James Edward Charles Webber's Blog (1)

China's farms struggle to meet growing demand

I stood in Zhang Meidi's cabbage patch, kicking the dirt with my boots.
Urbanisation and the creeping desert in the north mean China is losing 25m acres of farmland a year

The first frosts would arrive soon but for now the soil was dark, crumbly and rich. Not like the hard mud around Shanghai or the dry, sandy soil of Beijing. This is China's bread basket. Wheat has been grown here for thousands o