If no one farms in the future, can we rely entirely on imports for food? The experts make a pretty sound point
Autumn is the season when various crops ripen one after another. Recently, in the farmland across southern Henan, you can see farmers busy cutting rice. However, the faces of those busy with the harvest rarely show the smiles and joy of a bumper crop, and old Li in particular looks deeply worried.
After a conversation with him, I discovered his inner worry: in recent years, grain prices have remained persistently low, and the rice he grows through a year of hard work earns less than two hundred yuan per mu. He himself is already close to sixty, and given his physical strength and workload, he does not know how many more years he can keep going in the fields.
Old Li's words reflect a reality in today's China: fewer and fewer people farm the land in rural areas. To earn more income, the young rural labor force has flocked to the cities to make a living, resulting in a widespread shortage of labor for farmland cultivation across the country. According to statistics, in some rural areas in the central and western regions, 80% of farmers are elderly people aged 50 to 70. They neither understand modern agricultural technology nor have the strength to farm due to their advanced age, causing most of the rural land to be left abandoned.
At present, the number of people employed in agriculture in China is declining, and the pattern of a lack of successors in agricultural production is gradually intensifying. This situation has led to problems in China's food security: as rural population aging becomes more and more serious, if no one farms the land in China in the future, who will guarantee our country's food supply? Can China rely entirely on imports from abroad for its food? On this, experts offer the opinion that the approach of importing all food from abroad is not advisable.
It is often said that food is the first necessity of the people, and food security is a major matter concerning the national economy and people's livelihood. As a large country with a population of 1.4 billion, China's annual grain consumption for the whole nation, plus all kinds of grain used for feed and for grain and oil processing, is an enormous figure. Although China already depends partly on imports from abroad for soybeans and other crops, because China's total food demand is too large, the idea of filling our country's food gap entirely with imports is unrealistic.
On the other hand, for grain imported from abroad, prices are set entirely by the international grain market, and China does not hold the international pricing power for them. Therefore, it must passively bear the risks of international market speculation, thus losing the initiative in transactions. If China blindly relies on imported grain, international grain prices will also gradually rise under the stimulus of China's huge demand, and China can only be forced to pay for high-priced grain. Once it encounters a grain monopoly by foreign companies, it will even directly endanger our country's food security.
From this it can be seen that the rice bowl of the Chinese people must be firmly held in our own hands. As a major agricultural country, China absolutely must not slacken in agricultural production. Yet nowadays fewer and fewer people farm the land in rural areas, and large amounts of farmland are abandoned. Situations like this are truly not optimistic. Under such circumstances, only developing large-scale modern agriculture is a good way out. Only by devoting efforts to realizing agricultural mechanization and cultivating and developing more professional agricultural technical talent can China ensure that its food security is not threatened. What other views and suggestions do you have on this? You are welcome to leave a message and share them with us.
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