Tag: Agriculture and Farming

What Plunging Pork Prices Say About China’s Economy

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Sun Haoyu, a hog farmer in Dalian, in northern China’s Liaoning Province, first noticed pork prices beginning to tumble late last year. With 3,000 hogs to care for, Mr. Sun said, he had “no choice but to tough it out,” relying entirely on loans and borrowed money to keep his operation afloat. But prices kept plummeting, and last month they hit a 16-year low. Now, across his region, many small farms are on the brink of collapse. “Many hog farmers can no longer hold out,” Mr. Sun said in an…

How ‘Sentinel Gardens’ Help Spot Dangerous Bugs Abroad

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The wriggling larva would one day metamorphose into the red coffee-borer moth, an invasive species that damages many plants. It hasn’t yet infested the United States — but here it was, on a cloudy morning in early 2023, burrowing into the trunk of an American oak tree. Fortunately, that particular oak tree was growing in China, in what scientists call a “sentinel garden.” These gardens, scattered around the world, are plots of foreign trees that researchers closely monitor to figure out what local bugs and diseases can damage them. The…

Trump’s Tariffs Hurt U.S. Jobs but Swayed American Voters, Study Says

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The sweeping tariffs that former President Donald J. Trump imposed on China and other American trading partners were simultaneously a political success and an economic failure, a new study suggests. That’s because the levies won over voters for the Republican Party even though they did not bring back jobs. The nonpartisan working paper examines monthly data on U.S. employment by industry to find that the tariffs that Mr. Trump placed on foreign metals, washing machines and an array of goods from China starting in 2018 neither raised nor lowered the…

Senate Targets China, Voting to Restrict Farmland Purchases and U.S. Investment

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The Senate on Tuesday voted overwhelmingly to block businesses based in China from purchasing farmland in the United States and place new mandates on Americans investing in the country’s national security industries, taking the first legislative steps of the new Congress to counter Beijing’s espionage activities and curtail its economic power. The provisions, which would need to clear the House to become law, are a far cry from more ambitious efforts to target China’s economy through export controls and undermine its intelligence gathering and influence operations in the United States…

What Are Raccoon Dogs?

Chin@Strategy

On Thursday, scientists unveiled new data on the possible origins of the Covid-19 pandemic — and put a strange, squat creature squarely in the spotlight. Meet the raccoon dog; it earns its name from its black facial markings, which give the animal a masked appearance and a more-than-passing resemblance to those infamous raiders of urban trash cans. The animals were at least occasionally sold at the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, where many virologists suspect that the Covid-19 pandemic may have started. Scientists had previously announced that swabs from the market…

China Wine Tariff Pushes Australia’s Grape Growers Into Crisis

Chin@Strategy

For years, China’s thirst for Australian wine seemed insatiable. Chinese drinkers were so passionate about big-bodied red wines from Australia that many vineyards replaced white grapes with darker varieties. Wineries even reverted to using corks — instead of convenient screw tops — because Chinese consumers liked the traditional plug. But then everything unraveled. In April 2020, Australia’s prime minister at the time, Scott Morrison, called for an independent investigation into the origin of Covid-19. Beijing was furious, denouncing “political games” meant to assign blame for the pandemic. In response, China…

China’s Bid to Improve Food Production? Giant Towers of Pigs.

Chin@Strategy

The first sows arrived in late September at the hulking, 26-story high-rise towering above a rural village in central China. The female pigs were whisked away dozens at a time in industrial elevators to the higher floors where the hogs would reside from insemination to maturity. This is pig farming in China, where agricultural land is scarce, food production is lagging and pork supply is a strategic imperative. Inside the hulking edifice, which resembles the monolithic housing blocks seen across China and stands as tall as the London tower that…

How U.S.-China Tensions Could Affect Who Buys the House Next Door

Chin@Strategy

The share of United States farmland owned by Chinese people and companies is small and has not been growing substantially. Chinese owners held about 350,000 acres at the end of 2020, according to a U.S. Department of Agriculture report, and most of the farmland came from the Chinese acquisition of Smithfield Foods in 2013. Canadian owners, by contrast, held 12.4 million acres. The figures do not include residential or commercial buildings, though that has largely not been the focus of most legislative efforts. Chinese investors are among the top foreign…

Harvest Moon Lights Up Skies and Marks Start of Festivals Worldwide

Chin@Strategy

If you’re someone who rejoices at every sign of fall, you may want to look out at the moon this weekend. Across the United States and especially in places with clear skies, a full moon that signals summer is nearing its end will be visible. Because of the way light travels through the atmosphere and the moon’s location on the horizon, the moon appears reddish orange. The harvest moon, whose name grew out of its utility to farmers who harvested crops in the fall before the advent of artificial lighting,…

China’s Record Drought is Drying Rivers and Feeding Its Coal Habit

Chin@Strategy

HONG KONG — Car assembly plants and electronics factories in southwestern China have closed for lack of power. Owners of electric cars are waiting overnight at charging stations to recharge their vehicles. Rivers are so low there that ships can no longer carry supplies. A record-setting drought and an 11-week heat wave are causing broad disruption in a region that depends on dams for more than three-quarters of its electricity generation. The factory shutdowns and logistical delays are hindering China’s efforts to revive its economy as the country’s leader, Xi…