How to avoid the difficulty of selling grain: this exam question must be answered well

Facing days of continuous rain, Peng Dejun, a major grain grower in Chengtou Township, Sihong County, was full of worry. This 45-year-old farmer planted 4000 mu of rice this year, and by November 22 had harvested only 600 mu. First, he worried that the rain would make the mature rice lodge and turn into a "rotten rice field"; second, he worried that the rice could not be sold at a good price.

"The rice already harvested was sold to brokers, and the price they offered was only 1.07-1.08 yuan per jin." He sighed and said that although the moisture content was a bit high, reaching about 23%, if converted to the 14.5% moisture content that meets the national purchasing standard, it would still be only about 1.30 yuan per jin, far below the national minimum purchase price of 1.55 yuan per jin. A few days earlier, he went to the county's state reserve depot to ask, and the reply he got was that warehouse capacity was too tight and his grain could not be purchased for the time being. "At the current price, even though this year's yield increased by 100 jin of rice per mu, I can only break even with a tiny profit."

Affected by low market grain prices and persistently high domestic inventories, tight warehouse capacity has become a common phenomenon in the country's major grain-producing areas, and Jiangsu Province has also seen an unprecedented warehouse capacity gap in this year's autumn grain purchase. Facing this situation, how to protect the interests of farmers, especially major grain growers, and avoid the problem of cheap grain hurting farmers, has become an "exam question" placed before the grain departments.

"The method we adopted is to give priority to solving the grain-selling needs of major grain growers." Wang Haiyong, director of the Xuzhou Municipal Grain Bureau, said that the reason for doing this is that major grain growers harvest a large amount of grain and have nowhere of their own to store it, while farmers with smaller planting areas can generally solve the grain storage problem themselves and stagger the peak grain-selling period, using time in exchange for space. Therefore, before the autumn grain harvest, all grain depots in Xuzhou conducted a survey of all major growers with a planting area of more than 300 mu and took the initiative to make purchase appointments with them. By October 21, the city's autumn grain harvest was basically completed, and there was basically no difficulty in selling grain. Jiangyan District in Taizhou has a grain planting area of more than 500,000 mu, and its approach is to ensure priority purchasing for family farms and major growers engaged in large-scale planting. In fact, Yixing City, Liyang City and other places in southern Jiangsu with relatively large grain planting areas also adopted the method of giving priority to ensuring that major grain growers sell grain first.

There was also a special phenomenon this year: because the warehouse capacity used for market-support purchasing (grain rights belong to the State Council) was relatively small and far from enough to meet farmers' grain-selling needs, mobilizing local state-owned grain depots and social purchasing entities to purchase autumn grain also became a "subject of study." Xuzhou has many grain processing enterprises. On the one hand, the grain department worked with processing enterprises and encouraged them to cooperate with farmers in various ways, which could be purchasing and marketing on behalf of farmers, cooperative operation, or entrusted sales; on the other hand, it explained national policies to farmers. If they could not get into the "plate" of market-support purchasing, the grain department guaranteed to help farmers sell grain to private processing enterprises. The moisture requirement could be relaxed to 16%-17%, and the price would accordingly be a bit lower, at about 1.35 yuan per jin. The important thing was to sell the grain on hand first; otherwise, if wet rice was piled up for too long, it would inevitably affect quality and make it even harder to sell at a good price.

Huaian adopted the method of renting warehouses for purchasing. In addition to market-support purchasing, it increased self-operated grain purchases by 150 million jin; Xinghua coordinated joint-stock enterprises and social warehouse capacity to participate in purchasing, striving to put more warehouse capacity into autumn grain purchasing. In addition to borrowing 40,000 tons of social warehouse capacity specifically to purchase local rice, Jiangyan District also mobilized each of the 50 grain processing enterprises in the district one by one to increase purchasing. The 5 mu of rice grown by Chen Yi, a farmer in Tazi Village, Dalun Town, in the district, was sold to a processing enterprise through the grain department's matchmaking, at a price of 1.38 yuan per jin. He was satisfied with this price. "It has been raining all these days, and there is no way to dry the rice. If I don't sell it, the loss will be even greater."

In order to solve farmers' difficulty in selling grain, grain departments across the province have exhausted every means. In order to free up warehouse capacity, many counties (cities) in Yancheng planned to sell at a loss the self-operated grain purchased in previous years; Liyang's self-operated grain had already been sold out, and the selling price was lower than last year's purchase price, with local state-owned grain depots bearing the resulting economic losses; the Xinghua Municipal Grain Bureau was actively seeking government financial support to speed up the auction and outbound shipment of grain. At the same time, on November 20, the Provincial Grain Bureau held the "Jiangsu Famous, Special, Excellent and New Grain and Oil Premium Products Promotion Conference" in Shanghai, attended by grain management departments and purchasing and sales enterprises from five provinces and municipalities that are major grain-selling areas: Shanghai, Zhejiang, Fujian, Guangdong and Yunnan. Chen Jie, director of the Provincial Grain Bureau, at the promotion conference earnestly requested well-known grain and oil enterprises from the five provinces and municipalities to work with Jiangsu grain merchants for win-win cooperation and to jointly achieve increased enterprise efficiency and increased farmer income. A total of 14 grain purchase and sales contracts were signed at the promotion conference, and about 490,000 tons of Jiangsu grain would be continuously transported to the five provinces and municipalities to ease the warehouse capacity pressure in Jiangsu Province.