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
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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
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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.