Overseas Farming

"China looks abroad for greener pastures"
By: Barbara Demick
Source: The Los Angeles Times
http://www.latimes.com/world/asia/la-fg-china-foreign-farmland-20140329,0,5992574.story#axzz2xTh4RmOC
Ma Wenfeng grew up in the Chinese fields while his father was a wheat and corn farmer, earning minimal amount of money that his family had to eat mantou, a bread known as the poor's food. With the hardships growing up, Wengfeng would have never believed to become a farmer in the future, but with a slight twist. The Chinese are searching for rich agricultural fields, mainly in the United States, Chile, Brazil, Russia, Ukraine, Bulgaria, and Australia. Ma currently works as an analyst for CnAgri, a Beijing trading association, and said "We're the world's fastest growing economy, with a huge demand for agricultural products. When we look overseas, we see large tracts of land where you can operate a farm that makes sense economically." The Chinese fields have become beyond polluted to be used as farmland, so they target other countries to make up for it. Chinese companies have bought land around the world, such as 100,000 acres of farmland in Missouri, Texas, and North Carolina for pork at the cost of $4.7 billion. In Australia they acquired 200,000 acres of land for cotton plantations, as well as investing in farmland such as in Chile growing blueberries, kiwis, and grapes. Businessman Zhang Renwu stated "We want to bring American sunshine, land and water back to China,"This sounds more like an attempt to take advantage of other countries' useful resources because of a lack in China, but the process has been fairly successful.