China is the most populous country in the world with its population. Its population, which was 667.1 million in 1960, increased to 1.386 ...
China is the most populous country in the world with its population. Its population, which was 667.1 million in 1960, increased to 1.386 billion in 2017. Today this figure is around 1.4 billion. Naturally, it is quite difficult to feed this population, provide employment and improve the quality of life.
That's why the government implemented family planning with a one-child policy for many years. This method worked, of course. In fact, in Beijing , the capital of the country , the birth rate decreased from 9.06 per thousand in 2017 to 8.24 per thousand in 2018. Due to the impact of family planning, increased deaths due to the elderly population, and decreased marriage rates, a decrease of 170 thousand people was observed in the capital's population. However, the city population was still 21.54 million. Not crowded enough?
In order to prevent this population from suffering from nutritional problems, an annual budget of 2 trillion dollars is allocated to the food industry in the country. Although agriculture is carried out all over the country, vegetables are grown in computer-controlled indoor greenhouses with artificial lighting instead of sunlight. However, even all this production effort is insufficient against the population. Although edible oil is produced, even this is not enough for consumption, so around 1.5 million tons of oil is exported annually. Naturally, in such a situation, agriculture has a large place in the Chinese economy.
China , which implemented an economic policy closed to the outside world for many years , stopped the practice of collective farming in the early 1980s and allowed private enterprises again. The aim was to somehow feed the country by increasing production. This has attracted record levels of foreign investment to the country, making it now the world's largest agricultural exporter. The agricultural products it exports the most are cotton yarn, rice, tea, canned fruits and vegetables , vegetable and animal oils .
Although China's extraordinary population and ever-increasing appetite increase the tendency towards agriculture, the number of farmers still using traditional methods is quite high due to the general characteristics of the society. Today, it is still possible to see people preparing their land with plows pulled by water buffalos, plowing their fields with rusty tractors, and farmers preparing their crops for plowing with a handmade pitchfork in the paddy fields of Laohuzui . However, if agricultural machines were used, they would save both time, budget and effort. But since machines are still very expensive in this country, it seems more reasonable to use human labor as has been done for centuries.
In the last 40 years, China has caught up with the agricultural development that the West has used for more than a century. His conceptual redefinition of agriculture is very new. The idea of ​​sustainability , organic agriculture , small enterprises , amateur farmers as well as industrial factories are just finding a place in society. Agriculture is being defined again and again. According to the West, it is very late.
How can a country with one-tenth of the world's agricultural land feed approximately one-fifth of the world's population using traditional methods? Moreover, we are talking about a population whose eating habits have changed considerably. While three-quarters of the population lived in towns and villages 30 years ago, today more than half of them live in cities. Metropolitan life changes eating habits, as it does everywhere in the world, and China is increasingly taking Western food consumption as an example.
China, which consumes three times more meat than in the 90s, is turning more towards milk and dairy products and purchasing more processed foods. These new ways of eating naturally push the country, which has limited agricultural resources, to reach out to other countries. Although the government encourages people to buy agricultural land and engage in agriculture in countries such as Ukraine , Tanzania and Chile , traditions do not allow this. Because the policy of self-sufficiency, especially in grain production, has become a tradition. While we do not want to give up on domestic production and need more food, agricultural technologies are also gaining importance.
There is a significant similarity between China and Türkiye in terms of agricultural areas. Agricultural lands in small and scattered pieces create great difficulties in planting. However, Turkey's vision on agricultural technologies is not yet widespread in China . Because the country cannot break away from traditional methods, it does not implement any innovations in irrigation systems, nor does it take large-scale measures to disseminate agricultural technologies and mechanization. There is no plan to enlarge the land in agricultural policies. Because they believe that the yield from small lands is better. What they want to do for now is to bring adjacent fields together and create cooperation between landowners.
Despite all these data, the fact that the world's second largest agricultural exporter is the Netherlands makes people think. In terms of agricultural productivity , the Netherlands challenges not only China , which is 235 times larger in area , but the entire world. In 2017, the Netherlands exported agricultural products worth 97 billion Euros, while the USA could export 140.5 Dollars in the same year. So what is the secret of the Netherlands ?
This country, which is on average 23 times smaller than Turkey, is highly developed in terms of agricultural technologies. Moreover, since they use the highest level of technology in irrigation, water consumption is 90 percent less than normal. Drones and driverless agricultural vehicles are used in many agricultural lands . In this way, they can increase product quality and maximize efficiency. In short, it can stand up to any giant it encounters, such as the Netherlands, China or the USA. The secret of this agricultural production created despite its small surface area is clear; They are not afraid to use technology.
No comments