This is how China is feeding itself

© Mikhail Valeev

China may well have become the factory of the world, but it has long – millennia, indeed – been a country where its vast population has effectively been unable to feed itself. Just 15 % of its huge land mass is arable, and some 20% of that has been badly polluted during its rapid industrialisation and modernisation programmes. Its growing middle class and surging consumer demand for meat – China now accounts for half of the world’s pork consumption – ...