Cheap Western Agricultural Imports May Crush Chinese Agriculture
The impact of cheap agricultural imports on Chinese agriculture is obvious: phenomena that occurred during the era of capitalist economic crises, such as abandoned farmland, dumping milk, and slaughtering cattle, have been replayed in China.
Recently, the author learned that after our country imports soybeans, corn, rapeseed, and alfalfa from the United States and other countries, it is also going to sign free trade agreements on milk with New Zealand, Australia, and others.
If the above agreements take effect, China's dairy industry will face a severe crisis in its development.
Our country is a large country with a population of 1.3 billion, and it is also a major agricultural country. Grain has always been the guarantee of long-term national stability and the people's happy lives. However, in recent years, our country's grain problem has become increasingly prominent. At the Third China International Agricultural Business Summit held in May last year, Zhang Hongyu, Director of the Department of Rural Economic System and Management of the Ministry of Agriculture, already stated that our country's grain self-sufficiency rate had fallen to 87%, the self-sufficiency rate of all agricultural products was about 70%, and about 30% needed to be adjusted through the international market. These figures are shocking. As a major agricultural country, if our own grain output cannot even supply our own people and still needs to rely on imports to supplement it, then in the long run we will inevitably be controlled by others.
As everyone knows, due to the lack of precautions, China's soybean industry has basically been crushed, and more than 80% of the soybeans on the market come from genetically modified soybeans from Western markets; domestic rapeseed prices have also been higher than imported ones, and if measures are inappropriate, it will also face collapse; the sugar industry is also facing collapse due to the severe situation in which imported materials are lower than domestic materials; 90% of the vegetable seed industry is also monopolized by others. From this point of view, if imports are allowed to continue and Chinese agriculture continues to be suppressed, then when Chinese people eat meat, oil, sugar, tofu, drink milk, and eat vegetables, they will all fall to the point of having to look at others' faces. Not only that, if emergency measures are not taken and the impact of the international market is still allowed, China will also face severe social, political, and military crises.
In 2014, our country imported 71.4 million tons of soybeans alone, breaking through the 70 million ton mark. From the perspective of import prices, the average cost of imported soybeans was less than 3,400 yuan/ton, equivalent to 1.7 yuan per jin, while the purchase price of non-GMO soybeans produced in Northeast China was 2.01 yuan/jin, and soybeans in Shandong's agricultural areas were below 3 yuan per [jin], with no one producing them. This is the phenomenon eagerly discussed in the industry as “the floor price higher than the ceiling price.” Soybean yields are low, the planting season is long, and it is difficult to compete with the international market. Farmers mostly switch to planting corn, and the plant protein source for China's 1.3 billion people is handed over to foreign capital.
Why is foreign grain so cheap? This is the result of unfair competition. In fact, behind grain there are also ecological environment, biodiversity, social, political, and military costs, and these costs are all not calculated. Let us analyze them:
First, China's small farmers are competing with large foreign capital, and they are on different starting lines. The author once conducted field investigations of large family farms in the United States and saw that their farms were all between 1,000 and 10,000 acres, and were still being consolidated. Farms of more than 10,000 acres were already very common. 10,000 acres is equivalent to 60,000 mu in China, while the land planted by Chinese farmers is only a few mu, or after transfer just over 100 mu. Only in Inner Mongolia, Northeast China, and other places are there family farms of more than 1,000 mu. Americans use a hundred times or even a thousand times more land to defeat China's small farmers. What is there to boast about? Their economies of scale are obviously something Chinese farmers cannot compare with.
Second, American farmers receive subsidies for farming, and 40% of their income comes from government subsidies. In other words, as long as they farm, this 40% is pure profit, and no one dares to dock it. What about China's small farmers? Subsidies of less than a few hundred yuan per household are not even looked upon favorably by poor Chinese farmers; they can earn that much in one day working in the city. Then where does the money Americans use to subsidize American farmers come from? It is Chinese people's money. We earn money and are reluctant to spend it, and it is taken by Americans to spend, and the amount is not small. Americans use Chinese people's money to defeat Chinese agriculture. Is such a convenient thing more cost-effective than war?
