Chinese leaders cloak themselves in first-world food snobbery, but underneath they are obsessed with removing humans from agriculture through mechanization, relying on the latest scientific fads to magically increase crop yields, commoditizing "food" into standardized tons, and producing food in chemistry labs and factories. China's 5-year plan for 2026-30 reveals the "modernization" obsession. At a June 2 press conference the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs explained its approach to implementing the 5-year plan by identifying a handful of industries they expect to underpin the growth of "new quality productive forces" in agriculture: AI in plant breeding new energy agricultural machinery agricultural low altitude economy (drones) agricultural biological manufacturing novel food products A June 10 meeting of the agriculture ministry's leading group on science and technology innovation prioritized biomanufacturing and artificial intelli...
Retired USDA economist Fred Gale peers through the "dim sums" of puzzling data to provide insight about China's agricultural markets in bite-size pieces like Chinese "dim sum" snacks. See the Archive and Labels for posts on various topics going back to 2008.