Tuesday and Wednesday

Tuesday was a day of meetings and our departure from Beijing to Nanjing.

Dr. Hu Yuankun (2011 Eisenhower Fellow) has been an amazing help in making this trip a success.    We had a wonderful lunch at the Ministry and got to chat about our Fellowships to date, our impressions of each other's country, and of course, who should be the next US President.

He had set up some good initial meetings with staff at the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), including some meetings with experts in the fertilizer and biogas areas.  Fertilizer is a big thing in China right now.  No one used it in Mongolia, but China is the world's largest producer, and user of fertilizer.

Some really quick numbers that I gathered on my first day of meetings - China has roughly 22% of the world's population, 9% of it's arable land, and 6% of its surface water resources.  It also uses 1/3 of the world's fertilizer and 40% of the world's herbicides/insecticides/pesticides.  Food security is perhaps the largest national priority right now.  Supplying at least 95% of its own food is the objective.  At the same time they need to stop the negative affects agriculture is having on the environment.  The best way to give you idea of the major differences between US and Chinese agriculture - While ag. in the US varies greatly across the country, we have 3 million farmers with an average of 441 acres each.  China has 260 million farmers each farming from 1/2 to 1 acre.  Consolidation is happening, but it is slow and only in some areas of the country.

After my meetings at the MOA and the China Agricultural University, we headed to the Beijing Airport for our flight to Nanjing in Jiangsu Province.  It was an uneventful flight on China Eastern Airline - on time, smooth, and plenty of room in economy (granted it was only 1 hour and 45 minutes, and I have really short legs.)

fish net weights from around 1200 BC

Today (Wednesday) was spent at Nanjing Agricultural University, and at the Council of Agriculture for Jiangsu Province.  The university was very intriguing - 30,000 students attending an agricultural university.  It is one of the top 40 Universities in China (it has over 2,000 of them in total).  It is a world leader in Ag. Research with very strong partnerships with Iowa State University and Cornell. In fact at its founding in 1914, the first two deans of the college (it was just a college then) were both Cornell professors.  I visited the only museum of agricultural cultural heritage, located at the University.

Its a water pump.  You turn the horizontal shaft on the left
using the handles, that drives the paddles on the chain.  The
paddles fit the long box, and push the water uphill.
It's 100% wood, even the chain.

Iron buffaloes.  Buffaloes were raised
as both beasts of burden and food.
Between 200 BC and AD.

Next I visited the Council of Agriculture for Jiangsu Province.  Best comparison is our state departments of agriculture.  Our discussion centered around fertilizer and its use, and the efforts to address water quality issues in Lake Tai.  The largest contributor to water pollution in the lake is animal manure. Major steps have been taken to improve the situation, including the construction of more than 1800 organic fertilizer facilities.  Biogas facilities are being provided to small farmers with just 4 or 5 animals and are small units designed to take human waste and animal waste, digest them an great biogas for home lighting, as well as cooking fuel.  The province alone has invested over 2 billion RMB (330 million USD) in the last few years to try and clean up the lake.  One interesting effort is the planting and harvesting of water hyacinth to remove nutrients from the water.  Each spring seeds are spread throughout certain areas of the lake, and in the fall hundreds of millions of pounds are harvested and turned into fertilizer, thus removing the nutrients the plants took from the water each year.

Major issue I gathered that leads to this problem - all crop residues are removed from the fields here and sold to fertilizer plants.  The organic level in the soil is very low, and farmers choose to use cheap quick release fertilizers instead of slow release, or compost based fertilizers.  Only 30%-40% of the nutrients that are applied are actually taken up by the plant.  The rest migrate through the soil into the groundwater, making their way to the lake.  Major challenges ahead for China on the water quality issues.  They also need to make sure they aren't focusing on agriculture to the detriment of other making other necessary changes in household human waste and factory wastes.

Tomorrow visit a local village in the "New Countryside". I'm not sure what that means, but will find out soon.  Additionally we are visiting the Boccaro Teapot Museum & tea factory, visiting with staff form the Ocean and Fishery Bureau of Jiangsu Province, and finishing the day with a flight from Wuxi to Guangzhou.