Third, the ecological environment and health costs are not calculated. Large American farms are no longer able to adopt sustainable agricultural methods. They cannot do without large amounts of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and herbicides, and they also need to use genetically modified technology to fight pests and weeds inside and out. The damage to the ecological environment is obvious, and there is potential harm to human health. Setting aside the ecological damage this agricultural approach causes to the United States itself, no one has paid attention to the glyphosate residues and genetically modified ingredient residues in the cheap soybeans, corn, and alfalfa China imports. Cheap imported grain is not suitable for human consumption, and strictly speaking, even feeding it to animals is problematic. Experiments by French scientists have already proved that genetically modified corn has a high probability of inducing tumors in experimental animals. Yet we import it without taking measures to supplement people's rations, use it for oil extraction, and let it further enter the human food chain as animal feed. All of this is ill-considered. The scientific questions involved need to be carefully studied. Large-scale modern agriculture's destruction of the ecological environment also leads to the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases. One third of the world's greenhouse gases come from large-scale agricultural reclamation, and no one has seriously calculated this account either.
Fourth, the biodiversity cost is not calculated. Large-scale agriculture will inevitably lead to a decline in cultivation diversity and an increase in pests, diseases, and weeds, and good practices such as intercropping, rational close planting, and combining planting and breeding are out of the question. Cultivated species that humanity has preserved for thousands of years have been tragically lost, and the application of genetically modified technology has accelerated the rate of loss of natural species diversity. In large-scale agricultural planting areas, even the calls of birds are hard to hear. Bees suffer, butterflies are affected, and natural enemies such as frogs are rarely seen, ultimately causing potential impacts on human survival as well.
Fifth, the political and military costs are not calculated. The biggest business in the world is revolution, which pushes the government to start over. Therefore, no successive government dares to treat political power lightly, and the greatest machine for consolidating political power is the military, and the military needs deterrent weapons, so a large part of annual national defense spending is used for weapons research and development. However, while we attach importance to nuclear weapons, laser weapons, and space weapons, we forget that grain is an even greater weapon. The lethality of genetically modified biological weapons is far greater than that of nuclear weapons, because they can kill without showing their form. Even ordinary grain weapons can easily put people to death, as long as you dare not plant for one year. We import grain from former hostile countries, so we should be even more on guard against possible grain attacks. Is it normal to import grain at such low prices? If others give us grain for free, would we dare to take it? Others can promise to give us grain for free for one or two years to lure Chinese farmers into not farming. As long as you dare agree, I am afraid that by then the country will no longer be a country. The cost of such a war is too low.
The impact of cheap agricultural imports on Chinese agriculture is obvious: phenomena that occurred during the era of capitalist economic crises, such as abandoned farmland, dumping milk, and slaughtering cattle, have been replayed in China. The waste of resources this causes and the blow to farmers' enthusiasm for farming are difficult to make up for with money. If we appropriately subsidize Chinese farmers with the money used to import grain, the money used to remediate ecological damage, and the money invested in health protection, encourage them to engage in environmentally friendly ecological agriculture, and spend the funds on Chinese farmers, then we will strengthen the competitive advantage of our country's agriculture.
Where is the competitive advantage of Chinese agriculture? Obviously it lies in quality agriculture. That is, for different ecological agricultural regions, such as high mountains, hills, grasslands, deserts, and wetlands, we can develop intensive farming, stop or reduce chemical inputs, prohibit genetically modified foods for human consumption, improve the quality of agricultural products, and drive consumption among the urban middle class and above. This will protect the ecological environment, increase food supply, stabilize the agricultural employment workforce, and strengthen the nation's health. In this way, we will have won an agricultural war. Western modern agriculture is no match for China's quality agriculture. Due to reasons such as urbanization and labor costs, Western countries find it very difficult to carry out intensive farming.
Therefore, we cannot compete with them on the amount of land or the quantity of agricultural products. Instead, we must compete on quality, unleash the purchasing potential of urban populations for high-quality agricultural products, nourish agriculture in return, and strengthen ecological environmental protection, so that our people can stay away from hospitals. Imagine if China stopped importing grain from Western countries. This huge grain weapon would return to its producing countries, and its lethality would also be enormous, enough to give us more ample time to develop the economy peacefully. Rather than being passively beaten, it is better to strike first.