Nearing Midnight: Hungry Red Dragon - Todd Strandberg - http://www.raptureready.com/rap16.html
Most people living today have no idea that for decades there has been an amazing balance between our soaring global population and food production. As the planet became more crowded, scientists and researchers have done wonders to increase the supply of food.
In the 1930s, a farmer could produce 20 bushels of corn from an acre of land. Today, the average farmer can produce 160 bushels of corn from the same acre. During this same time period the yield for wheat has gone from 10 to 40 bushels per acre.
War and political unrest have created the occasional bottleneck in distribution, but for the most part, it has been several centuries since the global population was made to starve because of an inability to produce enough food. I think God's grace is a key reason why humanity has managed to keep their bellies full for so long.
In recent years there have been signs that the Lord's favor may be starting to waver. Droughts and floods have become a regular occurrence causing our grain reserves to drop to dangerously low levels. Also, a growing number of nations are unable to produce enough food to feed their own people.
China is one of the nations falling behind each year. Nie Zhenbang, the former director of the Chinese State Grain Administration, recently said that despite 2013 being a record year for Chinese grain production, China will need to import tons of food.
"Although the number is huge," said Zhenbang, "it still could not satisfy domestic consumer demand. In recent years, China's food imports have been increasing. Agricultural product imports are roughly equivalent to the productive capacity of 47 million hectares of planted areas.
A land area of 47 million hectare is181,468 square miles. To put this number in context, it is a little over the size of the entire state of California. Since a large part of the Golden State has unproductive desert or mountain areas, this just shows how massive China's need for food has become.
The average farmer can produce 7.6 metric tons of grain per acre. Each year, China's growing grain demand will tie up 12,000 additional square miles of farmland. With urbanization gobbling up large tracks of land, it is more likely that we will see a net decrease in farmland in the coming years.
China's food production problem is largely driven by a massive deficiency of freshwater. Chief Economist, Qian Keming, of China's Agriculture Ministry said, "Fresh water resources are only 2100 cubic meters per capita, which is only 28% of the world's average level." He also said, "The shortage of [water for agricultural irrigation] each year is about 30 billion cubic meters. China imported about 148.6 billion cubic meters of water in 2013, which was equivalent to 38% of China's agricultural water."
The increase in China's population is just part of the problem. Another factor is the growing affluence of the average Chinese citizen. A 2011 study authored by the University of Minnesota and UC Santa Barbara shows "a simple and temporally consistent global relationship between per capita GDP and per capita demand for crop calories or protein." Simply put, as a nation becomes more industrialized, its citizens consume more food.
Taiwan, for example, increased per capita meat consumption from just 28.6 pounds annually in 1951, to 145.5 pounds today. China's hunger for meat has been growing rapidly. So much so, that it recently purchased Smithfield Foods, one of America's largest pork producers.
China has a ravenous appetite for a host of commodities. A couple of weeks ago I pointed out how much its need for oil has grown. In 1980, Chinese oil consumption was at 2 million barrels per day (bpd). Today, it consumes over 10 million bpd. By 2020, its daily usage is expected to rise to the 18 million bpd.
The Bible predicts that China will have a key role to play in the latter part of the Tribulation. The need for resources may be a key reason why it will send an army of some 200 million strong into the Middle East.
"Saying to the sixth angel which had the trumpet, Loose the four angels which are bound in the great river Euphrates. And the four angels were loosed, which were prepared for an hour, and a day, and a month, and a year, for to slay the third part of men. And the number of the army of the horsemen were two hundred thousand thousand (200 million): and I heard the number of them" (Revelation 9:14-16).
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