Minister of Agriculture stresses full implementation of the national food security strategy under new circumstances

Fully Implement the National Food Security Strategy Under New Circumstances

Han Changfu

    Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the new central leadership collective with Comrade Xi Jinping as General Secretary, focusing on achieving the “Two Centenary Goals” and the Chinese Dream of the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, has proposed the national food security strategy under new circumstances of “taking self-reliance as the mainstay, basing ourselves on domestic production, ensuring production capacity, moderate imports, and technological support,” emphasizing the need to hold fast to the strategic bottom line of “ensuring basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of staple food.” General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that in safeguarding national food security, this string must never be slackened at any time, that the Chinese people's rice bowl must always be held firmly in our own hands, and that our rice bowl should mainly contain Chinese grain. This fully reflects the central leadership's profound grasp of our national conditions and the laws of modernization, and strengthens the governance philosophy and work requirements of emphasizing agriculture and grasping grain production. We must deeply understand the national food security strategy under new circumstances, and with a high degree of self-awareness and solid action, go all out to promote the stable development of grain production.

    I. Accurately Grasp the Connotation and Requirements of the National Food Security Strategy Under New Circumstances

    Throughout history, having enough food has always been the foremost great undertaking in governing a country and bringing peace to the nation. The ancients said that food is the first necessity of the people, and that “among the eight government affairs in the Great Plan, food is the first of governance.” For a populous country like China, food security is especially important, and at no time can we be negligent. The Party and the government have always attached great importance to grain production, introduced a series of important policies and measures, and achieved accomplishments praised by the world. Now, China has relatively stably used less than 10% of the world's cultivated land to produce 1/4 of the world's grain and feed 1/5 of the world's population. This is a major contribution to world food security and answers with practical action the question of who will feed the Chinese people.

    At present, China is at a crucial stage of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and safeguarding national food security faces new circumstances and tasks. At the Central Economic Work Conference and the Central Rural Work Conference held at the end of last year, General Secretary Xi Jinping placed safeguarding national food security at the top of economic work, stressing that as long as no major problems arise in grain, China's affairs can remain stable. This year's Central Document No. 1 proposed that we must promptly build the national food security strategy under new circumstances. We must base ourselves on the overall situation of economic and social development, and deeply understand and accurately grasp the rich connotation of the national food security strategy under new circumstances.

    Grasp the strategic foothold and always adhere to taking self-reliance as the mainstay and basing ourselves on domestic production. As the world's largest grain producer and consumer, China is constrained by resources such as cultivated land and fresh water, and it is an objective reality that there is a grain gap, requiring effective use of international markets and foreign resources. But more than a billion Chinese people cannot live by buying meals or begging for food; our rice bowl must mainly contain our own grain. This is because: on the one hand, the room for adjustment through the international market is limited. At present, global grain trade volume is only 500 billion jin to 600 billion jin, less than half of China's grain consumption; rice trade volume is about 70 billion jin, equivalent to only 1/4 of China's rice consumption, which is neither enough for us to eat nor possible to all be sold to us. On the other hand, large-scale imports are unsustainable. If China purchases large quantities of grain from the international market over the long term, it may cause international grain prices to rise substantially, not only requiring us to pay a high price but also affecting China's relations with some underdeveloped and developing countries.

    Grasp the strategic focus and clearly define the priorities for safeguarding national food security. China has only so much cultivated land, yet demand is so great, so we must ensure some things while restraining others, take some and give up some, and concentrate our strength first on protecting the most basic and most important things. First is “ensuring staple food.” Rice and wheat are China's basic staple food varieties. Nationwide, 60% of people take rice as their main food, and 40% take flour-based food as their main food. This requires rationally allocating resources and giving priority to ensuring rice and wheat production; the rice area should be broadly stabilized at more than the current 450 million mu, and the wheat area broadly stabilized at more than 340 million mu. Second is “ensuring grains.” Ensuring grains mainly means ensuring paddy rice, wheat, and corn; the output of these three major crops accounts for about 90% of China's total grain output. Paddy rice and wheat must be ensured as staple food varieties, and corn is an important feed grain and industrial grain whose demand has grown fastest in recent years, so it must also be ensured. At present, China's corn planting area is 545 million mu and should remain basically stable.

