State Grain Administration: China has huge potential and space for saving grain and reducing losses

“Reducing losses and waste is equivalent to increasing output.” Yan Bo, Director of the Policy and Law Department of the State Grain Administration, introduced that based on China's total grain output of 1.2 trillion jin in 2013, if the grain loss rate were reduced by 2 percentage points, 24 billion jin of grain could be saved in one year, close to the amount of grain output increase in 2013.

To effectively improve the capacity for saving grain and reducing losses, scientific post-production management of grain must be strengthened. In recent years, China has continuously strengthened the construction of grain storage and logistics facilities, vigorously repaired and renovated “dangerous warehouses and old depots”, and tapped the potential for saving grain and reducing losses.

Through the implementation of the “Special Project for Scientific Grain Storage by Farmers”, the grain storage loss rate of benefiting farmers has decreased by an average of 6%, and each year 900,000 tons of storage losses can be reduced for these farmers. Through carrying out the construction of storage facilities and the renovation of “dangerous warehouses and old depots”, and promoting new grain storage technologies, the loss rate of dangerous old warehouses and open-air grain storage has decreased by an average of nearly 3%. By guiding processing enterprises to carry out technological upgrading and moderate processing, the utilization rate of ration resources has increased by an average of 7%. By developing the “bulk loading, bulk transport, bulk storage, bulk unloading” four-bulk logistics method for raw grain, the grain transport loss rate has decreased by an average of 2%.

“Reducing post-production grain losses means saving the use of cultivated land and freshwater resources, reducing agricultural consumption and emissions, and developing ‘invisible fertile fields’ to achieve ‘output increases’ without land.” Yan Bo said.

At present, saving grain and reducing losses still faces many problems and difficulties, such as the difficulty of promoting scientific grain storage by farmers on a large scale due to shortage of funds, and the prominent contradiction of insufficient grain warehouse capacity. Yan Bo believes that to ensure that saving grain and reducing losses achieves tangible results, it is necessary to fully implement the grain collection, storage and supply security project, strive to form a resource-conserving, intensive, green, low-carbon, scientific and healthy grain circulation mode and consumption pattern, and establish as soon as possible a new mechanism for saving grain and reducing losses that is government-led, demand-driven, participated in by all people, and promoted through social coordination.

At the same time, legislation should be strengthened in cherishing grain, saving grain and opposing waste, guiding everyone to start from themselves, save every grain of food, and strive to form a social atmosphere of cherishing grain and saving grain throughout society.