land.  Problems not unique to China but which are amplified by having 1.34 billion people living in a country that is about 300, 000 square kilometres smaller than Canada (by comparison the population of Canada is only 34.6 million people).  2500 people every hour are leaving the Chinese countryside and moving to cities; where jobs are higher paying, more plentiful and working conditions are deemed superior.  No other country in the world is dealing with migration issues such as this, ultimately putting further strain on the food demand as these people no long produce any food for their own consumption relying entirely on purchased products.  

The Chinese government seems genuinely concerned regarding how they are going to feed their population in the future and they are working towards solutions, including buying foreign land and working towards Free Trade Agreements with food exporting countries.  The question remains will it be enough?  

At the same time from what I saw, the government isn’t doing enough to nourish agriculture on home soil.  Farmers, businesses and investors are taking it upon themselves to build a modern agriculture industry.  They have come a long way but will it be enough?  How can they continue to grow when the land is leased from the government for 70 years?  How can they keep healthy, productive soils when manure application is restricted?  How sustainable is it to continue to import alfalfa from the United States?  How will the horrific pollution problem affect the health of their animals, the ability of the plants to photosynthesize in the future?  

I feel they are at a fork in the road.  Turning around is not an option.  To the left lies continued reliance on imports to the point where the cities have swallowed all suitable farm land and the majority of the food required is produced offshore.  To the right lies a healthy agriculture industry, supported by Government, where imports are still needed but only to supplement what is produced for China by Chinese farmers.  Samuel Johnson said “Agriculture not only gives riches to a nation, but the only riches she can call her own.”  

It will be interesting to see which direction China takes.  She will always need imports, I’m not suggesting China will be self sufficient, no one is.  My hope for China is that they will create a thriving agriculture industry which has a bright future much like we are experiencing right now.

Additional Photos from China

Victoria Harbour from Victoria Peak, Hong Kong

Hong Kong

Bruce Lee statue on the Avenue of Stars, Hong Kong

Corn grinder in the shadow of The Great Wall, still used today

New bins at the beef farm in Qingdao

Lunch is served including fresh Wagyu beef

On The Bund, Shanghai

Promenade across the river from The Bund, Shanghai

SIAL Show, Shanghai

My last full day in China was spent at the SIAL trade show in Shanghai.  This industry only show is billed as “The Asian Food Marketplace” and is the leading meeting place for the Asia food and beverage industry.  

-2 400+ exhibitors

-45 000 visitors

-100 000 square meters of exhibit space over 8 halls

-covers retail, catering, hotel/restaurant/catering, food services, the import/export trade and manufacturing

-snacks & sweets, frozen foods, fruit & vegetables, beverages, seafood, beer and meat

Here I had the opportunity to see how food purchasing decisions are made and how products are marketed to the food industry in Asia.  It was a spectacle for sure.  Women in fancy dresses handing out samples, a replica of the Great Wall being constructed from chocolate and national pride oozing from around the world as every food exporting country tries for a piece of the China pie.  As with everywhere else in China it was crowded and noisy and big but absolutely wonderful.  

I will give credit to Canada Beef and Canada Pork International who had great displays and seemed to being doing a lot of business while I was there.  Our international meat exports should continue to be strong thanks in part to the efforts at this show.

Note August 14, 2014 - As I went back and was looking at past posts I have created I realized that I forgot to post this one.  I will keep the blog better updated from now on.

A Day in the Suburbs of Qingdao

After a long train ride in the rain and the scariest 2 hour taxi ride ever, I made it to Qingdao; a city between Beijing and Shanghai on the coast.  Today is an exciting day, I am touring with Mr. Li an associate of East Rock Technologies who will show me more mid-sized farms.  I am lucky that he has found a relative to travel with us for the day and serve as a translator.  We started the day with tea and a visit to the outdoor market.  This was the first market I have visited in Asia that had beef for sale, an entire leg of beef hanging just like the pork has at other places I have been to.  We had the opportunity to pick up a few things from the seafood market which was intended for dinner later today.  

Over the course of the day we visited a vegetable farm, three dairy farms and a Wagyu beef finishing barn.  Through the assistance of my fantastic translator I was able to talk to these producers about export markets, importing livestock, the challenges they face in finding labour and their operations in general.  I was impressed at how advanced and efficient their operations really were.  Two farms in particular really impressed me, the first one we visited was a Nestle Demonstration Farm that had both dairy and Wagyu production.  The entire farm was set up as a tourist attraction almost with an enclosed viewing platform in the beef barn and a restaurant and store on site.  A feed company was hosting a field day there the same day and we joined them for part of the meeting and for lunch.  The Wagyu animals are finished for 26 months which helps give the beef its particular flavour.  Their market is very high end and a large portion of the product is exported to Japan.  They also sell their beef fresh at their on-farm store.  

With Mr. Li at the Nestle Demonstration Farm outside their retail store.

