From N.S. Lyons' The Upheaval substack, September 1:
And what does that say about the world’s future?
China is obsessed with food security. You might not realize just how obsessed: stockpiling rapidly, by the end of the year China – with its 20% of the world’s population – is projected to have accumulated and stashed away some 65% of the world's corn and 53% of the world's wheat.
As far as China’s leaders are concerned, this is insufficient. In June, China’s State Council released emergency measures aiming to further shore up food supplies and drive down prices, pledging huge agricultural subsidies and massive logistics investments, and pushing local governments to accumulate even greater state grain reserves. Premier Li Keqiang (China’s #2 leader) went on record to threaten that “every level of government” must work to maximize agricultural yield this year, and that those officials who fail to do so “will be held accountable.” A national Food Security Law is about to be published, reinforcing the decision that food production and agriculture protections is now a top national security imperative (a national Energy Security Law will also soon be published).
Why the single-minded urgency? Now you, not being an idiot, might say, “No shit Sherlock Holmes: thanks to the war in Ukraine, sanctions on Russia, and the tragic lasting consequences of covid-lockdowns, the world is entering what the head of the UN World Food Program recently called the worst two-year period of food crisis since WWII, with some 49 million people now at imminent risk of starving to death and at least 323 million in a state of such ‘acute food insecurity’ that they are ‘marching toward starvation,’ so of course the Chinese are reasonable to be worried about food.”
You would of course be right about that; and in fact China, having already suffered first historic flooding and then historic drought, is this year also facing a wheat harvest that the country’s minister of agriculture described as being in the “worst condition in history.” There is all that.
But Chinese President Xi Jinping’s paranoia about food security dates to well before the current crisis began. In August 2020 Xi launched a nation-wide campaign to reduce food waste (dubbed “operation empty plates”), while stressing “the need to maintain a sense of crisis regarding food security.”
Then China’s all-important 14th Five-Year Plan for 2021-2025, released in March 2021, described food security as a “prerequisite” for national security and set a national food security target for the first time, at 650 million tons of grain per year. Protections to strictly maintain a “red line” of 120 million hectares of minimum farmland (first set in 2007) were enhanced. While Dutch authorities have been shooting protesting farmers to seize their farmland and build apartment buildings, China has been busy bulldozing half-built suburbs and dismantling ill-considered solar farms that threaten productive agricultural land and water resources.
In August 2021, the Party approved a new action plan for the seed industry. According to Xi, China’s “seed sources must be independent and under better control, and seed industry technology must be self-reliant.”
In December 2021, China initiated ambitious plans to set aside arable land to grow soybeans, a crop it had almost completely abandoned after its 2001 entry into the WTO, with a target of raising output by 40% over the next four years, including by utilizing (domestically) genetically engineered crops for the first time. “The Chinese people’s rice bowl must be firmly held in their own hands at all times, and that rice bowl must mainly contain Chinese grain,” Xi told a top-level officials at a meeting related to the plan.
Then, in March of this year, China’s the National Development and Reform Commission published orders to begin rapidly stockpiling fertilizer supplies. Xi devoted an entire speech that month to berating cadres to “not slacken our efforts on food security” in the least, while Premier Li insisted that, “We must address uncertainty in the external environment with the certainty of stable domestic [agricultural] production,” saying, “This is critical to stability of prices, of the economy, and of all of society.”
And they’re still at it this summer and fall. But what prompted all this, exactly?....
....MUCH MORE
Previously:
December 11, 2021
"China snaps up large volumes of French, Ukrainian feed grain"
December 30, 2021
ICYMI: "China Panic-Hoards Half Of World's Grain Supply Amid Threats Of Collapse"
"China’s wheat harvest “worst in history”, says agriculture minister"
That Time The CIA Completely Missed A Soviet Crop Failure And Allowed The Sovs To Buy American Wheat On The Cheap
China and Food Prices: "One reason for rising food prices? Chinese hoarding"
WSJ: "Food Hoards Can Ease Inflation, but Only Some Governments Are Prepared"
Rabobank: "What Possible Disruption Is Coming That Requires China To Start Massive Stockpiling Of All Possible Commodities?"
China May Be Facing Food Shortages, Launches "Clean Plate" Campaign to Cut Waste
"China Cites U.S. Agriculture for Why It's Chosen Not to Invade Taiwan"
"Global food insecurity and famine from reduced crop, marine fishery and livestock production due to climate disruption from nuclear war soot injection"
China, Taiwan, Pigs and Sanctions
