What exactly is the essence of China's food security issue?

Eleven consecutive years of grain increases is a very great achievement, but it should also be noted that the increase in grain output is the result of internal structural adjustment of grain over all these years. Last year our imports exceeded 70 million tons, and 60% of the world's soybean market was imported into China, so many farmers in our country, especially in the Northeast region, stopped planting soybeans and switched to corn. Corn yields are several times that of soybeans, so grain output went up. Overall, the increase in grain sown area has not been very obvious, and our land is only so much. This is the first aspect.

⟦NL> The second aspect is that grain output has been increasing for eleven consecutive years, which in fact has drawn down our resources heavily, especially in major grain-producing areas, where groundwater levels are falling, and the heavy use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has led to soil and groundwater pollution, and so on, including the safety of the grain itself, by which I mean pesticide and fertilizer residues. These are all problems that cannot be ignored.

There is also another point. When we talk about China's food security issue, in essence it is not about the part people eat. The part people eat is mainly rice and wheat, and there is no problem with that. In recent years imports of soybeans and corn have increased greatly, but imports of wheat and rice have basically not increased, only adjusting some surpluses and shortages, one or two million tons, which is a very small amount. So the food security issue may essentially be, on the premise of absolute security of staple grains, about solving the feed security issue. For a crop like corn, we eat very little of it; it is mainly used as feed, and for making feed, making silage corn, or not planting corn and directly planting feed, the benefits may be greater. So this year's No. 1 Central Document proposed structural adjustment, and one very important part of that is adjusting the structure, that is, taking part of the area planted with corn and using it to plant silage corn or feed.

Facing the current food security situation in our country, how can we transform the agricultural development model, enhance grain production capacity, raise farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain, and thereby build a stable and reliable national food security guarantee system?

The first is structural adjustment. The central government clearly proposed structural adjustment, the first time in 1985, the second time in 1998, and in 2013 it proposed the building of new-type business entities. New-type business entities are in fact the most important subject in structural adjustment. Without new-type business entities, it is very difficult for the original small farmers to carry out structural adjustment, because the commercialization rate of small farmers is relatively low, and they may even be self-sufficient. More than half are non-professional farmers, simply planting a few mu of land to eat for themselves and serve their own families, so structural adjustment does not really matter to them.

Second, from the perspective of grain, how to truly direct subsidies to the farmers who grow grain is very important. The so-called four major subsidies——direct grain subsidies, improved seed subsidies, comprehensive subsidies for agricultural production materials, and agricultural machinery purchase subsidies——must all be continued. At present the comprehensive agricultural mechanization rate has reached 61%, but it is still far behind developed countries. As for the other three subsidies, how to integrate them together so that they truly promote new-type agricultural business entities and truly promote grain-growing farmers is probably the focus of reform.

The third is deepening services. As we know, the benefits of growing grain are very low. Growing one mu of wheat or rice yields benefits of only two or three hundred, or three or four hundred yuan. If costs rise even a little, they lose money. In some places the government purchases deepened services to reduce farmers' burdens and lower farmers' production costs. Last year when we conducted a survey in Henan, it was about agricultural machinery providing a one-stop service from sowing to harvesting. In one county, the government purchased services for 30,000 mu. For these 30,000 mu, farmers only needed to pay one third of the operation fee, and the other two thirds was provided by the government. This is only a pilot. If the scope is gradually expanded in the future and all farmers can enjoy government subsidies, this will greatly boost the enthusiasm of grain-growing farmers.

There is also the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. How to extend the grain industry chain through grain processing, keep more profits in major grain-producing areas and in the hands of grain-growing farmers, and improve the comparative benefits of the grain industry is crucial to the future development of the grain industry.