Welcome to the Wynn. See a podcast. This is your host Jack gains. When CA is a product of the Civil Affairs Association and brings in people who are current or former military diplomats development officers and field agents to talk about working. The last three feet of Foreign Relations. Our goal is to inspire anyone interested in working on ground with partner nations in are Oil to contact the show, email us at see a podcasting at gmail.com, or look us up on the Civil Affairs.
Association website at www.flcfs.org. I'll have both of those in the show notes. So, how was, how was covid that covid grown comes from major Jamie critically and agriculturalists from the 353 civil Affairs command. He and Captain Gustavo Ferreira also from the unit and an agricultural Economist from the USDA co-wrote, a series of Assessments on Taiwan and China food, stocks, and peacetime and Supply, during conflict. So, I interviewed both for a two part series.
First we start with Jamie Curtis. Talking about taiwan's, agriculture. He also talks a little bit about the 38 golf program and the FX SP. And then next week, we host Gustavo Ferrara on China food stocks. We also talked a little bit about the USDA and civil Affairs. AG programs that work with diplomats Aid, workers field agents, and with the military to help people in partner Nations improve their food stocks and stability in their region. So stay tuned.
I don't know. Have you heard much on the ones? He podcast shame on you so many people that should be dialing in. I get these great speakers coming on I mean in my defense I'm not on any social media anymore so if it's posted there I wouldn't see it. Yeah she throw your wooden shoes into the machine. I had been on Facebook for 10 years and my elapsed time actually Actually in the app was over a year when I was like okay, I have better things to do with my life then be online.
Checking out other peoples pictures. So yeah, do you have any discussions about CA doing agricultural assessments overseas? We were asked to prepare a briefing on what the food security situation is in Taiwan. Oh yeah, yeah. Give me a little background on that. Absolutely Taiwan. Literally has no more than six months of food on hand. And so, we started to research.
Well, what could we do to better prepare Taiwan and what could the military do in the event of a conflict to resupply Taiwan? And it gets very, very challenging very quickly. Because with Taiwan just just over 100 miles from the Chinese Mainland, you know, the density of ships. It's and aircraft in the event of a naval blockade or embargo is is going to prevent any US Naval vessel will from reaching our Shores with a resupply. So we looked at a number of
different scenarios. Of course, the obvious ones are conservation, stockpiling diversifying, the food chain for Taiwan, and identifying ways for the average Taiwanese citizen T lower on the food chain. Pain. And also started to look at some novel methods of production such as Hydroponics and aquaponics put together. Local production of algae as a feedstock. For fish aquaponic production and then the waste from the fish being used for hydroponic vegetable production, right?
Does an offset 100% of what the Taiwanese would need, but it definitely puts them on a good path. There was also some historical context for the Taiwanese coming out of covid. A lot of people in Taiwan did not trust the food supply chains during covid from 2020 through 2022. So they started producing Hydroponics and aquaponics in their in their apartments and they were able to decrease the overall demand for imported fish by three to five percent per year.
Or what we also were considering was since Taiwan is quite sophisticated in terms of automation to revamp their civilian Wastewater treatments in a way so that algae could be
grown and used as a fertilizer. And as a feedstock for other portions of their local food supply, it would be decentralized and it would be at scale and to allow more Time for the u.s. to intervene in the event of a conflict, which it sounds like it's what you're trying to do is get it to where they can survive off the six months, while shifting to an internal system to build more food to extend that time. Yes, Taiwan is quite interesting.
I mean, like most industrialized countries amount of land available for agriculture is decreasing. It's just shy of half of a percent per year. But what's different about Taiwan is in other industrialized countries, where the farm size is drastically. Increasing in Taiwan, it continues to decrease in size, is it being lost to urbanization? There's quite a bit of it. Yes. Yeah. Unfortunately, I saw a lot of
that in California as well. I mean, they have industrial-style farming, so they probably have x minus the amount of yield that comes off their land, right? They have not Okay, we're seeing as also that the yield is pretty much flat and it's been flat since the 80s again, you know, many of the solutions we use in the Western World to achieve better yields. You would you would require investments into machinery and Technology to deliver its scale.
But the smaller and Parcels become the harder, it becomes to actually achieve those scale effects in Taiwan, you do must have to do a nationalization The farming infrastructure if they were ever under embargo in order to activate that type of scale is what it sounds like you're saying correct. It's a risk that they're so small and decentralized on the other hand. It's a massive opportunity because then no one particular field or Farm as the the
critical mass. And if it was disrupted I feel the Taiwanese would still be able to feed themselves, right? What Could be another major risk. If there's a large-scale embargo blocking and ports is that they would also set fire to any any fields that were dry to destroy Harvest, Right? Correct. We also looked at what would be the most opportune time of the year. It would be sometime between May and October in any given year they just planted or they're
getting ready to harvest. It's also the monsoon period. So there's that. Yeah, which would make being at Sea tough, right? Another issue that we raised in that, the massive dependency Taiwan has on u.s. imported grain. They're a very small country, it's the size of Maryland and Rhode Island combined. But yet compared to the other 200 nations in the world, they're the 16th largest importer of food in the world.
You would need something like 54 panamax size vessels a year loaded, with grain to satisfy what they need as a feedstock, for the animals on their Island. It's a massive amount. And now, if they were to reduce the amount of vandals and went more towards a vegetarian diet, in the middle of an embargo that would extend their time. Though. Right. Absolutely. It would they wouldn't be happy about it, but it was give them.
