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Click to watch the video Follow the Earth Knowledge Bureau’s video number to watch the updated video at the first time In the science fiction novel Three Bodies, the Three Bodies successfully attacked the Earth and drove all the human beings to Australia, which is the indigenous reserve of the Earth’s civilization, and packed with 4 billion people, and was shocked a little bit. Like Cheng Xin in the Three Bodies, most people’s impression of this distant country only stays in film and television productions Figure Movie Australia To know Australia from the sky, it is simply the largest single lump of earth on earth, a barren continent hanging alone in the southern hemisphere. Local aborigines have climbed the technology tree here for 50,000 years, but still stuck in the Stone Age, the population has never exceeded one million, even the plants and animals here are completely independent of their own evolutionary routes, it is really too suitable for use as a place of exile. When the exiled animals and plants now look like Today, many of the white people in Tucao is indeed the descendants of the British exiled criminals, and now there are only 27 million people, just one more than Beijing Zhangjiakou, to say that to feed 4 billion people, with the feet think also know that it is not possible. But if a three to five percent discount, feed the entire population of China , is there such a possibility? The farming potential of this land, far beyond our imagination!
Click to watch the video Follow the Earth Knowledge Bureau video number first time to watch the updated video In the science fiction novel Three Bodies, the three-body man successfully sneak attacked the Earth and drove all the human beings to Australia, as the indigenous reserve of the Earth’s civilization, loaded with 4 billion people, was a little shocked.
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In the science fiction novel Three Bodies, the Three Bodies successfully attacked the Earth and drove all humans to Australia, a small shock for the 4 billion people who were packed into the indigenous reserve of Earth’s civilization.
Like Cheng Xin in Three Body, most people’s impression of this faraway land only remains in movies and TV shows Figure Movie Australia
Like Cheng Xin in “Three Bodies”.
Most people think of this faraway land only in movies and television.
Figure Movie Australia
From the sky, Australia looks like the largest monolithic lump of earth, a barren continent that hangs alone in the southern hemisphere.
The local natives have climbed the technology tree here for 50,000 years, but they are still stuck in the Stone Age, the population has never exceeded 1 million, and even the plants and animals here are completely independent of their own evolutionary routes, which is really too suitable for an exile.
What the exiled animals and plants look like today.
Nowadays, many of the white people in Tohau are indeed the descendants of the British exiled criminals, and there are only 27 million people now, which is only one Zhangjiakou more than that of Beijing, and it is impossible to feed 4 billion people with one’s feet.
But if we make a 35% discount, feed the whole population of China, is there such a possibility?
The farming potential of this land, far beyond our imagination!
A paradise for 27 million people.
First of all, Australia has 7.69 million square kilometers of land, with 80% of China’s area supporting 2% of its population, even if the whole country is rotten, the food surplus is still extremely high. Not to mention the fact that this continent is not bad land, which means that in the game, you can have hammers and food.
The game is won in the beginning. bottom map google map
In our previous series on strategic resources, we showed that Australia has almost everything that China lacks, and when divided by population, any resource becomes a big number.
For example, iron ore per capita is 76 times that of China, and copper ore per capita is 132 times that of China. And the grade of minerals is far ahead, even we do not lack of coal, per capita in Australia is also 4 times that of China.
This amount of resources is unique in the world.
Looking at Australia’s export menu for 2022, two-thirds of all minerals will be sold to the three East Asian countries. And ranked behind the minerals, is the agricultural and animal husbandry products, its wheat exports the world’s third, wool the world’s first, frozen beef the world’s third, China is also one of the big buyers.
Proportion of Australia’s exports
Behind this is Australia’s world-leading per capita arable land of 1,93 hectares, 19 times more than ours.
In 2021, Australia’s total grain production will be around 55.3 million tons.
In the same year, China’s annual per capita consumption of grains, meat, fish, eggs and vegetables added up to 313.8 kilograms According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), if we calculate that each person consumes 320 kilograms per year, that would be enough to feed almost 170 million people.
But 170 million people is still a long way from feeding the entire population of China. To make a further breakthrough, we need to make greater efforts to develop this land.
At present, the intensity of agricultural development in Australia is far lower than that in China, so how much room for growth is there between limited development and extreme development? It is difficult to estimate.
In this regard, Australia’s local institutions, various organizations and universities tend to be very conservative, and they give the upper limit of the population’s carrying capacity as about 40 million, or even 9 million, with the most obvious constraint being the lack of water.
From the sky, Australia is the third largest yellow zone on earth after the Sahara Desert in west-central Asia, from Carnarvon to Toowoomba, in a range spanning 35 degrees of longitude, the arid hot desert stretches across the entire continent, and at a glance the heat is glowing red. Precipitation also shrinks in a circle, to the point where inland there is almost a whole rain-free zone.
Thirty-five percent of the Australian continent receives very little rain, and nearly half of that is desert.
