Crack Down Hard on Grain Smuggling to Safeguard National Food Security

In 2014, customs authorities nationwide carried out a one-year special campaign against agricultural product smuggling known as "Green Wind," concentrating efforts on combating and addressing illegal and criminal activities involving smuggled agricultural products, and achieving positive results.

Grain is an important strategic material and a special commodity that bears on economic development and social stability, and food security occupies an important position in national economic security. The Party Central Committee and the State Council have always attached great importance to the issue of food security, establishing the national food security strategy of "relying mainly on ourselves, basing ourselves on domestic production, ensuring production capacity, importing appropriately, and supporting with science and technology," and setting clear food security goals of "basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of staple food rations." In recent years, in order to protect the interests of grain farmers, stabilize grain production capacity, achieve a basic balance between total grain supply and demand, and ensure basic stability of grain market supply and prices, the state, while adopting a series of policy measures to support grain production, has also adopted a number of macroeconomic regulatory policy measures in the area of circulation, mainly in the following aspects. First, while fully liberalizing the grain purchase and sale market, it has implemented the minimum purchase price policy for rice and wheat in some main producing areas, and implemented the state temporary purchase and storage policy in some main producing areas for corn and rapeseed. Second, by means of public competitive bidding and auction of policy grain and other methods, it has increased effective market supply and guided grain market prices to operate within a reasonable range. Third, it has established and improved the central and local grain and oil reserve systems, and regulated the grain market through the release and intake of grain and oil reserves. Fourth, it has guided and encouraged production and sales areas to establish long-term and stable purchase and sales cooperation relationships, promoting regional balance in grain. Fifth, it has established a grain monitoring, early warning and emergency supply system to ensure emergency grain supply needs under special circumstances such as natural disasters and abnormal market fluctuations. Judging from the actual situation in recent years, the implementation of the state's policies to strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers and its grain macroeconomic regulatory policy measures has achieved notable results and played an important role in safeguarding national food security. Nationwide consecutive bumper grain harvests have laid a solid material foundation for national food security; the total domestic grain production and demand are basically balanced, stocks are relatively ample, and the market is generally operating smoothly.

Smuggling of grain such as rice is not only an illegal act of evading national taxes, but also causes adverse effects on national grain macroeconomic regulation and national food security. First, it impacts domestic market grain prices. At present, domestic and foreign grain prices are relatively obviously inverted; smuggled grain evades national taxes, has lower costs after entry, causes a relatively large impact on the domestic grain market, increases downward pressure on domestic grain market prices, and to varying degrees within a certain scope leads to problems such as inversion between domestic raw grain and finished grain prices and inversion between producing area and sales area prices, disrupting the normal circulation order of the domestic grain market, seriously affecting the orderly interregional circulation of domestic grain, and also bringing a relatively large impact on the normal operations of domestic grain processing enterprises. Second, it affects the balance of domestic grain supply and demand. At present, domestic corn and rice show phased characteristics of supply exceeding demand. Smuggled grain is not included in import statistics, and a large amount of smuggled grain entering the country will intensify the contradiction of supply exceeding demand, increase the pressure on purchase and storage in main producing areas, and affect the effectiveness of the state's market-supporting purchase policy in protecting the interests of grain farmers. Third, it brings certain hidden dangers to grain quality and food safety. Smuggled grain entering the country has not undergone necessary inspection and quarantine, has no guarantee in terms of quality and hygiene safety, and will pose a threat to food safety. Therefore, cracking down on grain smuggling is of great significance for implementing the national food security strategy, protecting the interests of grain farmers, maintaining the order of the domestic grain circulation market, and ensuring grain quality and safety.