The Wagyu Finishing Barn

The second farm was that of my host, Mr. Li.  He milks approximately 200 cows in a double 8 DeLaval parlour.  The hay was again imported from the United States and it was specifically for the higher quality in this instance.  The cows were housed in a free stall system that wasn’t a barn, just a pen with a roof over the stalls. Being a coastal area, winters are mild and snow is not very common.  Production is around 26 litres per cow per day, not to bad for a country where 10 years ago their commercial agriculture industry was almost non existent and their land is all managed on 70 year leases from the government.  

All the farms used RFID tags for animal identification and to keep individual records.  In a country that has disease issues including Foot and Mouth Disease and food safety issues and strange rules surrounding agriculture, it was refreshing to see the farmers themselves so akin to what is done elsewhere in the world.  

I had the opportunity to spend most of the afternoon with Mr. Li’s entire family, his daughter (who took the day off school to tour with us), his niece (my translator) and his mother (who had never seen a foreigner in real life before).  We drank tea, talked about the history of China and Canada, cultures and agriculture.  For dinner I was treated to a seafood spread prepared by the family.  The entire day I felt like a celebrity, everyone wanted photos taken of me at their farm and I was even interviewed for a Chinese news broadcast, which was a complex process of translation and practice runs . It was a fantastic day and a highlight of the trip, I learned so much about how the industry has evolved in recent history and I can only imagine how much it will continue to grow in the future.

Great Visit to The Great Wall

Today was one of those days that starts out with you thinking “today is going to be fun” and turns into “Wow, there was no way I could have predicted how great today was going to be”.  Today I went out to the wall.  I joined a tour group Dandelion Hiking which was recommended by Lonely Planet.  It was a two hour bus ride from greater Beijing to a section of the wall off the beaten track, not your typical tourist destination location.  There were nine of us in total plus guides, three of us just hiking for the day and the rest camping on the wall overnight.  After the two hours we got off the bus and were surrounded by hills, now we were in rural China.  A short walk got us to a rural homestead which was our lunchtime dining location.  We were served beautiful spread of Chinese cuisine homemade by the lady of the house, the tour group works with this lady to provide the food and offer assistance to the camping group and it was fantastic.  

After lunch we set off to hike, basically we climbed the hill directly behind this house and were on the wall after about 20 minutes of walking.  At first there were no other people in sight.  We had the wall to ourselves.  I was excited to see an iconic sight but I didn’t realize just how impressive it was until I was there.  It stretches on, zigzagging across the tops of the hills, crumbling into the valleys below still standing as a marker between provinces.  The pictures show it better than I can describe it, eventually we came across a few other people and one other tour group but nothing like the crowds at the fully restored section.  After about three hours walking along the top of the wall it was time to meet the bus again so that us day trippers could head back to the city.  On the trail down we walked along the edge of a number of small plot corn fields.  The corn was at the three leaf stage and was obviously planted by hand as no machinery could negotiate the path or work in such small spaces.  This was small scale farming in China and I had stumbled into it without even planning on it.  I took as many pictures as I could but we were running late and had to hustle.  I took in the effort and the dedication it would take to farm in that area, in the shadow of the Great Wall.  Serendipity it was; as I have seen production from 70 000 cows to a few acres of corn.  Food production does not fit in one box, it takes all kinds of farmers to meet the current demands and I love seeing all the different kinds.  

Dairy Visit #1

Today I toured a dairy farm that included a rotary parlour, free-stall barn that housed 3400 cows, they were milked three times a day fed an alfalfa/corn silage based TMR ration.  The cows were tagged with an RFID tag which electronically records individual production on every cow at each milking.  Vaccine records are also individually recorded based on the RFID tag to ensure individual animal traceability on the farm.  Stats on every cow as well as the operation as a whole were known and easily recited by the owner when asked.  We chatted with the owner and manager of the operation about problems he faced including finding and training labour, cost of feed and a thriving the growing city which not circles the farm property that we were on.  The conversation, production methods and cattle could have easily been on a farm in Canada or the United States but I am still in China; about two hours northeast of central Beijing.  

The Huaxia Farm milks 70 000 cows in total spread over a number of barns and properties.  The owner who is a Chinese-American from California who sold his dot com companies less than ten years ago and went into the dairy business.  He had the vision to see the need for milk products produced in China to decrease the reliance on imported product.  The operation started with 180 cows and has grown to this size through venture capital funding and the ability to import live heifers from New Zealand and Australia.  Further expansion is currently underway with a new barn being built near Shanghai.  

The barns are built using American designs and the entire operation has been developed with an American type production system in mind.  The milk produced from one barn which holds 3400 cows which are milked three times a day using a DeLaval rotary parlour is sold as fresh milk and drinkable yogurt under their own brand.  The rest of the product is sold to four different processors.  There are plans to increase their own brand, Wonder Milk and begin a home delivery service in Beijing.

