The Bureau recommends a fascinating article posted by Fast Company, which explores China’s contribution to the world food shortage.
According to the piece, the Chinese middle-class is eating more and more meat and in 2007, amid fears of the dangers the fluctuation of pork prices might have to political stability, China established a top-secret ‘strategic pork reserve‘, the only one of its kind.
With this massive dependence on corn and soybean imports for animal feed, China’s agribusinesses has been forced to fan out abroad in a quest to control the means of production. It means that in order to feed all those pigs Beijing is increasingly importing grain from deforested land in the Brazilian rainforest.
The country’s expansion into the developing world is causing tension and, the author claims, ‘could be just the first step in an ever-escalating series of resource-based conflicts’.
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