ON GRANARIES - MEAT: A Benign Extravagance - page 140

Ireland did in the 19th century - but unlike Ireland, it guaranteed food security through
state managed granaries:
China provides an example of successful bureaucratic management of food sup-
plies, during the Qing dynasty in the eighteenth century. The Chinese state undertook
far-reaching measures to feed the people during times of scarcity; these included pub-
lic granaries, the provision of loans, discouragement of hoarders, encouragement of
circulation by canals and roads … The Chinese peasant did not beg for charity, he de-
manded relief and saw the bureaucracy as bound by its office to provide this, and the
rich as bound by duty. 28
The system collapsed in the 19th century, partly because of the expense and insecurity
caused by the Opium Wars, and catastrophic famines occurred which were eventually alle-
viated, to an extent by the reimposition of state control under Mao Tse Tung, and then by
the development of a coal powered nitrogen fertilizer industry. Instead of a legume-based
agricultural revolution in the 17th and 18th centuries, China underwent a chemical based
'green revolution' in the second half of the 20th century. In the last 50 years China has built
up a formidable feed grain buffer, mainly based upon pork and poultry. Per capita consump-
tion of meat and eggs increased from 5.6 kg per head in 1961 to 75 kg in 2007, which is ap-
proximately the same as in the UK (although milk consumption in China is much lower). 29
The centralized approach to grain management doesn't attract many adherents at the mo-
ment - the experience of the USSR didn't do a lot for its reputation - but we should not
discount its potential effectiveness, since it apparently worked well in China for a century
or two. If the market fails to contain population and consumption, and the world is pushed
towards a more vegan diet, then a centralized system of food control may have to come
with it, hopefully more humane than Stalin's. In any case, the market has proved woefully
inadequate as a means of distributing the existing abundant surplus of grain to the poor, so
it would be foolish to expect it to dispense a much smaller food buffer with any degree of
equity. But to pursue this line of enquiry any further would lead me to political considera-
tions that are not the theme of this topic.
1 Gold, Mark (2004), The Global Benefits of Eating Less Meat, Compassion in World Farming (CIWF).
2 Wardle, Tony (n.d.), 'Hype, Hypocrisy and Hope', Growing Green International 9.
3 Thompson, E P (1991), Customs in Common , Penguin, p 264.
4 The Corner House (2002), The Origins of the Third Word: Market, States and Climate , Corner House.
5 I bid.
6 I bid.
7 Thompson (1991), op cit .3.
8 The Corner House (2002), op cit .4.
9 The Ecologist (1993), Whose Common Future , Earthscan, 1993.