Angus farmer witnesses huge contrasts in China

TOUR: Former Nuffield scholar says vast country faces a challenge from water shortage

China is well known as both an enigma and a land of contrasts and according to Angus farmer James Black these perceptions are absolutely correct.

He has recently criss-crossed the country in an epic tour organised by Nuffield Australia. A former Nuffield scholar, James was one of two Scots in the 22-strong party, the other being Alex Fowlie from near Peterhead.

“We started from Hong Kong and flew two hours into Zhejang province and a different world,” said James.

“It was hilly country with flat river valleys where crops were being grown by cooperatives. No one owns lands but people do have ‘rights’ over no more than two acres.

“We saw a very large vineyard where the rights of 150 farmers had been pooled. In some cases villages of 5,000 people were employed in this sort of joint venture.

“Looking at the terraces on the hillsides, some only one metre wide and growing oilseed rape, it seemed unbelievable that China could feed its one billion population.”

The party, all used to farming with forklifts and loaders, were taken aback to see everything being hand-balled. Even in a large city fruit and vegetable market routinely clearing 2,500 tonnes of produce per day there was not a single forklift to be seen.

Much of this, of course, is down to the government policy of maintaining full employment especially in rural areas.

China still maintains a one child per family regulation although this could be circumvented by making a payment to the government of $30,000 for a second child and $60,000 for a third.

The practice was relatively common in the cities among prosperous business people but was impossible for peasants.

“We saw many contrasts across the country,” said James.

“A recently established sheep station kept 4,500 ewes in slatted sheds while outside in the fields women with sickles cut forage into bags. Indeed, in all our travels we never saw grazing livestock of any type.”

There was, however, plenty of abattoir activity to be seen in the northern province of Heilongjing with the privately owned Grand Farms plant killing 1,000 cattle a day and handling 38,000 New Zealand lamb carcases weekly. The company claimed to be New Zealand’s largest lamb customer.

This northern area close to the Russian border was more prairie like with large mechanised arable units and a huge investment in dairying with units of 2,000 to 4,000 cows common.

Swiss company Nestle was hugely involved and had invested the equivalent of £20 million in a University of Dairying in Shuangcheng. There are apparently plans for a gigantic 100,000 cow dairy unit to be run on the border lands in collaboration with the Russians.

“The Chinese have reputedly bought 200,000 dairy heifers from New Zealand and Australia since the melamine baby food contamination scandal,” said James.

A new green-field port at Dahlian, again in the north, was completed in 2005 and was now capable of handling 20 million tonnes per year, about half of which was domestically produced and often strategically stored.

“There is a huge change under way as China moves to a high-protein diet, but the main limitation is that there is not enough water,” added James.

James Black was one of only two Scots who were part of the tour.