TRAVELING REPORTER FILES CHINESE FARMER STORY

CHINESE AGRICULTURE DRYING UP
Our visit to a Chinese farmers operation in central China this summer (see below) brought out that the irrigation system was not only deteriorated but was never coming back, judging from our interview with this typical Chinese farmer and further investigation into the underlying facts.

Looking into the Chinese agriculture situation we find that basically Chinas huge population is running out of water. There is no where to go to get more water other then to divert water from agriculture to other more pressing uses.

A measurement of water that results in $450 in agriculture production can be diverted to industry and generate over $10,000 in industrial production. Therefore the irrigation projects are being shut down,
and the water used elsewhere and agriculture reverts to dry land farming as you saw in our farmers 3 acre farm story. (see article and photos below.)

What this means is those involved in farming in China, as the farmer and his wife (with photos) we interviewed, who will find it even harder to exist. China as a whole as a result will be forced to be importing more agricultural products. This is a trend that seems will have no end as the water supply becomes tighter and tighter in China.

TRAVELING REPORTER FILES CHINESE FARMER STORY
Frequent flier miles had piled up so your reporter had an opportunity to go to China this summer with the air fair taken care of via miles "earned" over the year sitting on airplanes. Needless to say this trip required sitting in the same airplane seat for over 12 hours without a break. Then just when you get over it and the jet lag, from a 12 hour time change, you get to do it all over again and come home, which then keeps you totally mixed up for over 3 days as to when to sleep and when to be exhausted.

Took a Chinese airline flight from Beijing up to more central China where the 6,000 terra cotta soldiers were discovered and after playing tourist, hired the only English speaking person we could find with a car, for a half day to take us out to a rural area and see what farming was all about in China. Our driver explained we were getting out in an area where tourists normally do not go. This was apparent because it looked like once we got out in the country side that the government had not spent a dime on roads or anything since 1930, sort of going back to the stone age, with the most modern device that showed up regularly along the country road was bicycles and various versions including 3 wheel types made into a sort of a farm "pickup" for hauling produce to town.

Once we were out in what looked like farm country we noticed an unexplained phenomenon that we noticed from the plane as we landed and here we see it again... An occasional field about 7 or 8 feet lower than the adjoining field of crops. Both had crops, just a wall of embankment like you had picked up a huge rectangular cake pan of dirt making your neighbors farm crops 7 foot lower than yours. Took a bit of translating and conversation to finally solve the mystery. Since there seems to be few lumber size trees in China, construction for the last 3000 years has been mostly from bricks. So they run brick production from the portion of land for a few hundred years, and then when the brick production moved down the road, they went back to farming it. This explains why you occasionally have different level fields in what is an almost flat land in that area. (see photos)

Noted a great number of melon fields and since this is a relatively dry area noted they used plastic between the plant rows to hold in moisture and leave what rain did fall to soak in only where the plants where. This was not done in the corn fields however. Corn was in various stages from tassled to barely out of the ground and we had to get our translator to clear that one up. Turns out the tassled corn field farmer had only grown corn, and the short corn farmer had raised wheat first and now was going to corn. Seems the area more or less farmed year around.

We had our English speaking Chinese driver talk to a couple that were tending a corn field that looked like a plot of about 3 acres with one third still in wheat stubble. We asked him to find out speaking Chinese to them of course, just what had happened to the concrete irrigation system that looked like it had not worked since the 30s... Our Chinese farmer seemed to treat that as a joke of some sort so we never got anywhere with that inquiry.

The wife continued to hoe weeds out of the corn while we talked, via translator, the farmer explained he was pouring liquid fertilizer from the pigs he raised in the village, from a bucket directly on to each individual corn stalk. There are no farmsteads, the farmers all live in the village, and as he had done here packed his 50 gallon drum of liquid fertilizer pulling his cart well over a mile from the village. When discovering he had pigs in the village (30) we offered him 15 yuan (about $1.80) (about a days wages) to ride into town with us and let us see his pigs. Refused any money and rode into the village and proudly showed us his pigs, all penned up in 4 neat brick pens. Neat and orderly clean as pig pens go. Had one sow with 8 new pigs and the rest about ready for market. He had a brick drainage system that brought all of the pig waste into a tank which he had ladled out into his 55 gallon drum on his 2 wheel cart to take to his corn field. We asked what he fed them since we saw little sign of feed inventory. Turns out he had two large barrels of restaurant slop hauled out to him once a week from the big city for 40 yuan a large tank full. He explained he also fed them corn when he had some. Which was later in the season of course since there seemed to be nowhere for carryover. He reported he normally received about 100 yuan for each pig when he sold them off. Did not get into the economics of that and let it sit. We did notice further down the road a 3 wheel motorcycle with enlarged bicycle pick up box with about 2 foot boards making up the box containing 5 large pigs. The pigs were kept from getting out enroute to market by a rope mesh of about 4 inch squares over the top of them. We were invited in for tea but passed on that, but regretted it afterward since we would have liked to have seen the inside of the brick house. All of these bricks by the way looked like they could be a few hundred years old. The translator told us the farmer explained he leased his plot of land from the government for 30 years. It appeared the entire farm implement inventory consisted of one hoe, and his transport one two wheel farmer powered cart with a 55 gallon drum. His manure spreader consisted of one large plastic bucket.

We stuck the 15 yuan in his cart despite his protest and wished later we had gotten an exact name and address so we could have mailed them a little something from the US for Christmas. It was difficult to communicate but he seemed pleased to find out we had both been raised on pig farms in the US.

When in China we noted in the English edition of a Chinese newspaper that the Chinese farmers were enthusiastically accepting genetically altered crops and despite paying higher prices for seed were well ahead of the game with cotton that resisted the persistent boll weevil. Other crops were being affected in a similar way but now the government was starting to slow things down after pressure from some outside of China groups.

The same newspaper reported that two crop dusters were reported killed in spraying a huge infestation of grasshoppers that had hit northern China. A duck farmer claimed he had the solution. His 5000 long necked brown ducks were reported to eat over 400 grasshoppers a day each and could clean up large fields in a day or two. He also claimed grasshoppers were high protein, saved him over 70% on his usual feed bill and fattened his ducks much faster.