Building a new type of food security guarantee system will be the focus of future development

With the rapid development of urbanization, China's food security guarantee will face more complex situations and challenges in the future. From the perspective of food consumption demand, first, the continuous expansion of the urban population will lead to growing total food consumption, and the contradiction of the food supply-demand gap will become more prominent; second, rising resident incomes and improved living standards will promote the transformation and upgrading of food consumption and dietary structure, making the contradiction in the variety structure of food supply and demand more obvious; third, under the background of urban population concentration, the high concentration of food consumption demand places higher demands on building emergency guarantee capacity for food supply in response to major natural disasters and other emergencies. From the perspective of food production, although China's food production has achieved “eleven consecutive increases,” in the process of rapid urbanization and industrialization, as agricultural development enters a new stage, the foundation for ensuring food security in the future is being challenged: on the one hand, domestic agricultural production will remain in a channel of rising costs, the comparative benefit of food production will continue to decline, the “floor” of food production costs will keep rising, and the constraint of the “ceiling” on grain prices will become increasingly prominent, making it more and more difficult to maintain and increase farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain in the future. On the other hand, with the in-depth development of urbanization, cultivated land and water resources will become more strained in the future, the “tightening band” on the resource and environmental conditions of food production will become more severe, and the challenge of achieving sustainable agricultural development will become more serious.

Therefore, we must pay greater attention to strengthening the building of food security guarantee capacity, build a new type of national food security guarantee system, and do everything possible to solve the issue of feeding the 1.3 billion people well. This is not only the top priority in China's governance, but also the foundation for controlling the overall situation of economic and social development and national security under the complex international and domestic situations in the future.

To build a new type of national food security guarantee system, we must adhere to the principles of relying mainly on ourselves, basing ourselves on domestic production, ensuring production capacity, importing appropriately, and relying on scientific and technological support, ensure the basic self-sufficiency of grains and absolute security of staple food, keep the Chinese people's rice bowl firmly in our own hands at all times, and always maintain the initiative in national food security.

First, comprehensively build a new type of food production capacity system. Stable, efficient, safe and sustainable food production capacity is the core of basing ourselves on domestic production and ensuring the basic self-sufficiency of grains and absolute security of staple food. First, we must strictly observe the red line of cultivated land and designate permanent basic farmland. This is the basic guarantee for ensuring food production capacity. We must intensify comprehensive agricultural development, accelerate the construction of high-standard farmland that provides stable yields despite drought or excessive rain, and comprehensively improve the quality of cultivated land and the level of land output. Second, we must accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model, promote the transformation of food production from focusing on quantity growth to placing equal emphasis on total balance, structural optimization and quality safety, from mainly relying on resource consumption to being resource-saving and environment-friendly, and from mainly “relying on heaven for food” to improving the level of material and technological equipment, and build a new type of food production capacity system featuring efficient output, safe products, resource conservation and environmental friendliness. Third, we must rely on scientific and technological progress and give food production the wings of science and technology. We must accelerate the process of full mechanization in food production and fully leverage the role of agricultural machinery as a carrier in invigorating grain production through science and technology.

Second, establish a new type of food support policy system. We must improve and innovate food support policy mechanisms and further protect and increase farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain. This is the key to ensuring the stable development of food production. First, we must adhere to the principle of market pricing, fully leverage the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, improve the grain price formation mechanism, and consider gradually replacing the minimum grain purchase price and temporary purchase and storage policies with a target price system to reduce the distorting impact of price support policies on the market. Second, we must improve and innovate food subsidy methods, establish a mechanism linking policy subsidies with food production, and improve the pertinence, targeting and effectiveness of subsidy measures. Third, with subsidies focused on key food products, main producing areas and key links as the core, we must explore and implement direct subsidy measures that have little market-distorting effect and are effective for grain farmers, vigorously subsidize and support resource-saving and environment-friendly agricultural production methods, and accelerate the building of food risk management and control systems such as mandatory policy-based agricultural disaster insurance and price insurance.

Third, accelerate the innovation of the agricultural operation system. Cultivating new types of agricultural business entities and innovating the agricultural operation system are key measures to solve the problems of “who will grow grain” and “how to grow grain.” We must cultivate new types of agricultural business entities, support the development of large grain-growing households, family farms, farmer cooperatives, leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization and socialized service organizations, promote the transformation of agricultural producers from traditional farmers to high-quality professional farmers, promote the specialization, scaling and organization of agricultural operations, and enhance the sustainable development capacity of food production.

Fourth, strengthen the building of the food security reserve and emergency response system. Safe and reasonable food reserves are the material foundation for ensuring national food security. We must scientifically plan the scale of food reserves, optimize the variety structure and regional layout of reserves, and enhance the guarantee capacity for responding to emergencies and other unconventional shocks.

Fifth, build a new type of international agricultural cooperation system. Expanding agricultural opening-up, accelerating the pace of agriculture going global, and coordinating the use of both international and domestic markets and resources are inevitable choices for ensuring food security and ensuring the effective supply of important food varieties. We must innovate international agricultural cooperation mechanisms, deepen international agricultural strategic cooperation, and promote the improvement of food production capacity and effective supply levels in developing countries. We must accelerate the pace of agriculture going global and explore the establishment of overseas agricultural investment and industrial systems that meet the strategic requirements of China's food security. We must appropriately import foreign agricultural products, grasp the scale and pace of imports well, and properly manage the adverse effects and risks of imports on domestic agricultural production.