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News on Agriculture in China

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Soya bean surprise as traders default on orders
Apr 25, 2014 (WiC 234)

The Chinese warn that “even the gods are hard put to foretell the price of mulberry leaves”. The idiom dates back to a period in which fortunes were made using them to fatten silkworms. The proverbial lesson is more prosaic – that it can ...

Army goes on offensive over GM food risks
Sep 13, 2013 (WiC 208)

One is the world’s largest military force, the other sets policies for Chinese arable land. But when it comes to genetically modified crops, it seems that the People’s Liberation Army and the Ministry of Agriculture don’t exactly see eye to ...

Plot development

One of the boldest experiments in Chinese farming is underway in Jiaxing
Jun 28, 2013 (WiC 199)

How do you encourage tens of millions of farmers to move to the city each year? Counter-intuitively, the Chinese government seems to think that the answer is to guarantee them their land rights back home. As part of China’s urbanisation ...

As carcasses float down the Huangpu, one pork entrepreneur is on the up
Mar 22, 2013 (WiC 186)

Thousands of dead pigs floating down a river might not seem like a laughing matter. At last count, at least 14,000 carcasses have drifted down the Huangpu, a major water source for Shanghai. But China’s netizens, long accustomed to food ...

Chinese farmers cross the border into Russia
Dec 14, 2012 (WiC 176)

Zhang Hongbin’s progress in Russia is best measured by the machinery parked in his backyard. When he first arrived to grow soya beans in 2005, Zhang rented a small tractor. The next year, he bought it. The year after that, Zhang’s earnings ...

Will soya and corn shortfall drive up inflation?
Jul 27, 2012 (WiC 160)

Think of Chinese food and you will likely think of soya sauce, a condiment invented some 1,800 years ago in China. But, surprisingly, the main ingredient of this quintessentially Chinese product – the soya bean – is now much more likely to be ...

100 years behind

Eye-opening report on Chinese farming
Jul 20, 2012 (WiC 159)

"As one of the four ancient civilisations: China ranks along ancient Egypt, Babylon, and India in its contribution to mankind through agriculture.” That is one of the opening comments from a new report on the state of modern Chinese ...

Root of problem

Chinese ginseng industry loses out to Koreans
Jan 13, 2012 (WiC 134)

China has been using ginseng medicinally for centuries. During the first years of the Qing Dynasty, smallpox was rampant and for the victims ginseng was thought to be the only cure. As a result, thousands began making the trip to the northeast of ...

Chips with everything

Farmers are suffering losses after potato harvest produces glut
Dec 9, 2011 (WiC 132)

This year, Han Gang reaped a bumper harvest from his 80 mu (a Chinese measure, in this case equivalent 5.3 hectares) farm in a village to the north of Zhengzhou, where he grows sweet potatoes and daikon radishes. But instead of celebrating, ...

Why bureaucrats don’t have to worry about food safety
Jun 10, 2011 (WiC 110)

By most measures, China’s leaders have failed to make the country’s food safer to eat. And a recent Southern Metropolis Weekly exposé points to one of the more compelling reasons for this lack of success: the country’s top officials ...

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