Luo Yi is a Chinese pig farmer eking out a living in a decrepit former aluminum parts factory near Khabarovsk, in the Far East of Russia. He is a small part of a smoldering conflict that could prove to be one of the biggest geopolitical problems of the 21st century. The land that Luo is on is part of a vast area that Russia annexed 140 years ago, when China was too busy fighting the Opium …showed first 75 words of 1124 total…

…showed last 75 words of 1124 total…a decade ago; now there are only 83. After peaking at 392 million tons in 1998, China's grain harvests have fallen to 350 million tons a year since then. Within two decades, according to a U.S. government report drawing heavily on classified data, China could need 175 million tons of grain a year, more than the total world grain trade in 2001. No wonder Siberia, remote to so much of the world, looks to Chinese eyes like a convenient granary.