August 31 2004
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>Yes...But! 4-43
Our only grandson in Canada, ( he has two older sisters and
we have 4 granddaughters in the USA and 4 grandsons as well)
came over a few weeks ago for a specific purpose, accompanied
by his father.
That sounds like an ominous beginning, but read on.
This strapping young lad is a dedicated outdoor’s man,
and since our property has a back yard of thousands of crown-owned
acres including small lakes, wetlands, rocks and trees, he wanted
to practise his skills in surviving in the wilderness and ‘live
off the land.’
So he and his dad set out, equipped with bow and arrow, sleeping
bag, matches and hatchet, water, but no food, to become ‘hunter-gatherers’
for a 28 hour period, leaving at 1 p.m. and planning to return
at 5 p.m. the next day.
They did come back an hour early and hungry. Had, indeed, lived
‘off the land.’ Our grandson, with his arrows had
shot a few large bullfrogs, which they ate for supper and breakfast.
They also had gathered handfuls of blackberries, growing in
abundance in a clear patch in the forest.
We had a large meal ready for them, homegrown potatoes and green
beans, cucumber and tomatoes, even a dark beer -bought, not
home-brewn - for our son-in-law who left to lead a three day
computer conference, while our grandson stayed to earn some
money, helping me for three days with heavy cement slabs and
some brick work.
Relying on the land for food is an ancient practice. That’s
how thousands of years ago people lived, choosing and picking
what was growing, hunting and fishing what was available, sometimes
feasting, often starving.
Of course, then- whenever that was - the earth had only a few
million people, with intimate knowledge of nature’s free
food supplies.
Our grandson has some of that insight, unique for an almost
16 year old. Whenever he is in a bookstore, he always noses
around in the ‘nature’ section and buys books such
as the Special Air Services (SAS) manual teaching its members
how to live without regular meals from mother. He showed it
to me before they set out.
All this makes me wonder. Is he sensing something that we miss?
Are there vibes vibrating out there that we, grown-ups, don’t
notice? I know there are a lot of unknowns in the universe.
Do stars really influence our lives?
His excursion made me think about the direction our world is
taking. Lester Brown, president of Earth Policy Institute in
Washington and an expert on China, sees that country as the
weathervane for the entire world. If China can survive as a
nation in the next decades, then we will have a good chance
to do so as well.
Picture the map of the USA. The Mississipi River runs roughly
North - South and has about 40 percent of America’s landmass
east of its shorelines, with perhaps 200 million people. China
has in that same space about 1 billion bodies. No wonder that
with such great density water tables are falling, rivers drying,
and contaminated water sources taking their toll on the productivity
of China's fields. Also, of the 16 most polluted cities in the
world, China has 14.
No surprise then that the general level of health is falling,
made worse by the government surrendering medical care to private
enterprise which the majority of the people cannot afford. Not
only is farmland being absorbed rapidly by the expansion of
cities and industrial parks, but with peasants working out,
their land is more neglected and exploited.
So when I noticed a short paragraph in the Globe and Mail that
China was rapidly increasing its food imports, I started to
wonder how this would affect us. It’s quite likely that
a year or two from now, China might be importing as much as
50 million tons of wheat, soya and rice, more than any other
country in the world. Makes sense. With 20 percent of the world’s
population, it has only 7 percent of its arable land.
China’s leadership- all old men - remember well the famines
of the 1950s, when an estimated 40 million people starved to
death as a result of the government-ordered initiative to industrialize,
known as the Great Leap Forward. This mass die-off set the stage
for China to become the manufacturing hub of the world, and
made stores, such as Wal-Mart, possible. The blood of the peasants
is the seed of capitalism.
Thanks to massive exports, China has lots of money: it has some
$500 billion in the piggybank and can afford to outbid any country
in the world to prevent food shortages from happening again.
Fact is that since 1998's record harvest of 512 million tons,
grain production has fallen every year to now just over 400
million, depleting its reserves, while its appetite is jumping.
The 9% annual growth of the economy is pushing up wages and
pushing out waistlines. City people are more likely to eat meat
- which is fattened on grain - and they are more likely to be
fat. Already soyabean imports have doubled last year to 20 million
tons and are expected to double again this year. The price of
rice too - the traditional staple - has surged globally, while
grain futures are up 30% this year thanks largely to the China
factor.
So, perhaps as early as next year, China’s cereal needs
may cause food shortages to appear and with it rising inflation
and interest rates.
Could it be that our grandson has the right idea after all?
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