35% of mainland Australia receives very little rain.
Nearly half of which is desert.
Doesn’t that look bad? But that’s just the surface.
Australia’s red soil is the result of high levels of trivalent iron in the soil, an indication of the concentration of high-grade iron ore. Such a large area of red land is the only one on earth, and mining is obviously much more profitable than farming.
The red earth is as far as the eye can see. Feel the richness of Australia’s iron ore deposits. shutterstock.
Red earth as far as the eye can see
Feel the richness of Australia’s iron deposits.
Photo shutterstock
An arid continent with no shortage of water
Is there a water shortage in Australia? There is a shortage, but not that much.
Australia is the only continent in the world without glaciers, and there are not many big rivers, the largest of which, the Murray Darling River, the annual flow is only equivalent to the amount of the Amazon River in a day and a half.
The Murray-Darling River Basin, despite its size, has one of the lowest flows of any major river system in the world Figure Government of South Australia
The Murray-Darling River Basin is a large river system.
The Darling River Basin, despite its size, has one of the lowest flows of any major river system in the world.
Figure Government of South Australia
But if you look at the precipitation lines, you’ll see that there’s actually quite a lot of water here.
The 800mm line is China’s roughly north-south precipitation demarcation line, which is also known as the water-dry-field demarcation line, while the 400mm line is China’s agricultural and pastoral demarcation line, which is higher than 400mm, so you can plant dry fields, and in Chifeng and Tongliao in Inner Mongolia, where many places are lower than 400mm, you can barely grow a field by relying on runoff and groundwater.
This precipitation conditions in Inner Mongolia, food production can also rank sixth in China.
Inner Mongolia this precipitation conditions
China’s sixth largest grain producer.
Australia in the 800mm above the country, basically is the north and east of the coast plus the southwest corner, the big cities are basically in this range, the area is not big, but if pushed to the 400mm line, it is very big, almost encompasses 40% of the area of Australia.
If we calculate according to this, theoretically there are 3 million square kilometers of land that can be farmed. Although there are problems of high evaporation and unconcentrated precipitation, these problems exist in many agricultural regions of the world, including China. So, rather than saying that Australia is not short of water, China is simply too short of water.
Arid, semi-arid, semi-humid and drought-prone areas together account for a large part of the country’s 4.93 million square kilometers of land, and all of this land that can be cultivated is cultivated, and to feed one-sixth of the earth’s population, it can only be exploited to the limit.
Regardless of whether the land is good or bad, we can plant it with our efforts.
On the other hand, how much of Australia’s 3 million square kilometers is farmed? Less than one-tenth of 28.34 million square kilometers, after all, his population burden is only one-fiftieth of ours, planting one-tenth of the already exported over, planting too much instead of making money.
Australia doesn’t have a lot of arable land, but it’s enough for now.
Australia doesn’t have a lot of arable land.
But there’s enough to go around.
This only one-tenth of the agricultural area is basically at the south-east and south-west ends South-west is a small Mediterranean climatic area South-east is the famous Murray Darling River Basin, the Great Dividing Range’s many sources of water converge into two major tributaries, the Murray and the Darling Rivers, which make their way westwards to meet in the lower reaches and ultimately enter the sea south-east of Adelaide, and before they go they make a large lake in the process.
The entire Murray Darling Basin, in the 400mm line east of the part is basically the core of Australia’s agriculture, here the good land and beautiful homes, very consistent with our imagination of the American and Australian-style large farms, the size of each piece of land than the specifications of the Great Northern Wilderness is even larger.
Comparison of Chinese and Australian farmland at the same scale google map
Comparison of Chinese and Australian farmland at the same scale.
Figure google map
But going north, around Rome, the fields become less regular, and around Stamford and Richmond, the satellite map becomes more abstract, with looser and looser traces of humans.
A little further north, it’s a complete wilderness, a vast area in the north of Australia, basically this is what it looks like, it’s the Great Northern Wilderness, which is much bigger than the Eastern provinces.
The further north the wilderness Figure google map
So why doesn’t the Australian government do a northern development? Mainly because there is no one.
For example, the northwest coast of the Kimberley region Kimberley, is the earliest indigenous people set foot on the Australian continent, the area is equivalent to four Zhejiang Province, but only 30,000 people, 40% of which are Aborigines.
Darwin, the largest city in the Northern Territory, has a population of only 150,000, and the second largest city is next to Palmerston, which is only 30,000 people, making it a village in China. The island of Java, just across the sea, is home to at least 150 million people.
Australia’s population is concentrated in the eastern part of the country
So in Australia’s eyes, it would be very scary for Indonesians to swarm south. And in Indonesia’s eyes, Northern Australia is a no man’s land, where everything can be farmed.
Assuming Australia is a farming fiend like China, half of the land above the 400mm line, excluding mountainous urban reserves, is assumed to be planted with high yielding crops. With a yield of 400 kilograms per acre, there would be roughly 600 million tons of production a year, slightly less than China’s total output, 8 times that of Heilongjiang, and able to feed 1 billion people.
