CHINA

What a country, huge contrasts, wealth, lower class, poverty,  but big on ambition and the future

China has an official pop of 1.3 billion people, some of their major cities have the population of australia living in them. But there are estimates that number could be as many as 1.5 billion people living in China.

China is experiencing dramatic change to its social classes, infrastructure and traditions. The Chinese Govt has a national spend of 26% of GDP on the countries infrastructure over the last 5 years. Their national roadways rival any countries, Building is happening at a frightening pace, with every towns skyline littered with cranes on the top of skyscrapers, new cities being developed in remote areas. There is a push to attract people from the country into cities, encouraging amalgamation of farmland into bigger more productive lots. Investment is encouraged from outsiders, to develop farmland to be more productive. The alarming thing we saw, was the lack of planning, quality control and finish, to these programs.

We were met by Ashely Fraser, Nuffield 2012, who led us for the first few days of our tour,  Ashley has been exporting machinary from china for 5 years and gave us an insight on Chinese tradition, custom, and mentality. Ashely introduced us to  Mr Zhi Young Zhao, owner of the Kaifeng Maosheng machinery co, who make and export grain cleaning, flour milling equip world wide. We were their guests for three nights, thier hospitality was amazing, and I am sure any of Nuffield would be welcome any time.But their   plans for the future are huge, Along with the Chinese Govt, they have invested in a 40 ha development that will house workers, offices, and manufacturing building and equipment. Work has started, and they will be complete in five years.

We visited Li Shaobing, Inner Mongolia Reproductive Biotechnology, in charge of a facility importing sheep embryo from australia, mainly dorper types, and infusing them into the local mongol sheep, a big framed animal, with high fertility, but poor meat score. The program has worked well, with 10 centres rolled out around the grazing ares of north china. The country cannot support grazing, 200 mil rainfall per annum, so animals are housed. The program funded by the govt, gives animals to local framers, who have to use these animals for breeding, not eat them. Program is working so well that farmers are now approaching them to buy the latest progeny. Gains in meat production have been huge and well accepted.

We later met with Peter Yeung, a Hong Kong born investor, gone farming in China on the yellow river. Along with the Govt, he has developed 400 ha, to grow Chinese Veggies, mainly brassicas. He has developed the farm using western technology, sprinkler systems, raised beds, modern row crop machinery, refrigeration etc. all his product is exported to Hong Kong. He has big plans, but is restrained by his labour force, as they are slow to embrace the new ways, and the idea of quality control is hard to implement.

We visited chinas largest dairy operation, Diary United milking at 72 diaries across the country, 1 million cows, producing UHT products and yogurts. Their is very little fresh milk in china, per capita use at about 12 litres per, year but expected to double in the next 5 years

We met with James Su.  assistant general manager of diary United on our last night, He conveyed that China was developing quickly, trying to met its domestic requirements, with expenditure on infrastructure and industry, but was facing problems with education, feeding the population, and changing tradition. He is very positive about the future, suggesting that china will never be able to meet its domestic requirements on its own. China is thirsty for knowledge, looking for joint venture capital, and expertise, but still looking to protect its internal production, making it very hard to export product into china.

It is my impression that the next generation of Chinese will want to join western society, opening many doors into china, but for the moment that door is firmly closed. Young people do not want to work in agriculture at present, drifting to the cities, but are being well educated, while the older generation remains in the country, unable to change, or invest in the future.  sounds just like agriculture in Australia.

China will be an opportunity in the future for import/exports from around the world, Their infrastructure is being built to  carry them forward to the next generation, but is it sustainable. Their leaders have a great  vision, the spend on infrastructure is huge, but the will to change and embrase the western world is still a generation away. They have the ontrepenours, cheep labour, but no middle management, and no education programs.

03 06 2013, IIRI Phillipines

We are at IRRI, International Rice Research Institute, talking to staff member James Quilty.

IRRI Rice Research has expertise and facilities that would be the envy of any research institution, and is firmly focused on feeding the world. 

They are working on the worlds largest collection of rice varieties, some 117,000, and still counting, all in cold storage for the future. They are working hard at mapping Rice genotypes of many of these varieties, this will allow fast-tracking the breeding of new varieties , cutting the time taken to produce a new variety by at least half, but also to select for traits as required. New varieties could be ready to go commercially in as little as 5 years.

They are also focused on education, forming the science partnership, GRISP, offering 200 places annually to students from all over the world, the opportunity to study, and work with their scientists. IRRI also work extensively with farmers, extension people in the  Philippines, as well as people from other countries in an effort to increase world Rice production in a sustainable way. 

Thier breeders are interested in creating a C4 type Rice, basically a rice variety with the vigour of a corn plant. They are looking at the possability of developing a variety with higher Iron levels, and higher vitimain levelsto assist in providing an easy way to increase the health of all those who consume rice.  All geared to increasing the production of Rice to feed the growing world population.

Some interesting facts from the day

World demand for Rice is expected to increase 2% per year

3 Billion people rely on Rice

World area planted to Rice has stabilised

Yields are not increasing quickly enough to meet forecast world demand

We also visited their great Rice Museum which maps out the history of Rice and has a large display of farming practices, tools, from the  Philippines.

 

 

The day started with a presentation by Duncan Mackintosh, Development directer, and Liegh Vial, Head of the experiment station and former Nuffield Scholar, 2008. we then wre taken on a tour by james McQuilty, research scientist of the station. 1st stop was a look at the oldest trails, countinous rice for 52 years, with out any nitrogen fert for that time. . Not thier normal practise, but an intersting comparison to other trials. From there we looked at trials designed to break the continous rice cropping cycle, with alternate crops, corn, mung beans etc, in an effort to prove to local farmers that they could be more productive and profitable.

We then saw thier world wide collection of wild rice, which showed graphcally, the amount of variation of rice types from around the world.

After lunch we visited the International Rice Genebank, were we where shown how they prepare grain for long term storage, at low temp, some at degrees, foe 100 years, to safeguard the survival of varieties.

from there we went to the labs, and discussed how, using Molecular markers, they map the geneotypes of a variety, and how that they can identify traits, that they can transfere to a new variety, to enhance the new variety, speeding up the selection pocess of new varieties.

we finished the day looking at thier rice Museum, with an interesting display of old farmimg practices/tools from the phillipines and china, Interesting Rice products, and a fantatsic display of birds that frequent rice paddies from around the world.