Bounty

China and the Ozarks

I took one lesson from the many miles we drove yesterday across a portion of the Ozarks: abundance. That likely sounds odd but it is vital in our on-going competition with China. It also is a key reminder to ourselves.

Southern Missouri and northwest Arkansas are hardly the finest growing in the country. I am confident those in other states would claim the prize but I do know that the soils are likely a bit north of where we are. The last ice age scoured the land north of the Missouri River, leaving amazing loess deposits that offer farmers amazing fields for corn, wheat, soya beans, and countless other major crops. The Palouse of southeastern Washington, which I have never seen, is renowned for its amazing harvests. The average rainfall conditions, at least in the preextreme weather era, in these areas offered bountiful, sustained crops that made this the world’s breadbasket. California has an unmatched variety of crops but has long had water issues which don’t plague the large agricultural gems of the Midwest or Pacific Northwest.

Even with the rocky soil that is neither as lucrative nor as appealing, the Ozarks offers hundreds, if not thousands, of fields laden with enormous bales of hay. Some of the fields also have plump cattle grazing lazily or seeking shelter from the heat in small streams or reservoirs. It wasn’t miles of picturesque Claude Monet paintings but it was a reminder of our bounty.

One of our standing comments as my husband and I drive through farming areas or visit a farmers’s market is that we would love to bring Chinese leaders to see them—then weep. China has little arable land, and that percentage is gradually decreasing-11.6% in 2022, as desertification continues apace through climate change and state run mismanagement. China may have more nuclear weapons and a modernized People’s Liberation Army but Xi Jinping is petrified for food security.

Over the past two decades, China’s reliance on imported food increased, even in the face of a decade of Xi’s fears of external foes and China’s population decreasing. As more Chinese want a varied diet, that stresses a centralized planning system that is far from agile. But the types of food people seek are also more water intensive, such as beef. I have long joked McDonald’s was our major weapon with China but I should have said Kentucky Fried Chicken which is the most popular restaurant in many places.

The Belt and Road Initiative, Xi’s signature program dating to 2013, is substantially about assuring access to food that the United States cannot cut off. Much talk always centers around the Malacca Dilemma, where China fears the U.S. Navy could prevent energy from coming through the Strait of Malacca to Chinese ports by sea. CCP leaders also are recognising, without naming it, a Rice Dilemma as fears exist that Washington would prevent its allies and partner from providing Beijing with wheat, rice, soya, and other staples. Without adequate and now accustomed-to access to food, Chinese citizens might well create the luan in the streets that most worries CCP officials.

The global breadbasket increasingly over the past decades has expanded to Brazil, Argentina, Canada, and Australia. Improvements in agriculture outside this country have been phenomenal. While the latter two have strained ties with Zhongnanhai and are firm, enduring U.S. allies, neither Brasilia nor Buenos Aires is willing to close the door on better ties with China in exchange for investment and loans—and a form of respect they crave. Decades of disappointment opened the door to better relations with a distant country with which they had no prior experience.

In some ways, we have inverted our current power with China by not grasping this point that not all indicators that matter are about military strength. For obvious and understandable reasons, we focus on growing hard power that has changed in measurable ways in past thirty years. Platforms and soldiers fight wars but they do so with other resources, not the least of which is food. It remains an element and indicator of incredible U.S. strength and resilience.

The Ozarks don’t produce the rich waves of grain we cite in ‘America, the Beautiful’ but the remaining family farms and larger Big Ag farms produce hay and other crops essential to the beef most Americans consume with vigour. Translated otherwise, even the poorest of our soils produces important crops with ease. Don’t get me wrong, please: the Ozark farmers work hard to use this land but they face fewer daunting water or pollution challenges confronting Chinese days in and day out.

I was driving all day so I have only a single pictures of the Carolina blue skies we saw. But, it was a striking reminder of the advantages we have and take for granted.

It is still dangerously hot. Please be sane, safe, and well. FIN

Zongyuan Zoey Liu, ‘China Increasingly Relies on Imported Food. That’s a Problem’, CFR.org, 25 January 2023.