Our last official visit in Shanghai was with the Shanghai Municipal Agriculture Commission. We met with Ms. Cao Li Hua of the Economic and Trade Division and Mr. Wang Dong Rong, Vice Director and Senior Economist.
Shanghai is effectively a mini-province; it is a municipality that does not belong to any other province. In area Shanghai is about 1/4 the size of Vermont. Approximately half the population lives in the urbanized area of which we saw a small part, and about half live in towns and rural areas which we did not see--what they call the Shanghai suburbs. There is about $3B of agricultural output from the Shanghai suburbs, which provides about 1% of the food that Shanghai needs.
