Mailart 365: #5 L-plate Chairman Mao's armchair agricultural strategies

#5 L-plate Chairman Mao's armchair agricultural strategies

PostMuse's recent mailart365 posting about conserving on eggs was a reminder of this story which I've decided to feature in mailart form for PostMuse herself :)

Now this is a bit of a contested question. The story goes that China's Chairman Mao was advised during the 1950s that the country's communal farms were not going to meet their production quotas because birds were eating a lot of the grain. And so he ordered all the farmers to clap whenever they saw a bird land and even wake up super-early, go outside and bang pots together to make a big racket. The idea was that the birds would either have heart attacks from fright, or become exhausted since they could never rest and just drop dead out of the sky. But help the Chinese meet their production quotas, it did not. Because the birds couldn't land and died pretty young, the insect population in China grew so fast that they ate all the crops and a long-lasting famine was the result.

Who knows if this ever happened or not, but there's no smoke without fire (not any birds without insects, hence we must never forget that messing around with the foodchain is a messy business).

Cheers for the inspiration, PostMuse, I've decided to keep the picture back for now so it's a surprise for when the postcard arrives with you :)