The future of food is Chinese and it’s up and running

Agriculture is the single most critical and most important major supply chain of the world. The first Agricultural Revolution redefined humanity and created the first civilizations. The new Automated Agricultural Revolution is just as drastic, and China is at the forefront in multiple fields.

The first thing to understand is that none of this is theoretical. None of it is hype. China is reinventing agriculture, and it’s all real.

Global Big Ag food producers like Canada, the EU, Eastern Europe, India, Australia, and South America are now facing highly advanced, cost-efficient competition unlike any in history. It’s so fundamental, it’s like the Invention of the Wheel, much upgraded.

The news about Chinese automated agriculture is a constant stream of new tech and new methodologies. There’s a certain Karmic justice to this situation. China’s ancient history of stubborn subsistence agriculture is legendary. That history was formed against a jaw-dropping background of famines, droughts, and almost unbelievable, endless centuries of hardship and survival.

Now, when food and water supply are becoming huge, dangerous, and unavoidable global issues, the only way out is change. China has now linked automation, robotics, and AI directly to humanity’s most basic needs.

The speed, scale, and added dimensions of China’s automation

China is deploying automation at incredible speeds, backed up by new intelligent manufacturing on a truly huge scale. “Scale” means that, according to People’s Daily Online:

“To date, China has built more than 35,000 basic-level smart factories, over 8,200 advanced-level facilities, more than 500 excellence-level factories, and 15 flagship smart factories.”

Now consider the impact of highly competitive automated industrial output from thousands of factories on world markets and apply that to agriculture.

The US and Europe may be technologically a bit better in some fields. In terms of actual deployment of large-scale technologies for manufacturing and now agriculture, it’s decades behind. The Rust Belt still simmers in the sun, and the museum still plods on.

The Chinese version of frontline working automation is in full swing right now. The West is still dithering ingloriously about everything from layoffs to finding uses for agentic chatbots. This isn’t even a competition anymore. It’s embarrassing at best, catastrophic at worst.

Western Big Ag is now being confronted with competition at the most fundamental levels.

To spell it out:

Automated agriculture requires ultra-efficient water supply management and massive volumes of handling facilities for planting, harvesting, and distribution. This is an entire industrial ecosystem.

Managing pests, quality control, and environmental issues on this scale as automated operations requires new and thoroughly proven technologies.  The global cost of these critical issues is truly horrendous, affecting wholesale and consumer prices directly.

The food sector in general, in its multigenerational righteous coma over so many critical issues, is likely to take more than a few bullets. Their mostly superficial technologies are now basically redundant. It can’t even compete. Forget GMOs, ridiculous dangerous additives, useless filler pseudo-foods, and antiquated “clever” costing. There’s no need for any of them in a truly efficient food production environment. Automation can accurately test, produce, preserve, and cost your food down to a single grain of rice.

In the area of agricultural robotics, China is now far ahead. This is a repeat of the full automation of Chinese factories in the mid-late 2000s. It’s a gamechanger, improving all aspects of production and distribution.

The future of agriculture

The giant issues for future agriculture are pitilessly clear.

The overriding issue of efficient agricultural land use is unavoidable. So much land is devoted to agriculture. This land typically uses inefficient, antiquated technologies and even worse distribution throughout the entire supply network.

It’s archaic. It is completely unsustainable, even by current metrics. It’s even an emerging pressure point for conflict over resources. It’s wasteful to the point of non-viability. The current situation simply can’t meet demands on any level. Even the water supply is now a multi-decade-long guessing game in the US.

Automation and intelligent use of land are the ways out of this unsightly mess. How do you argue against improved productivity, better prices, and improved quality?

Nobody’s arguing with it, in theory. They’re doing far worse, by not even addressing any of these perennial issues in any meaningful way. The next global famine could be based entirely on food chain inefficiencies. Food deserts infest the supply chain.

This idiot-haunted sector echoes 1950s industrial ideas in nearly all aspects of food supply. The ridiculous “just in time” supply idea is leaving shelves bare, costing time, space, and money at the retail consumer end. It’s farcical.

One of the biggest problems, in fact, seems to be that the old industrial ideas are still even credible. You see economists muttering about the “revival of industrial heartlands” as though it was even possible, let alone desirable or realistic. That world is gone, and there’s nowhere to put it anymore.

The West is showing a profound lack of leadership and understanding in all these fields. The big problems have simply dragged on for decades. China, which until relatively recently was a rural economy, has surged way ahead. The future needs survival strategies, not nostalgia.