The road to making potatoes a staple grain is not smooth; no new subsidies for now
The proposal to make potatoes a staple grain is currently only a departmental opinion of the Ministry of Agriculture, and has not been elevated to the national level or become a joint initiative of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration and other departments; many people have expressed confusion over the Ministry of Agriculture's hasty rewriting of the definition of staple grain.
The road to making potatoes a staple grain is not smooth; no new subsidies for now
The road for potatoes to join the ranks of staple grains does not look very smooth. After the Ministry of Agriculture put forward the strategy of making potatoes a staple grain with almost no groundwork, it received many replies from netizens expressing confusion, as well as doubts from quite a few experts about competition for resources and policies. The Ministry of Agriculture recently made a detailed explanation, saying this was the result of “scientific decision-making.” Pan Wenbo, deputy director of the Planting Industry Management Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, told Caixin reporters that he has not yet heard any talk of new subsidies for potatoes.
According to Caixin reporters, this proposal is currently only a departmental opinion of the Ministry of Agriculture, and has not been elevated to the national level or become a joint initiative of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration and other departments.
A new face proposed for the staple grain world
The scientific name of the potato is Solanum tuberosum; its homeland is South America, and it has been cultivated in China for more than 400 years, with an area of more than 80 million mu. In fact, the potato has long been included in China's grain statistics, and China is the world's largest potato producer, accounting for one quarter of the world's total output. However, due to different dietary habits, potatoes in China are mainly used as a fresh vegetable dish.
When China speaks of grain, it is divided into broad, medium and narrow categories. The broad category refers to cereals, soybeans and tubers; the medium category refers to cereals and soybeans; the narrow category refers only to cereals. The main staple grains are three: wheat, rice and corn. At the end of 2013, after comprehensively considering future supply and demand, ecological pressure, resource bottlenecks and other conditions, China established a new food security strategy, updating the past approach of “ensuring everything” to “ensuring cereals,” among which the top priority is ensuring “absolute security of food rations.” Under such circumstances, the Ministry of Agriculture's launch of the strategy to make potatoes a staple grain has left quite a few experts feeling somewhat puzzled.
The strategy of making potatoes a staple grain mainly has two goals: expanding the potato planting area from the current more than 80 million mu to 150 million mu; and having it account for a major proportion of Chinese people's three meals a day. Dai Xiaofeng, director of the Institute of Food Science and Technology under the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, explained, “What is held in your hands when eating normally is called a staple grain; what is placed on the plate in the middle is all called a side food or dish.”
In response to various public discussions, the Ministry of Agriculture responded to several points in a targeted way. It stressed that potato production saves water, land, fertilizer and pesticides, and that the basic principle for expanding the area is not to compete for land with the three major cereals of rice, wheat and corn, with the focus on developing and utilizing winter fallow fields in the south; making potatoes a staple grain is also not because there is not enough food to eat. Making potatoes a staple grain is an important supplement to the absolute security of food rations, a case of “adding flowers to brocade,” conforming to the needs of ordinary Chinese people to eat their fill and eat healthily and nutritiously.
Technological innovation in steamed potato buns
As to whether the potato, with a history of more than 400 years in China, has failed to become a staple grain because it lacks a “mass base,” the Ministry of Agriculture also offered an explanation.
Pan Wenbo believes that this is due both to traditional dietary consumption habits and to insufficient public awareness of the nutritional value of potatoes. Affected by these two factors, not enough has been done to breed special potato varieties suitable for processing, and the corresponding research and development of formulas, processes and equipment for processing into staple foods has been insufficient, with industrialization and development lagging behind.
Dai Xiaofeng said that breakthroughs have already been achieved technically. Potatoes do not contain gluten protein, so when making staple-food products such as steamed buns and noodles, there are problems such as difficulty in forming, difficulty in proofing, high hardness, and noodles that break easily and do not withstand boiling. At present, the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences has successfully developed products such as potato steamed buns with a whole potato flour proportion of 40% and potato noodles with a whole potato flour proportion of 35%, and has initially achieved factory production; at the same time, it has also developed a series of products such as self-rising flour for potato steamed buns and compound flour for potato noodles, and “in the future, ordinary people can also make potato steamed buns and noodles at home.”
Who benefits from the potato strategy?
However, clearly, many people are not convinced by this explanation. “A potato is just a potato. If it follows market mechanisms, there is nothing wrong with calling it a staple grain. With such fanfare and such justification, is it trying to play for policy? It is hard to understand such a hasty rewriting of the historical definition of staple grain.” Cheng Guoqiang, a grain issue expert and researcher at the Development Research Center of the State Council, publicly questioned on Weibo.
⟦NL> One expert believes that behind the Ministry of Agriculture's proposal of the strategy to make potatoes a staple grain is the push of industrial interests ranging from scientific research to production and operation.
In 2010, Guo Fenglian, a member of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, party branch secretary of Dazhai and chairman of the Dazhai Group, and the “Iron Girl” of that era, once put forward a proposal recommending that the staple grain status of the potato be established as soon as possible and that support for and promotion of virus-free seed potatoes be increased. She said that the National Potato Engineering Technology Research Center, relying on leading enterprises, had already made breakthrough progress in breeding new potato varieties and in the large-scale production and promotion of virus-free seed potatoes. As long as the state values potatoes just as it does grain crops such as corn, wheat and rice and gives policy support, China's potatoes could be expected to double production capacity without increasing planting area, making a huge contribution to increasing grain output, ensuring China's food security, enriching the people and strengthening the nation.
In the view of some experts, however, industrial development can largely be resolved through the market itself, and the effect of using state policy measures is not necessarily good.
Pan Wenbo told Caixin reporters that next the Ministry of Agriculture will mainly advance the strategy of making potatoes a staple grain from four aspects: first, strengthening planning guidance; second, strengthening scientific and technological innovation and variety breeding; third, strengthening research and development of product processes, formulas and equipment; and fourth, doing a good job in publicity and promotion, because “the consumption of ordinary people is the most important.”