However, this is only an assumption of extreme exploitation, and whether it can be sustained needs to be considered in the light of other factors.
The open plains coupled with highly mechanized cultivation could feed an India in no time. pic shutterstock
Open plains with highly mechanized farming
It’s easy to feed an India.
And this increment is almost all food surplus, all of which can be exported, it’s really too rich.
The reason it’s not being done at the moment is that it’s not profitable. In Australia’s export structure, mineral resources are far more profitable than wheat, by selling minerals can be a stable developed countries, even the service industry do not have to engage in, why go to the Great Northern Wilderness to eat the suffering of agriculture?
According to the World Bank, Australia’s per capita wealth of 835,000 dollars is the highest in the world. Among them, even farmers have an average annual income of 70,000 U.S. dollars. Although Australia is a country of soil, it is also a country of trenches.
All in all, farming is just an industry and business for the Australian people, not a necessity for survival. If you want to make money from steak, you can raise cows; if you want to make money from wool, you can graze sheep. When kangaroo boxing goes worldwide, kangaroo production will naturally come up.
Herding cows for fun and making a billion bucks on the side Pic shutterstock
Let the cows play and make a billion dollars on the side.
The Western Island in the Eastern World
However, this level of affluence in T&A cannot be separated from the very low population numbers and the very high per capita resources.
In Australia’s White Paper Our North, Our Future Developing Northern Australia, it is stated that the northern Pilbara region alone has an income greater than 119 economies, and that this income is generated by only 60,000 people.
Figure Extract from the White Paper
Could the world be more Versailles?
So even though Tu-Ao needed immigrants to develop the Great Northern Wilderness, they didn’t want too many outsiders to share the pot of meat.
In the last century, the Australian federal government had a 72-year White Australia policy, which allowed only white immigrants to come in. Between the 1940s and 1960s, more than 3 million people, almost all of them Europeans, immigrated to Australia.
After the abolition of the White Australia Policy, the share of Asian immigrants gradually increased. between 2016 and 2021, of the more than one million immigrants in Australia, 230,000 came from India, 137,000 from mainland China, and 70,000 from Nepal.
Now the Australian government’s immigration policy has begun to tighten gradually, and this year it plans to cut the annual net migration by half.
Therefore, the slow development or even stagnation of the northern part of Australia is ultimately a matter of population and immigration policy, and the climate, environment, and aborigines are only secondary reasons.
Similar to Northern Australia, there are the Sahelian region of Africa and the arid provinces of Northwest India. But the latter two are extremely saturated with people, and the environment is always on the verge of being drained.
Nigerians fill plastic containers with water at a public well in a desert oasis Drought is drought, but it’s time to be born Pic shutterstock
Nigerians fill plastic containers with water at a public well in a desert oasis.
It’s a drought, but it’s still a drought. photo shutterstock
So Australia, with the Super North in hand, is in no hurry at all for development efforts. If restrictions on Asian immigration were to be loosened prematurely, the demographics of the North would be radically altered within a few years. After all, with 27 million people, Australia is still too few people to face 10 times as many Indonesians 50+ times as many Chinese Indians.
In a few years, when populations around the world peak, and when the growth potential of traditional agricultural areas has been tapped out, Australia’s vast northern wilderness will be the biggest food increment on the planet , and it could be a far more critical strategic resource than copper, iron, oil and gas.
Australia’s Northern Territory Photo shutterstock
Australia’s Northern Territory
Located in the Western Pacific Ocean, Australia is in fact a western island in an eastern world. Across the Western Pacific, from Siberia to East and Southeast Asia, the natural environment is vastly different, and the distribution of human, mining, food and industrial capacity is extremely uneven.
It would be beneficial to all if resources could be complemented. However, the reality is very complex, and in the context of geopolitics, there are actually many barriers.
Land and food, as the ultimate strategic resources, must ultimately be kept in one’s own hands. As an arid continent, Australia’s overall ecological environment is still very fragile, compared to the imagination of extreme development. Under the premise of ensuring the quality of life of the residents, 230 million may already be the upper limit of the carrying capacity, this level is also unsustainable. But this still has great potential for improvement compared to the current population size. and
Land and food, as the ultimate strategic resources, must ultimately end up in one’s own hands.
As an arid continent, Australia’s overall ecological environment is still very fragile, compared to the extreme development of the imagination. Under the premise of ensuring the quality of life of the residents, 230 million may already be the upper limit of the carrying capacity, and this magnitude is also unsustainable. However, this is still a great potential for improvement compared to the current population size.
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The content of this article is provided by the author and does not represent the position of Earth Knowledge Bureau Cover shutterstock
The content of this article is provided by the author and does not represent the position of the Earth Knowledge Bureau.
Cover shutterstock
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