Ministry of Agriculture Releases First Agricultural Outlook Report, Focusing on Food Security in the Next 10 Years
Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture released an agricultural outlook report for the first time, predicting that over the next 10 years, higher yields per unit area will become the main factor in agricultural production growth, and the agricultural industry chain will be further expanded and extended; market supply and demand for major agricultural products such as grain, cotton, oil, sugar, meat, eggs and milk will continue to remain balanced; agricultural product consumption will continue to grow rapidly, agricultural product prices will generally trend upward under cost pressures, and agricultural product import and export trade will grow steadily—
Over the next 10 years, what will China's agricultural development trend look like? How can market signals be better used to guide agricultural production? At the 2015 China Agricultural Outlook Conference held from April 20 to 21, the Market Early Warning Expert Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture released the "China Agricultural Outlook Report (2015-2024)," providing an outlook on the trends in China's agricultural product production, consumption, prices and trade over the next 10 years.
According to reports, this year China released an agricultural outlook report in the name of the Market Early Warning Expert Committee of the Ministry of Agriculture for the first time. Experts pointed out that this outlook report takes into account the new normal characteristics of China's economic development and grasps the overall situation of the agricultural product market in the coming period, and that this outlook activity on China's agricultural development trends is of milestone significance.
Food security is guaranteed
Grain security underpins the world, and the issue of food security attracts the most attention. The report shows that in the next 10 years China will be able to achieve the food security goal of “basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of staple foods.” Xu Shiwei, executive chairman of the outlook conference and director of the Agricultural Information Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that based on the analysis of large amounts of data, systematic model calculations and consultation and judgment by experts in the field, China's future food supply security is fully guaranteed.
“China will maintain a reasonable self-sufficiency rate for grains, and the two staple food varieties, rice and wheat, will be more than self-sufficient in consumption.” The report predicts that in the next 10 years, China's grain sown area will remain generally stable, and comprehensive grain production capacity will be further enhanced. By 2024, China's total sown area of rice, wheat and corn will remain stable at more than 1.36 billion mu, output will reach 580 million tons, and total consumption is expected to be 600 million tons. Among these, rice output is expected to remain stable at around 206 million tons, equivalent to rice grain output of around 145 million tons, with rice staple food consumption expected to be 114 million tons; wheat output is expected to reach 129 million tons, with wheat staple food consumption expected to be 89 million tons; corn output is expected to reach 244 million tons, with corn staple food consumption expected to be 7 million tons, while feed consumption and industrial consumption are expected to maintain relatively rapid growth, and supply and demand will be balanced through a moderate increase in imports.
Rice is the number one staple food for Chinese people, and 60 percent of residents nationwide use rice as their main food. Peng Chao, associate researcher at the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that after China's rice output exceeded 200 million tons in 2011, it reached a record high output of 206.43 million tons in 2014. It is expected that in the next 10 years, China's total rice output will remain stable, rice planting area will decline slightly while remaining stable, and yields per unit area will continue to increase. He said that in the next 10 years, China's rice paddy and rice prices will generally maintain a stable-to-rising trend. Because China has limited rice trading partners, a large increase in imports is unlikely. It is expected that in 2024 China's rice imports will be around 3.2 million tons, only more than 600,000 tons more than in 2014.
Supply and demand for major agricultural products balanced
The report predicts that in the next 10 years, the production of major agricultural products such as oilseeds, vegetables, fruits, meat, poultry eggs and dairy in China will continue to develop steadily, agricultural production will continue to develop steadily, and domestic supply and demand in the agricultural product market will remain generally balanced.
Vegetables are one of the agricultural products that have developed fastest in recent years. Kong Fantao, associate researcher at the Information Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, expects that in the next 10 years vegetable production will still develop steadily, but the growth rate will slow. It is expected that in the future there will be limited room for further expansion of China's vegetable planting area, and the growth rates of sown area, yields per unit area and total output will tend to slow. However, with the development of facility vegetables and improvements in production technology, yields per unit area will continue to rise steadily. At the same time, the share of pollution-free, green and organic vegetable varieties will increase, and production will shift from focusing on output to placing equal emphasis on ensuring balanced supply and improving quality and efficiency.
Meat is also an important part of people's shopping baskets. Nie Fengying, researcher at the Information Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, believes that although the supply and demand situation for live pigs will improve significantly in the second half of this year and there may be a temporary tightening of supply and demand, the overall price increase will not be too large, and hog farming for the full year will be at a slightly profitable level. In the long term, over the next 10 years, live pig and pork prices will rise amid fluctuations, and affected by the increase in scale, the range of fluctuation will slow significantly. In addition, China's beef and mutton consumption is generally in a steady growth trend. However, affected by factors such as breeding cycles, transformation of development methods and disease, the trend of tight beef and mutton supply will continue to exist. It is expected that in the future beef imports will continue to increase, while mutton imports will be stable.
Development quality will improve markedly
“In the next 10 years, the quality of China's agricultural development will improve markedly.” Zhang Hecheng, director of the Market Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said that with the in-depth implementation of the strategy of transforming agricultural development methods and adjusting structure, China's agricultural development will gradually shift from a quantity-growth model to a quality-and-benefit model, and the growth rate of output of major agricultural products will slow. Higher yields per unit area, representing scientific and technological progress, will become the main factor in output growth, the diversification and quality improvement of agricultural product consumption will gradually become a trend, and the industry chain will be further expanded and extended.
Cheng Guoqiang, researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, believes that in the future China will pay more attention to the protection of agricultural resources and the environment, and to the coordinated use of both domestic and international resources and both domestic and international markets. Driven by the rapidly growing and increasingly diversified domestic demand for agricultural products, agricultural product import and export trade will maintain a steady growth trend. In particular, with the implementation of multilateral and bilateral trade agreements with relevant countries and regions, as well as the in-depth advancement of the “Belt and Road” strategy, the interaction and integration between domestic and international agricultural development and global agriculture will increase markedly.