    Grasp the strategic point of effort and strive to ensure production capacity and strengthen technological support. To enhance China's comprehensive grain production capacity, we must first store grain in the land. At present, low- and medium-yield fields account for 2/3 of cultivated land area, effectively irrigated area accounts for only a little more than half, and the situation of relying on the weather for food has still not fundamentally changed. To ensure production capacity, holding the red line of cultivated land is an important prerequisite, designating permanent basic farmland is an important guarantee, and building high-standard farmland that ensures harvests despite drought or excessive rain is an important path. Second, we must store grain in technology. Against the background of increasingly strengthened constraints on resources such as cultivated land and water, the fundamental way to increase grain output lies in science and technology. Last year, the contribution rate of China's agricultural scientific and technological progress reached 55.2%, nearly 12 percentage points higher than 10 years ago, and the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation, planting, and harvesting reached 59.5%, 27 percentage points higher than 10 years ago. In recent years, agricultural science and technology have contributed greatly to China's grain output increases, but compared with developed countries there is still a large gap. The gap is potential; from now on we must persist in following an intensive development path that relies on scientific and technological progress and increases per-unit yield, and give agriculture and grain the wings of science and technology.

    Grasp the strategic balance point, moderately import agricultural products, and make good use of both resources and both markets. China has insufficient land, not enough water, and great pressure on resources and the environment, so moderate imports are necessary to meet market demand. On the one hand, we must do a good job of adjusting variety surpluses and shortages. China still has insufficient supply of special varieties such as strong-gluten wheat, weak-gluten wheat, and malting barley, and needs to make up for domestic shortages through appropriate imports. At the same time, we must also import some distinctive foreign varieties for adjustment to meet diversified consumer demand. On the other hand, we must do a good job of annual balance adjustment. During the Warring States period, Li Kui, chancellor of the State of Wei, made the “ever-normal granary law” an important part of his reforms; its essence was to regulate the grain market and prices and prevent low grain prices from hurting farmers and high rice prices from hurting the people. Agriculture is directly affected by climate, and annual harvests often vary, so adjustment through imports, exports, and inventories is needed. Adapting to the process of economic globalization also requires coordinating the international and domestic markets and appropriately importing grain to supplement domestic inventories and ease pressure on domestic resources and the environment. But we must grasp the scale and rhythm of imports well, and prevent concentrated large imports of individual varieties from harming domestic production and bringing adverse effects on farmers' income growth.

⟦NL>     Hold fast to the strategic support point and hold the safety lines for grain self-sufficiency and cultivated land retention. How much of our own grain must be in our rice bowls to count as safe, and what we rely on to ensure enough of our own grain, requires scientific assessment and the drawing of bottom lines. According to the requirements of the national food security strategy, we must quantify “two indicators.” From the perspective of resource conditions, demand structure, and domestic and international experience, first, achieve “basic self-sufficiency in grains,” maintaining the grain self-sufficiency rate above 95%; second, achieve “absolute security of staple food,” with the self-sufficiency rate of paddy rice and wheat basically reaching 100%. These are hard indicators and hard constraints for safeguarding national food security. To draw “two bottom lines” and achieve the self-sufficiency rate targets, stabilizing sown area is the foundation. From the current grain per-unit yield level and the potential of future scientific and technological progress, under the premise of holding the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, we must hold the bottom lines of 1.6 billion mu of grain sown area and 1.4 billion mu of grain crop sown area.

    In short, on the issue of grain we must not forget history or be blindly optimistic, we cannot forget yesterday's experience of hunger just because we are full today, and we cannot fail to see the difficulties and pressure of safeguarding food security in the future just because grain output has increased for consecutive years. The task of ensuring food security remains very arduous.