For the grain industry to develop healthily, guiding consumption is key

Our country is not only a major grain producer, but also a major grain consumer, and at the same time a major grain waster. One of the main reasons for this is that people waste a serious amount of grain in consumption. In order to cater to people's unhealthy grain consumption, our country's grain industry has also, to varying degrees, embarked on a “distorted” path.

At the source of grain production, it is not hard to find that pursuing high grain yields has become the primary goal of many grain growers. Under a pattern of “predatory” land management, grain producers continuously increase the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The average chemical fertilizer application per mu of cropland in our country is 21.9 kg, far higher than the world average (8 kg per mu), 2.6 times that of the United States and 2.5 times that of the European Union. Although our country's arable land area is less than 10% of the world total, chemical fertilizer application accounts for nearly 1/3 of the world total, and has become a major cause of agricultural non-point source pollution. From 2012 to 2014, the average annual use of pesticides for crop pest and disease control was 311,000 tons, an increase of 9.2% over 2009-2011.

Excessive application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides brings a vicious cycle of increased costs, environmental pollution and declining soil fertility. And although the grain produced by this unhealthy production method has high yields, it has low nutritional value and is increasingly unwelcome in the market. It can only be purchased into the national granary by relying on the state protective price policy. When the policy-based grain price is far higher than the market price and the international market price, it not only occupies a large amount of the national granary, but is also difficult to “auction” off. The longer it is stored, the more its quality declines or even ages, and ultimately it cannot be consumed as food grain, resulting in enormous waste.

⟦NL> As income levels rise, people's consumption of rice and flour increasingly leans toward polished rice and refined flour. In fact, polished rice and refined flour are products of excessive grain processing. Unlike ordinary commodities, the vitamins, various trace elements and other components of grain products that are richly nutritious for the human body are all found in the epidermis and germ of rice and wheat. But excessively processed rice and flour products remove the epidermis and germ entirely. In rice processing in particular, after removing the rice epidermis and germ, it is also polished again and again, until in the end only sugar and carbohydrates remain. The disappearance of effective nutrients during excessive processing not only reduces the natural nutritional content of rice and flour, but also invisibly lowers the yield rate of rice and flour, causing grain waste.

According to estimates by relevant experts, in the rice processing stage, each additional polishing step reduces the rice yield rate by 1%, causing a loss of more than 7 billion jin of grain each year; in the wheat processing stage, the loss rate is about 2%, with a loss of about 5 billion jin of grain. On a comprehensive calculation, the grain loss caused each year by excessive processing in our country's processing stage is more than 15 billion jin, and the grain waste generated in people's consumption is more than 100 billion jin. Calculated according to our country's per capita grain consumption in 2014 of about 922 jin, this is equivalent to the annual grain consumption of 125 million people.

The grain waste in the production and processing stages has many causes, and one important aspect is insufficient publicity and guidance regarding grain consumption. At present, people's “distorted” and wasteful grain consumption has brought about the unhealthy development of our country's grain industry.

To change our country's current “distorted” grain consumption pattern and thereby promote the healthy development of the grain industry, we must start with guiding people's consumption and adopt multiple measures simultaneously.

Awareness stage: from emphasizing appearance to emphasizing both appearance and nutrition

Grain is an indispensable daily necessity in people's three meals a day. The level of grain's nutritional value is directly related to whether people's health is good or not. Consuming grain scientifically is a very realistic issue that people need to face seriously after their incomes gradually rise.

“Pleasing in color, aroma and taste” is people's natural choice in diet. In grain consumption, how can “pleasing in color, aroma and taste” be achieved?

“Color and aroma” actually refer to the appearance of grain. In an era when people's living standards are rising day by day, there is nothing to criticize about requirements for grain's appearance. In the process of production and processing, grain producers and processors should satisfy consumers' needs as much as possible.

In response to the needs of different consumers, producers can produce grains of different colors when producing grain. Such as white rice, red rice, black rice, green rice and so on. As long as effort is put into variety breeding, producing grains with different appearances is not difficult.

