Even with consecutive years of grain harvests, we must remain vigilant in times of peace and never relax our guard

Food security is considered the foundation of a country's social stability. China's grain production has achieved “twelve consecutive years of increase” - does that mean we can sit back and relax? The answer is no. In fact, China's food security issue currently faces more complex factors, and we cannot afford any slack in this regard.

From the perspective of external factors, there is a considerable gap between the competitiveness and price level of China's grain and those of strong foreign producers. The massive entry of imported low-priced grain has had a major impact on China's grain market. As is well known, grain consumption is generally inelastic, and when the scale of grain imports becomes too large, domestic grain production is bound to shrink. In fact, international grain prices have been hovering at low levels in recent years, which has led some countries to try to expand their share of the Chinese market through various means, and we need to guard against the impact this brings to food security.

From the perspective of internal factors, the lack of successors in the grain production workforce requires us to plan ahead. As early as 5 years ago, an institution conducted a sample survey of 10 provinces and municipalities across the country, and the results were worrying: the average age of farmers actually engaged in grain production had already reached 57. This situation has still not improved to this day. On the one hand, few young people are willing to return to rural areas to farm, and agricultural production can hardly replenish its new labor force; on the other hand, this also means that the main body of grain production has a relatively low educational level, which brings about lower production efficiency.

Second, China's grain “twelve consecutive years of increase” has also come at a high cost, including the massive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which has caused large-scale degradation of farmland, and water and soil resources have already shown a “red light.” The urgent task is for China's grain production to shift from pursuing an increase in quantity to placing greater emphasis on improving quality, safety and grade, and to achieve a green transformation of grain production.

To meet the above challenges, we must work hard on improving agricultural production and operation methods. From the perspective of improving the organizational forms of agricultural production, we should adhere to the family farm as the foundation, appropriately introduce urban capital, and promote production and operation methods such as “company + farmer households”; from the perspective of adjusting the industrial structure, we should start by extending the agricultural industrial chain, increase the proportion of deep processing of agricultural products, and alleviate the current fiscal difficulties of many major grain-producing counties; from the perspective of improving the rural land management system, we should accelerate the elimination of the drawback of different rights for the same land in land transactions, promote the resolution of deep-seated issues such as contracted land, rural collectively operated land, and the transfer of homestead land, and further unleash the vitality of agricultural development.

It should be pointed out that we have about 20% of the world's population, but only about 9% of the world's arable land. This national condition determines the national food security strategy under the new situation of “relying mainly on ourselves, basing ourselves on domestic production, ensuring production capacity, moderately importing, and supporting with science and technology.” In other words, the rice bowl of we Chinese must always be held firmly in our own hands, and the rice bowl of Chinese people should mainly contain Chinese grain.

From a long-term perspective, the fundamental measure for safeguarding national food security lies in enhancing potential production capacity. In the future, on the basis of firmly upholding the red line of arable land and accelerating agricultural scientific and technological innovation, we must build a new type of agricultural operation system and cultivate a new generation of farmers. Only in this way can we truly achieve “with grain in hand, the heart does not panic.”