How is China able to provide enough food to feed over 1B people? • Hacker News Board

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

#221

Post by Noumenon72 » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:20 AM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #23

moksly wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most upvoted answer is probably the most awesome pierce of information I’ve seen in 2019 though, holy socks that’s a great Quora answer. And it’s the top answer, clearly distinguishable from the answers you’re referring to, which I think is better than most social media, HN included.

Woah. I thought you were being hyperbolic. Man! That was a well fleshed out answer. Is Quora always like that? Or is that a one off kind of thing?

Quora is way, way better than say, Yahoo Answers, and rivals AskReddit in its own way. Here are some well fleshed out answers you may like.

https://www.quora.com/What-was-very-useful-when-it-first-cam...

https://www.quora.com/Why-are-Gray-codes-used/answer/Steve-B...

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-proper-name-for-a-roly-pol...

https://www.quora.com/How-much-damage-does-Marine-1-cause-to...

https://www.quora.com/How-did-people-put-out-candles-in-the-...

https://www.quora.com/Why-do-urban-trees-have-short-lives-co...

https://www.quora.com/What-is-normal-in-your-country-but-wei...

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

#222

Post by roboys » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:23 AM UTC

mhh__ wrote: post #191

tombh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very existence of America is a human rights violation, vis-a-vis the original inhabitants and African slavery. Not to mention the multitude of similar abuses those same Europeans caused over the rest of the world. China's violations are certainly serious, but it's just not comparable to the sheer extent of the West's.

> China's violations are certainly serious, but it's just not comparable to the sheer extent of the West's. Within recent history this just isn't true. In fact I'm not even sure it's true over history going back to the creation of the colonies: Decades spent under communism - millions dead, freedom totally unknown and nothing to show for it. I don't know to assign magnitude to anything like that, but to say they aren…

India never had a famine before the British landed on its shores, when all was said and done, they stole over $45 trillion dollars worth of value from that single nation...

I imagine Africa's stolen loot was many times larger (just the gold export records from South Africa are staggering), not even counting the rest of the world. China would have to maliciously work for decades (maybe centuries) to do the same kind of economic damage that Europe did to these regions.

Realize we are comparing the Chinese, who invaded almost nobody in the last 2000 years, to Europeans, who have invaded almost everybody just in the last 500 years. Not even close here....

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

#223

Post by lappet » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:29 AM UTC

rayiner wrote: post #204

FigBug wrote: post #2

The country I don't understand how they do it is Bangladesh. A country the size of New York State with 164 million people. (50% of the US population). As I understand it, they generate 90% of the food they require.

The answers below are misleading by omission. While being on a river delta makes for fertile land, Bangladesh was nowhere near food independent a few decades ago. It was made so due to modern crop varieties and modern farming methods: > During the last two decades and a half, important changes occurred in the realm of rice production and profitability. First, the cost of producing rice is several times higher than po…

You raise a very good point about the increase in yield, but the reason Bangladesh has so many people in the first place is the fertile land. The lack of self-sufficiency in recent times may be due to the famines caused during the British Raj era.

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

#224

Post by Iv » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:32 AM UTC

n-exploit wrote: post #206

nradov wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A slight sea level rise will cripple farming in a large part of Bangladesh. I'm not optimistic about their future.

What can we do as computer scientists to best militate this risk and protect human life?

Make sure the Bengali alphabet is working in whatever software you are doing.

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

#225

Post by bluemaster » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:40 AM UTC

jaaron wrote: post #123

rajeshp1986 wrote: post #97

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??

It's definitely an impressive response, but it also looks like the sort of state sponsored responses typical of Chinese propaganda. That's not to say it's inaccurate, just biased.

The guy is definitely a Chinese operative, just look at his dozens of other articles related to HongKong etc https://www.quora.com/Why-does-China-criticize-Britain-for-t...

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

#226

Post by roboys » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:42 AM UTC

_bxg1 wrote: post #190

tombh wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The very existence of America is a human rights violation, vis-a-vis the original inhabitants and African slavery. Not to mention the multitude of similar abuses those same Europeans caused over the rest of the world. China's violations are certainly serious, but it's just not comparable to the sheer extent of the West's.

I was of course only talking about the present and future. That's what matters when it comes to foreign policy.

We are tied to so many treaties and agreements made in the past, that I believe this is not the case.

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

#227

Post by mstaoru » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:44 AM UTC

Another perspective on how China is able to provide enough food:

- In Shanghai 96% white-collar workers have at least one disease of the "food triad" (diabetes, fatty liver, hypertension), up from ~80% in 00's.

- In Beijing 26% of the whole population is overweight or obese, up from 11% in 00's.

- China has the largest percentage of obese children in the World, only competing with Mexico.

So there is enough food, but this food is low quality empty calories to "feed" 1B people, not nourish them.

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

#228

Post by sunstone » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:51 AM UTC

bllguo wrote: post #46

dmix wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the first answer has “Western media won’t tell you this”. Like there’s some western conspiracy to downplay Chinese agriculture industry. The Chinese media is constantly telling their people that the US is plotting against China and is hostile to them, so the citizens don’t get any crazy ideas like democracy and human rights. While simultaneously amplifying the bad news coming out of America to show the ‘dangers’…

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…

I have known and worked with several mainland raised Chinese and there is no doubt that the schools in China teach anti-American propaganda. Whereas America does not teach any anti-Chinese propaganda in their schools.

This is really kind of weird since it was the Americans who provided the Burma-to-China airlift during WWII that allowed China to expel the Japanese from China. Furthermore, if you look at world trade balances since 1978 it is America, and only America, that has carried the burden of an imbalanced trade relationship with China of billions of dollars per year; year after year.

I'm not anti-Chinese in any way, I've traveled through the country three times, but the facts are the facts.

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

#229

Post by atlasunshrugged » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 4:53 AM UTC

mstaoru wrote: post #227

Another perspective on how China is able to provide enough food: - In Shanghai 96% white-collar workers have at least one disease of the "food triad" (diabetes, fatty liver, hypertension), up from ~80% in 00's. - In Beijing 26% of the whole population is overweight or obese, up from 11% in 00's. - China has the largest percentage of obese children in the World, only competing with Mexico. So there is enough food, but…

Does that necessarily mean that the food is low quality or just that there are more options and many are considerably unhealthier than the more traditional options (eg. more processed foods easily available now than in the past)

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

#230

Post by atlasunshrugged » Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 5:00 AM UTC

chiefalchemist wrote: post #168

thefounder wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Junk food is not "real" food

Regardless. Death is death. And while we have traditionally feared shortage, the truth is excess - albeit of the wrong "foods" - is now the bigger problem.

Yes, although it's globalizing a pretty big problem. What you said is absolutely true in countries that are adopting a more modern western diet (eg. those upping their intake of processed foods, more meat, tobacco/alcohol, etc. + a bunch of factors around things like AIDS, malaria, diarrhoea, etc. not killing them before those things have a chance to do so which all usually take much longer.

If we're talking about many countries in sub saharan Africa for instance though, I'd say shortage is still a problem and probably going to get worse with climate change since Africa is particularly vulnerable (literally read an article about this yesterday but can't find the link right now)