Half of the total production of poultry and pigs on earth are in China, almost all of them coming from small family farms. Conti Asia have found some success in supplying premixed livestock feeds to this giant market. There is very little bulk handling in China so the company move stock by hand in bags everywhere. I witnessed shipping containers of corn meal in Shenzing being shovelled out and bagged by hand. Every truck I saw carrying freight of one type or another in China was loaded to the the point of breaking. If it's a ten ton truck you can bet on it having a twenty ton load; one way to cut down on those food miles I guess.
This will not change for a long time to come. I was surprised to hear a lot of large western businesses come to China and introduce their systems of handling only to fail such as in the feed market where some companies tried to move large volumes of product only to find they are selling to farmers who may have only a half dozen pigs and simply cannot afford to buy a bag of feed let alone bulk. Most feed outlets sell by the cup.
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| Potatoes on drip in china |
After some sightseeing in Beijing (the Great Wall was a stand out), we caught a flight out to Hoh Hot city to see a little of Inner Mongolia. Construction was everywhere we went in China but in Hoh Hot and the drive out to the research site at Si Zi Wang it was off the chart. From road construction to wind turbines it was happening. It was interesting to see honey being sold on the side of the road on more than one occasion and Ben Hooper (our Nuffield apiarist) was busting to get out and sample some of the local product. It was a hot, dry and barren landscape with failing wheat crops the norm. I was stunned to see potatoes being grown with a drip system out there. There was no one to talk to about it. On inspection they had the tape above ground with a clear film of plastic covering the beds holding the tape in place and providing some weed control. The tape was fed by above ground soft sub mains. I can only guess groundwater was the main source of irrigation for the crop as a channel to provide water was nowhere to be seen.
Out at the research station we were shown some trials of dryland pasture. The aim is to extend the grazing there and help farmers with their production.
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ReplyDeleteWARM HEARTED HAND
The cattle truck showed up an hour late but at least it did finally arrive. We grabbed a long strong rope, some feed and a four-wheel drive Ford Tractor that had a bucket loader on the front of it.. The man in the truck followed us over to the other barn which was across the road from the main barnyard.
The bull that we were after was almost as big as the tractor but he was white with some light brown spots and the tractor was blue. Many men have been mauled and even killed while trying to remove a bull from a pasture but this bull was good natured and like all cattle, loves feed.
Coaxing cattle with feed is an old trick and more often than not it serves the purpose perfectly. I've seen whole herds of heifers chase a quad down the road when a man sat on the back with a five gallon bucket of feed for them follow.
But, we weren't driving cattle this time, so we tried to lasso the bull and separate him from the heifers. The man who brought the truck was following the bull around a feed trough that was out in the middle of the pasture while trying to toss the looped end of the rope over the big bulls massive head. The first attempt failed because the rope only grabbed one-half of the bulls head so we had to wait for the beast to shake it off before we could try again.
The idea was to lasso the bull but to let the rope go once we did. Once the rope was finally around the bulls neck, the plan was to recapture the loose end of the tether and tie it to back end of the tractor while the bull was being preoccupied with the feed. It would have worked if the rope had fell just right on the first try but since it didn't the bull was spooked and wouldn't come close enough for us to try it again.
One has to be calm and quiet around cattle because they can spook easy. Seeing that we had no chance of capturing the bull under the circumstances we decided to relocate the feed trough and get a longer rope. We moved the trough from the pasture up to the lower level of the old barn and started shaking the feed bucket again. The cattle answered the dinner call and as fortune would have it the bull went into the barn behind a heifer whereupon we closed the two in by shutting a metal gate.
Once inside the barn, the bull was preoccupied with eating feed so we were able to lasso him correctly this time. The bull was tied close to the back end of the tractor and then led to the cattle truck which was parked down by the road. I held the tether tight while another fellow operated the tractor. I rode on the tractor by standing on a running board and secured the animal by wrapping the rope around a solid bar that was attached to the tractor.
The bull came quietly but at one point it seemed like the bulls massive head was going to get jammed in between the back tire and the tractor's frame so we halted and readjusted the rope. The ramp up into the cattle truck was already down and the side gates had been attached so we pulled the bull up to the ramp, loosed the rope and prodded the bull up into the truck.
Well that was one down and another to go. The second bull was back in the main barnyard. So we repeated the process again, over there. The second bull was younger but he seemed to be more dangerous which is unusual because generally it's the other way around.
I was the youngest of our crew of four. George was the oldest at 88 years old, his brother Bob is 84 and John is about 70 years old. I am 55. Bob has breathing problems and he can't walk around to good so he operates the tractor. Bob has poor circulation also. I took my glove off and held his frozen left hand in mine for a moment so that it would warm back up. I overlooked the snot that had been wiped off onto the wrist and grabbed it anyway.
We all know how cold noses can run in the winter time. It was zero today.