Bringing People Back to the Farm

Bringing People Back to the Farm. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Line On Agriculture.

China is in a state of transition. Massive numbers of people moved from rural areas to the cities in recent years. Now efforts are underway to bring people back to the farm. Former Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer is an advisor to a major agriculture and technology zone in China and says 22-million people moved back to the farm last year. That has created a unique challenge.

SCHAFER: They recognize they have to consolidate the land use because they’ve got all these little itty bitty farms that are basically producing by hand and the **** are not working so they’re moving massive amounts of farmers in to planned communities. They’re giving them an annual salary plus free housing and then saying we’re going to take your land back and put it together in productive big yielding farms so that reduces jobs too in rural areas. So in the meantime while they’re trying to increase yields by economies of scale they are also moving people off so that it’s a tricky balance there how they’re going to get jobs in the rural area.

Earlier this month - Schafer spoke at a major agriculture fair in Yangling (yawn ling). Schafer says attempts are underway to flatten out China’s growth in mature industries, like pork and poultry. At the same time - the central government wants to expand beef production.

SCHAFER: As they expand for instance the beef production, as they develop a herd in China they need corn, they need feed. They don’t have that developed either so they’re going to be pushing on corn and wheat. Their wheat production this year is probably down – they say 2 to 3%, it’s probably down 5 or 6%. They need to watch that so I think they’re going to continue to focus on wheat and corn and buy their soybeans and that’s just going to provide great opportunities for us the in the United States. We have good product, it’s great, they like it, they buy it and they’re going to be buying more of it.

Schafer says the U.S. and China are dependent upon one another and a cooperative working relationship is essential.

That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.