China imports a gigantic amount of food, and ports were first to be hit by disruption. As a person who works in OEM electronics in China, I can tell at least that.

So, at any normal day, China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself.

Agriculture has been on shutdown for the past 2.5 months. Farms have slaughtered a large portion of their livestock, and a big portion of the seedstock has been used for food in the last few months too.

Chinese national reserves were said to be able to keep the country going for 3 months under a strict rationing regime, which we haven't seen, but at least we know by many accounts that meat reserves have been released all across China with no restraint.

Now try guessing how much of it left.

P.S. On ports. I initially wrote them being shut down, I correct that they are facing major disruption, with a lot of ships missing their berthing timeslots

Where is the source on Chinese ports being closed? I work in the international trade sector and since March 9th we’ve had record breaking activity on our system.

Even looking at AIS you can see 1000+ dockings over the next 3 days at Shenzhen - https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/data/?asset_type=arrivals_d...

Also air freight volume is off the charts! We’re starting to see airlines use their 777’s with cargo in the belly and boxes on the seats.

I can’t speak to the food security situation at all. However, from my vantage point, supply lanes are screamingly full of something.

How that plays out for individual products ... shrug ...

> Also air freight volume is off the charts! We’re starting to see airlines use their 777’s with cargo in the belly and boxes on the seats.

Yes, after resumption of commercial activities, air freight was record cheap for a few weeks, than it was hit again by airport closures.

Now I got news that SZ airport will be reopening again for freight only flights under some special regime

As for ports, we have a container stuck in Yantian since Feb 14, no news from the shipper when they can load. The freight broken says the shipping company says the ship is there moored, but they have no permission berth or to do anything besides pass instant noodles to the crew.

Yeah, it's best to say we are having a monumental pileup that is continuing since the spring festival

Has the empty container imbalance problem been fixed?

> China would've been eating 30-32% of world's food by value, while producing 20% of it by itself

References? And of course, that is by value... I’m in NZ and it’s been in the news about how our our crayfish (lobster in US) exports to China crashed, but that’s a high value food. China imports a lot of “unnecessary” luxury foods from NZ (deer, fruit, salmon, mussels, etc), although I don’t know anything about volumes of staples like wheat.

One of my clients in NZ sells mussels to US and China and has had to close down production as you dont need them for your restaurants anymore. No other food issues here I can see our local supermarket was well stocked and quiet, though I am out in a rural area

Relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22711661

I have only heard of kiwifruit going unharvested. We’ll all soon know (if product has no coolstores, and assuming farm to supermarket delay is about a week).

> crayfish (lobster in US)

Crayfish is crawfish in the US, not lobster

NZ Crayfish are called Rock Lobster in the US.

http://www.leefishusa.com/products/lobster/spiny

Crayfish in NZ is the size of lobster in the US.

Now I wonder how big their lobsters are.

[EDITED. I was talking of the wrong species]

There are some giant crayfishes in Australia. Much bigger than the standard old world crayfishes. Some (Cherax) can be raised in captivity and are very similar to lobsters in size and color, except that they are non marine.

Closing sea ports should not to be a problem for those species at short term (as long as there are reserves of crayfish food remaining of course).

Technically, they're langoustine.

Literally, they are kōura. Technically, they are https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jasus_edwardsii

Edit: the dictionary says langoustine are another species, although one of the joys of English is making it mean what you want!

> Agriculture has been on shutdown for the past 2.5 months.

Can you explain that in more relevant terms? AFAIK agriculture has been shut down in the US for the past 2.5 months as well (actually more like past 5-6 months), simply because it's not the growing season.

What are the different growing seasons in China, for different kinds of crops?

There is no single growing season in a country as vast as the United States. Hell, look at a state like California with a huge variety in latitude and altitude you can grow pretty much anything at any time in the year somewhere in California.

Certainly sounds plausible. I was trying to point out that the video doesn't do much in substantiating these claims. If you have another source, I'd be interested in reading more.

Well before this crisis in mid 2019, China culled a majority of it's hog herd. I think it was African Swine Flu if I remember right. So they were already low on home produced protein when this struck.

I stand corrected, but I think the meat reserves were touched first to keep prices down with the african swine plague?

The pork supply gap is too big for any national reserve, the gap is 20 million tons. That's why China is importing Canadian pork despite the Huawei situation.

Compounding the matter is the party bureaucracy effectively killed most small farms since villages were completed sealed off, chickens weren't allowed to be sold (or killed in fear of bird flu) and feeds can't be sent in.

The pork shortage drove the chicken market to overheat last year and just right when they were suffering from oversupply during the winter this virus hit. Double whammy.