From China to America, monumental forces are driving global demand for food, feed and renewable fuel. Faced with a worldwide credit crunch, demand will probably take a breather, but the long-term trends are still strong.

BEIJING IS A CACOPHONY. JACK HAMMERS CLATTER, CAR HORNS HONK, CONSTRUCTION CRANES SCREECH. Seventeen million legal inhabitants—and another 7 million or so "guest workers"—go about the business of making Beijing one of the fastest growing places on Earth. China's other cities—Shanghai, Tinjian, and Chengdu among them—also bustle with new construction of apartment buildings, shopping malls, highways. By one estimate, 150 million Chinese have migrated from the countryside to the cities in search of jobs created by China's booming economy.

This mass migration—perhaps the largest migration in the history of the world—has implications for the American farmer. Those who move to China's cities to work in factories, offices and shops make more money than they have ever made in their lives. As a result, they eat better, and "better" often means more meat. Since China has used all its arable farmland and is building cities on some of what's left, it must import feed grains—principally soybeans—to feed to hogs, poultry and farm-raised fish. And much of that grain comes from the U.S.

Reports say China bought more than $12 billion in soybeans in the first seven months of 2008 and signed an agreement for $3 billion U.S. soybeans. In recent months, China also has begun importing dry distillers grain from U.S. ethanol plants. Along with feed grains, the Chinese are also buying pork—54,000 metric tons in the first half of 2008—and breeding stock, 4,600 breeding hogs from January to June of this year.

All these big numbers are important. But The Progressive Farmer went to China to put a face on those numbers, to show you your Chinese customers.