Ensuring Food Security: Strategic Thinking under the New Normal

China's economic and social development has entered a new period. Under the new normal, the strategic thinking on China's food security needs to change, mainly including the following aspects:

1. The concept and goals of food security. It is suggested to abolish the traditional concept of grain, exclude soybeans from grain, focus on cereal security, and shift from the concept of product security to resource-guarantee security. In cereal security, the main consideration is variety security; in the security of major varieties, the main consideration is staple food security; in regional security, the main consideration is the security guarantee of sales areas; and in population targets, the main consideration is the staple food security of low- and middle-income people.

2. Domestic reserve policy. The reserve volume should be reduced to a reasonable range. Given that China is a large country with a large population, the food security reserve rate can be higher, but the reserve rate should preferably not exceed 30% of the social consumption volume of that year.

3. In production policy, the market should be allowed to play a decisive role in resource allocation. It is suggested to cancel the temporary purchasing and storage policy. Within the national target reserve of 30%, the government purchases grain from farmers in limited quantities at the target price, and allocates the purchase volume proportionally to grain-growing households; these quotas can be transferred among farmers. After the target reserve is exceeded, when the market price is lower than the target price, producers can be subsidized in cash according to the commodity rate of grain based on the price difference; otherwise, low-income consumers can be subsidized. On the basis of retaining the existing production subsidies for grain-growing farmers, adjust the direction of future incremental input and subsidies for agriculture, mainly for investment in high-standard farmland construction and the transformation of low- and medium-yield fields; for investment in projects such as high-quality seed breeding, modern agricultural machinery and equipment, and land pollution control; allocate a portion of funds to encourage and support farmers in adjusting their planting structure and developing high-value-added agriculture; and provide technical training for farmers to strengthen their farming skills.

⟦NL> 4. Import and export policy. Under the new normal, it is necessary to replace agricultural resources, promote our advantages, namely labor-intensive agricultural products, abroad, and enhance export competitiveness; while reducing the export of land- and water-intensive agricultural products, appropriately increase the import volume of such products. At the same time, under the Belt and Road opening strategy of the Silk Road, support going global, use overseas agricultural resources to produce agricultural products, and serve the domestic market. Encourage the export of domestic agricultural capital, combine the import and export of agricultural products with capital export, support domestic capital in carrying out agricultural development overseas, and transport back to China agricultural products such as grain produced by overseas investment. To this end, it is necessary to adjust policies on overseas agricultural investment and the import and export of agricultural products.

5. Accelerate institutional reform. Reform the national purchasing and storage system, so that the annual national purchasing and storage tasks are mainly undertaken by state-owned enterprises, gradually transition to open competitive bidding in society, and ultimately achieve equal treatment for state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. To this end, reform state-owned purchasing, storage, and processing enterprises, implement mixed-ownership transformation, and attract domestic social capital to participate in the reform of state-owned grain enterprises. Encourage the development of private enterprises in the grain sector, relax market access conditions, simplify registration procedures, provide policy-based financial support, and improve their market competitiveness.