Feed is sourced both locally and from the United States.  Alfalfa is sourced from California, bought and shipped to the farm for approximately $450 USD a tonne.  This is actually cheaper than bringing hay overground from growing areas in inner Mongolia, not because of bad roads or high fuel costs but the abundance of toll roads drives the cost through the roof.  Corn silage is sourced from a number of different smaller farms in the general area of a fifty mile radius.  Bedding is also sourced within China and is rice hulls; which comes in bags and have to be opened and stored in bunks.  

Security is an issue.  Concrete fences surround all the properties to keep people out.  Corn cannot be planted in the area, which is surrounded by city now, as people will steal the ears right off the stalk.  We were told that even as the harvester is in the field people will still be in the field taking what they can, so corn is not grown at the farm.  All vehicles go through a tire wash at every gate before entering the property.  Visits are actually hard to come by, many farmers require that you not be on another farm within a week of visiting their operation, today as visitors we had to stand in a room with ultraviolet lights for three minutes before entering the barn.  It was an interesting day from start to finish and I was lucky to have the opportunity thanks to James, Jeff and East Rock Technologies. 

Beijing

I arrived in Beijing yesterday with full expectations that it would be similar to Hong Kong;  I was wrong.  The only logical explanation I came to for having that thought is that I read that english signage and speakers were easy to come by in both cities.  Hong Kong was under British control for a number of years so it makes perfect sense that the use of English is widespread around the city; in Beijing English is spoken commonly enough at a very basic level and there is some signage but it is not nearly as easy to operate with only English language skills.  It is my own fault and I write this only as an anecdote that I have had too many preconceived notions already on this trip and I need to learn to have less expectations for this process and just see what happens.  That being said I have friends here in James and Jeff from East Rock Technologies who are bilingual and very helpful.  For all of you who are not familiar with James he is an ally of Nuffield International, spent the week of the Contemporary Scholar’s Conference with us and coordinates the leg of the Global Focus Program that goes to China.  He is also kind enough to assist any of us other Nuffielders who are travelling in China as part of our experience.  

I spent the afternoon at East Rock yesterday getting my bearings and finalizing the itinerary for the rest of my stay in China.  I have a whirlwind ten days ahead of me but I am very excited.  Today I was off sightseeing and toured around the centre of the city to see Tiananmen Square and Forbidden City.  Big, is the first word that comes to mind to describe it.  I believe I will just sit back and let the pictures do the talking on this one.

Hong Kong, the start of my Asia adventure.

I arrived in Hong Kong on Wednesday, April 30 and found it to be a wonderful city that has proven to be easy to navigate, beautiful and more “western” influenced than I imagined.  There is plenty of money on display, I have seen two Maserati’s just casually parked on the street and stores like Tiffany & Co and Rolex are common.  I wasn’t able to set up the meetings that I hoped to while here but instead I am seeing the sights and learning more about the people of Hong Kong.  

I have hit a few tourist sites including the Peak Tram, up to Victoria Peak, and the Museum of Hong Kong History both wonderful places to experience the city past and present.  Hong Kong was given back to China in 1997 from the United Kingdom and now operates as a Special Administrative Region within China under a “One Country, Two Systems” arrangement.  Hong Kong, along with Macau and Taiwan have capitalist economic and political systems which they maintained as part of the transition.  The history of British rule is evident in the city with the architecture, the street names and the large amount of english that is used.  

Aside from sight seeing I have been doing informal polls of restaurants, grocery stores and food markets to learn about how the residents of Hong Kong shop and what they have available.  Hong Kong is a focus for the Canadian beef industry’s export market.  From what I can tell there are many different ways that the people of Hong Kong can access groceries or food.  Restaurants are plentiful and serve beef from Australia, New Zealand and the United States so far I have come across one restaurant that served Canadian pork.  

All the meat in the grocery stores has been fresh and comes from New Zealand or Australia as they obviously have the geographic advantage to supply the area.  The beef has much more exterior fat left on it then at home and is all labelled quite well.  Along with the basics most product included the country of origin, the brand (if there is one, only one store had branded Angus and Wagyu product from Australia) and the slaughter date.  The portions are small; most packages are half of what we would purchase in Canada and the selection is small.  The meat sections have not been very big and pork is King.

Another way to purchase food that seemed to be very popular was the open air markets.  The one I wandered through today was six or seven blocks long, took up the entire street and was packed with people.  Everything was for sale, I saw stalls selling fruit, vegetables, clothing, spices and meat.  Seafood, pork and chicken was all fresh; seafood and one chicken supplier had it still living and you could purchase pork cut to your specifications at the stall. The smell was overwhelming and the sight of stray cats and so many people around didn’t have my mouth watering for a barbecued pork tenderloin but it wasn’t stopping the locals.  My theory is that with the smaller demand for beef and the inability for the butchers to handle beef sides due to their weight is why there was none available here.  Fresh is the overriding theme that I see in food so far…..with one more full day here I look forward to learning more and seeing more of this place before I am off to Beijing.