I mean, because it panamax vessels, the largest, that's the largest freighter in the world, right? That's right. When we say panamax vessels, I mean, these are not vessels that traditionally carry greens, right? You're talking, you're talking vessels that would carry 12,000, 20-foot, shipping containers, right? But Taiwanese Port structure is still a bit immature for AG Imports. There's only one port in the north set up to receive barges
of grain. The rest, what happens is a panamax size vessel or smaller arrives with containers, full of grain which have been back wild from the US and that's how they handle it. So it can take in green and containers but right. It's just the it's a volume game. Yeah, well it's a volume game. Versus someone who's also blockading the ports. So you have to do insertion style supplies, right? Yeah. So that's, that's going to that would say. That's a tough.
That's a tall order. Yes. The other aspect that we looked at was, how much logistic infrastructure would be needed to strictly resupply? The Taiwanese military with food? And so we use some planning factors, you know, we went with the fact that the average Taiwanese citizen is eating 1800 calories a day. It's a bit lower than what we consume in the US and based on that, if we just resupplied each soldier in Taiwan with one MRE per day, so that's about 1,400
calories. It would require 99, shipping containers per day to feed their military, So again in contested Waters and airspace. How do you bring that in? Yeah so it's definitely going to be a challenge. And I'm hopeful that they're planning for this sounds like your first discussion on how to get them to mobilize local farming, and dairy farms is probably the smartest Choice.
The thing is with local Community Gardens, is that It creates variety because not everyone's going to try and grow the same thing versus a large farm, and that would help to keep people healthy because very much just living on corn or soy. You're gonna have problems with health, right? So that does make sense as the first bet and plus that extra variety. If the farm Fields got assaulted, would still be able to sustain the population of a
little bit longer, correct? The work that we're doing today is a direct culmination of some of the precursor work. We did a couple of years ago. We were just starting to write articles. In fact, our first article was in April of 2020, we were talking about breakdowns in agriculture, Supply chains, which would happen due to koban and then lo and behold, it started to happen. We attended our first conference. We started to establish a network of academics around.
The country who were interested in solving this problem and For Better or Worse, we just have a huge Rolodex. Now of names and numbers people, we know that we can talk to about any subject matter within agriculture. The next year 2021 is, when we started to support the first few units being deployed developing, an AG assessment is also the first year that we started to attend joint special ops University and to do some training with the special ops
community. And it seems like, all of those things have led us to the point where we are today where we're starting to generate more and more Poll for AG related services. And that's the same sort of methodology I would endorse or other squads other other teams other Asis with in the 38th Golf Community you have to generate the relevant content, the combatant commanders know what
value it is that you offer. If you don't have that, if you can't explain it, then you're not at the point, to be able to actually offer support because you will get the platform to do so yeah. So civil Affairs has struggled with filling specialty slots, like, FX s B's and as hard to do in one region. So do you think that it would improve the odds of either expanding out the FX? S B's across all the cake homes and making it a network? Or do you think it would be better?
Building out localized K cam FX as bees and then keep recruiting to fill up all those slots. I'm not sure how this works. And I just wanted to get your opinion on it. My motivation has been for the last few years, just fill the slots with qualified people. Any way that I can because I just felt that if we didn't fill the slots then at some point the units would be dissolved. We're closing in on about 50%.
Phil what has been particularly challenging though is that the Personnel that you get do not always match the slots that you There are 1880s eyes. I can't speak for the other 3, K columns, but within the 353, we only have six Asis identified within our ranks. Sure. So, trying to get the right mix of personnel, it's definitely a challenge at the moment we have a number of people that are inbound that while we do have 38, golf slots.
We don't have the right ASI. So I don't know what that means for Mo sq4. These Nell, or when they would be eligible for promotion. Right? Which is always another issue. But you're seeing growth in FX, sba's right? We're seeing definite growth in recruitment. We used to only do Branch transfers. And then two years ago, they started to do direct appointments. And starting. In November of last year, we also have a pathway for enlisted that are well qualified and want
to be effects SP officers. It's just it. You almost have to be lucky to build these teams or be able to recruit from the civilian force and a Rectum. Well, I will say that the the team is quite small, it's only it's only five people, the vacancy right now but I don't have a good answer for that. The problems were, we know, we can make an impact, the demand on the team is quite high, but there's there's a lot of missions that we just, we just can't do. We don't have the expertise.
Here's a quick question. How do you or your team attract the right people to the job? If we can't fill it on our team and we can't feel fill it locally with the cake. Calm. And I, you know, I have to say most times with, I don't know that the problems get resolved right. Is there any type of targeted Outreach to colleges or professional organizations to promote be in a civil Affairs? Officer I have seen other K comes setting up the mou for public utilities and water.
So basically like somebody that that handles civilian water infrastructure or sewerage systems they set up an mou with the organization in Milwaukee called the water Council. And then after that mou was established, they worked with some local universities in Wisconsin, to be able to identify people that could join different units. And that was led by one officer particular colonel kooyenga out of the 352. Okay? Cool cool. And it was successful.
Yes, it's been very successful. It's just, it's always a chicken or the egg problem. You need to have the right resources to get people interested in joining, or you have to have the right people interested in joining and then you need the right resources, but in both cases, you need the people. You need the resources. Yeah. Well, I think I've used up about an hour and a half almost two hours with you no problem. I mean I'm hopeful you can pull something out of this and I can.
All right. Well, thank you very much. And all right, thanks for this Jack. Thanks again for listening to the one. See a podcast, our show is a production of the Civil Affairs Association. If you are interested in coming on the show or guest hosting an episode. Email us at see a podcasting at gmail.com?
I'll have that email and the Civil Affairs association website in the show notes and to all our folks in diplomacy development defense and operations working on ground to build those relationships with partner Nations and their people. Thank you for all you do. This is your host Jack gains until next time have a great week.