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

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

#141

Post by tombh »

_bxg1 wrote: post #66
cybersnowflake wrote: post #13

A lot of superdefensive people over at quora everytime you ask a question about china.

I enjoyed having my perspective on China as a country expanded; I don't hear many positive things about it, and the environmental focus is genuinely refreshing, in stark contrast to my own country's idiocy in that department. With that said, nothing outweighs their government's human rights violations. Nothing. I know the U.S. has some of its own, but not to an extremity nor scale nor public acceptance that comes any…

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.

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

#142

Post by charlesju »

kartan wrote: post #75
einpoklum wrote: post #54

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…

> "How are many national economies keeping innumerable people hungry, even though there's plenty of food to go around several times over?" I never see this question on TV. What I mainly see on Tv is talk about political strategies, result surveys and the like. Climate change is one of the few things that I see being discussed. And even that has a lot of this let's talk about politicians positions and poll results. I…

You might be interested in supporting Andrew Yang: https://www.yang2020.com/

All he talks about is the problem of resource redistribution through the means of a basic income, $1000/month to every citizen!

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

#143

Post by Theodores »

kaesar14 wrote: post #96
scarface74 wrote: post #36

I can’t imagine the US being as efficient at anything as China is at growing food.

What does this even mean? Almost 300 million people are agricultural workers in China, versus 6 million in the US. Despite that, we produce nearly the same quantity of food and export 140 billion dollars of food every year. The US has plenty of efficiency shortcomings, but in agriculture, the US agricultural sector is a modern marvel of engineering and efficiency.

US produce is industrial feedstock, not food.

In the Brexit-headed UK there is considerable discussion about this, some Brits don't consider US food to be edible. Phrases like 'chlorinated chicken' get mentioned.

Are those soy beans fed to people or pigs? Same with all that corn. None of it can be eaten, it has to be processed into corn syrup or fake potato crisps. There is no modern marvel of engineering, it is monoculture, as if nothing was learned from the dustbowl. It is also heavily subsidised. Watered by fracked aquifiers. To international tastes it is all bland, adulterated and not really food.

Those exports also put people out of work on the global market so they are not growing their own food, just importing nonsense like American maize.

I am not into Chinese food but I know that Chinese people don't consider U.S. food as having much taste, not even real food.

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

#144

Post by carapace »

kartan wrote: post #75
einpoklum wrote: post #54

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…

> "How are many national economies keeping innumerable people hungry, even though there's plenty of food to go around several times over?" I never see this question on TV. What I mainly see on Tv is talk about political strategies, result surveys and the like. Climate change is one of the few things that I see being discussed. And even that has a lot of this let's talk about politicians positions and poll results. I…

"Redesigning Civilization with Permaculture" http://tobyhemenway.com/videos/redesigning-civilization-with...

With integrated carbon-neutral fuel production: http://www.alcoholcanbeagas.com/node/277

> "Alcohol Can Be a Gas!" (subtitled Fueling an Ethanol Revolution for the 21st Century) is an information-dense, highly readable, profusely illustrated manual, covering every aspect of alcohol fuel from history through crops, hands-on fuel production, and vehicle conversion. It's the first comprehensive book on small- to farm-scale alcohol production and use written in over 90 years.

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

#145

Post by chiefalchemist »

einpoklum wrote: post #54

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…

World-wide more people die from the "side effects" (i.e., obesity) of too much food, than not enough food.

https://www.pri.org/stories/2014-11-28/more-people-die-eatin...

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

#147

Post by selimthegrim »

heyimherelol wrote: post #60
ZeroGravitas wrote: post #21

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…

Read Red Plenty. Here's a good review, though I recommend reading the book first: https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/24/book-review-red-plenty...

The part of Red Plenty about Raisa Berg’s contentions is totally mathematically illiterate and unsupported.

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

#148

Post by nine_k »

einpoklum wrote: post #54

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…

Because powers that be want control more than they want happy, well-fed, even productive population.

Ask any organizers of international food programs. In most cases local authorities will demand that they, not the international do-gooders, distributed the food. When they get hold of that food, they keep it under lock and key and distribute in a way that supports the existing power / social status structure, not in a way that helps most hungry people. Some food could even rot unused, but not given away to the hungry.

The problem is not a lack of food. The problem is that certain power structures emerged on top of traditional food-deficient economy, perpetuate it to stay in power, and can't be fixed by injection of food from the outside.

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

#149

Post by nobody0 »

cybersnowflake wrote: post #13

A lot of superdefensive people over at quora everytime you ask a question about china.

Aparting from political views, it does depend on types of questions are asked to some degree.

Like 'Do China have cars?'

Questions without basic googling. Well, even this type of questions, there are still many people who try to answer it by statistics.

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

#150

Post by nine_k »

lph wrote: post #136

One thing that's not mentioned is that the freshness and variety of produce available in China is fantastic. There's much less refrigeration and transportation, so there's a good chance the produce you buy at the local street market came from nearby fields very recently. Seeing this as a visitor from the US is quite a revelation.

Which places did you visit, and observed this?

I bet it's characteristic for large cities where the amount of produce consumed is large, and prices are higher.

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