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How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

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101–110 of 356 posts

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#101
post #79
post #8

I see 3 sushi restaurants on the same street, start to extrapolate in my head, and wonder how we hadn't extinguished most edible fish species decades ago. From what I've read and heard on the subject, my understanding is: (1) some we have (touched upon at end of Jiro Dreams of Sushi, for example), (2) we are in the process of doing so to most the rest, (3) fish farms are increasingly making up the difference.

Fish stocks are being depleted. We are running the earth down.

No we're not.

Many species have disappeared before we even began to walk. Many will after we are all dead.

The earth, and life as we know it, have both faced and survived much worse.

We are merely ruining one of the many ecosystems our planet has supported and will support.

It just so happens to be the only one we definitely know we can thrive in ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#102

I was really impressed by the top answer until I read this statement. "I mean, the Chinese government has also forced Tibetans to build a massive amount of greenhouses on the Tibetan plateau. Those Tibetans have no time to go to temples for worshipping any more, instead, they have to work in the greenhouses taking care of tomatoes. This is why Dalai Lama is not so happy to hear this." What??

Anyone with even a basic knowledge of farming knows how specious this statement is.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#103
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard for me to emphasize enough how little typical Westerners understand about Asia. I bet the typical human knows very little about life and culture outside of their specific environment. A typical city-dweller knows little about rural life even in their own region, and vice-versa. It's weird how easily we fall into a trap of saying "look how ignorant x people are". I mean, of course, it's a big world, and we…

> I bet the typical human knows very little about life and culture outside of their specific environment. A typical city-dweller knows little about rural life even in their own region, and vice-versa. I think this is certainly true, but at the same time, I've never met an American (even an otherwise 'uneducated' one), who was under the impression that London or Berlin are backwoods villages that struggle to keep the…

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Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#105
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I found that comment a bit bizarre, too, as an American. Many (most?) people in America simply don’t care about this or have any general curiosity about the world outside of them. America is the land of fast food and unsustainable cheap beef; we have a president that denies climate change, so it’s no wonder that there is simply no interest in understanding sustainable fishing by a large portion of the population, reg…

Americans work longer hours and save less than most other developed nations. Plus they don’t have extensive social safety nets. If you’re struggling to get by it’s hard to be curious about the world. Also the country is ginormous.

This seems like a ridiculous hypothesis.

America works longer hours, but not the most. Canadians save even less than Americans and have more debt.

And the US has one of the highest median incomes in the world (with a few exceptions).

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#106

This and watching HBO's Chernobyl have prompted me to ask: how do communist countries work? Is there something I can read or watch to best understand things like who owns these farms, who profits from them, how do they pay workers, how do you buy a house, etc It's all as foreign to me as medieval peasants and nobles so I don't know how it works from day to day. The fact that China now has billionaires, and billionair…

China is not a communism these days (not sure if it ever was). It’s a market economy, just much less state-controlled/-directed than most Western economies (if you dispute that Western economies are state-controlled, just see US subsidies for agriculture and their political lobbying for Boeing)

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#107

The question should really be "How are many national economies keeping innumerable people hungry, even though there's plenty of food to go around several times over?" In most places in the world it's easy and cheap enough to produce food and distribute it. Actually, it's so easy and cheap that many world states artificially subsidize agriculture/livestock farming/etc. to prevent them from collapsing due to low prices…

Well simple really, there are still many shitty governments out there and not much of anything that we can do about it. worse is when they get sufficient weaponry it pretty much puts them off limits for any intervention and in some cases lets them blackmail others. look at Venezuela and even North Korea, then look who supports these regimes that allow the governments of each to keep themselves in power. We cannot do…

The US is actually causing incredible harm by its trade sanctions against Venezuela, with the US being that country's main trade partner:

http://www.economywatch.com/world_economy/venezuela/export-i...

A special UN rapporteur sent to Venezuela suggests the sanctions are causing death due to lack of things like Insulin.

https://therealnews.com/stories/un-rapporteur-us-sanctions-c...

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#108
post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's hard for me to emphasize enough how little typical Westerners understand about Asia. I bet the typical human knows very little about life and culture outside of their specific environment. A typical city-dweller knows little about rural life even in their own region, and vice-versa. It's weird how easily we fall into a trap of saying "look how ignorant x people are". I mean, of course, it's a big world, and we…

> I bet the typical human knows very little about life and culture outside of their specific environment. A typical city-dweller knows little about rural life even in their own region, and vice-versa. I think this is certainly true, but at the same time, I've never met an American (even an otherwise 'uneducated' one), who was under the impression that London or Berlin are backwoods villages that struggle to keep the…

Maybe it's because of historical ties to Europe, both a partially shared culture and history?

As for the asymmetry. The US has been considered one of two, then the only, global superpower for the last 70 years, inundating the whole world with their culture the whole time.

Reminds me of a course on models, where they talked about "celebrities". Those who are seen by and influence most people, but don't know and aren't influenced by most of said people (might need to clarify that)

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#109
post #87
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The tone is honestly understandable. It pains me to bring up this cliched point, but is the US media not constantly telling us that China is hostile, China is plotting? As someone with a foot in both worlds, US coverage of China is _at least_ equally warped. It's funny; to my parents and relatives in China I'm perceived as having a US bias, but everywhere else I get characterized as being too Chinese. It's hard for m…

> It's hard for me to emphasize enough how little typical Westerners understand about Asia. I bet the typical human knows very little about life and culture outside of their specific environment. A typical city-dweller knows little about rural life even in their own region, and vice-versa. It's weird how easily we fall into a trap of saying "look how ignorant x people are". I mean, of course, it's a big world, and we…

That is sort of the thing. It isn't so much that people don't know as that it doesn't register as important. Hans Rosling ended up devoting much of his life promoting a fact based view of the world after learning first hand that some of the absolute top students in Sweden had an obsolete world view. The West is used to being "the first world" were most important things happen. But increasingly we are the ones "on the other side". In most of the West large government programs aren't on the table, so that doesn't register as important to us. I am not even sure there is much that can be done about it. It is literally history in the making really.

Re: How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people?

#110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are a lot of snide remarks in that answer, however, detracting from otherwise great information. (Eg what does the Dalai Lama and Uighur oppression have to do with this?)

> what does the Dalai Lama and Uighur oppression have to do with this The snark likely comes from the fact that Xinjiang is consistently portrayed in Western media as a nightmarish, dystopian, Orwellian hellhole suffering under the iron fisted oppression of the Communist Party. They ignore the very real benefits that have been afforded to millions of poverty-stricken people in Xinjiang via progressive government poli…

Hitler had some great social programs too, what's your point?
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