People's demand for “good taste” reflects a requirement for nutrition. Based on modern science and technology, producing “delicious” grain products that people demand is a very easy thing. However, “delicious” grain products are not necessarily products rich in nutritional value.

Excessively processed grain products look very good in appearance. For example, excessively processed rice is crystal clear and uniform in grain size, but its nutritional value is very low. Because vitamins, trace elements and other substances needed by the human body are lost during excessive processing, after people eat this kind of grain, so-called “modern diseases” appear to varying degrees: high blood pressure, high blood lipids and high blood sugar.

In the multimedia era, relevant state departments should make good use of various media to widely publicize the new concept of scientific grain consumption. People should eat well, eat their fill, and eat nutritiously.

Production stage: from emphasizing quantity to emphasizing both quantity and quality

Blindly pursuing grain output will inevitably cause grain quality to lag behind. In an era of highly developed science and technology, grain production must develop from emphasizing quantity to emphasizing both quantity and quality.

Reduce the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and focusing on the use of farmyard manure and organic fertilizer can not only improve soil fertility and reduce pest control costs, but also produce grain products beneficial to people's peace of mind and health.

The scientific use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides requires effort in six aspects. Soil testing and formula fertilization should be widely carried out to apply fertilizer precisely and improve fertilizer utilization; rational tillage should be carried out to enhance fertilizer efficiency and improve economic returns; organic substitution should be made to comprehensively build soil fertility and improve resource utilization; pest and disease forecasting should be done well to apply pesticides precisely and improve pest control efficiency; new pesticides should be promoted and pesticide use limited to improve agricultural use efficiency; alternative prevention and control should be adopted to stay away from pesticides and improve economic and social benefits.

Produce green, organic and pollution-free products. A good natural ecological environment should be established and maintained; “from land to dining table” whole-process quality control should be implemented for grain products; and unified labeling and management should be implemented for products in accordance with the law. On this basis, in accordance with the production requirements of organic food, the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers, herbicides, synthetic pigments, hormones, preservatives, essences and other artificially synthesized substances is absolutely prohibited in the grain production and processing process. A completely new production and monitoring system should be established, adopting corresponding alternative technologies for pest and disease control, soil fertility maintenance, seed breeding, and product processing and storage.

Produce high-quality grain products. Whether grain quality is good or not, seed is the key. Only with high-quality improved seeds is it possible to produce high-quality grain; only with high-quality grain is it possible to win consumers' favor. Only by winning consumers' favor is it possible to achieve effective utilization. Relevant state and local departments should increase the breeding and promotion of high-quality grain varieties, improve the protective-price grain purchase policy, and encourage grain processing enterprises to produce original-ecology high-quality grain.

Processing stage: from emphasizing taste to emphasizing both taste and nutrition

Grain processing is an indispensable stage for grain to move from the production stage into the circulation stage and then into thousands of households. Only by doing a good job at the processing stage can we do a good job at the stage of healthy grain consumption.

For a period of time, people have always taken delight in saying that consumption determines production. From an economics perspective, there is no problem with this. However, when it comes to affecting people's health, it is not necessarily scientific. What some consumers demand is not necessarily something healthy. Even what the majority of consumers demand, due to misunderstandings in understanding, is not necessarily something healthy.

Faced with grain products that directly affect the consumption of millions upon millions of people, we should advocate that production guides consumption.

In real life, people always complain that good-looking grain has low nutritional value, but grain rich in nutritional value does not taste good. To satisfy both people's appearance requirements for grain consumption and people's nutritional value requirements for grain consumption, grain processing enterprises are required to make full use of modern processing technology to solve the taste problem while retaining the nutritional components of grain as much as possible. At the same time, they should also produce “functional” grain foods in response to the consumption needs of different groups of people. These can both satisfy people's requirements for grain diet and play an auxiliary dietary therapy role.