Flashback - China needs people with skills

China's agricultural production is increasing dramatically and often, they are using cutting edge technology to help them.

We visited a tissue culture laboratory developing new potato strains, a 10,000ha vegetable farm with incredible computerised logistics systems, a state of the art milk processing plant, a cashmere mill using goat and camel fibre to produce high end knitware and duvets, to name a few places.

 China is investing heavily in infrastructure and there are some impressive farming operations however their farm performance, once you drilled down a bit, left something to be desired. The big gap that I saw is in the management capability area. There are plenty of workers and there are pretty advanced corporate management structures, but the interface between the two is lacking. This will take quite some time to address and offers an opportunity for NZ and our farm management expertise. China has many mouths to feed and people to clothe.

I don't see them being a threat as a agricultural exporter in the foreseeable future. In fact, there is a forecast labour shortage as the "One Child" policy works through the age brackets and China will soon become an aging population.