What major problems is the development of China's high-quality wheat industry facing?
Although China is a major wheat-producing country in the world, it is not a strong one. Not only is it very difficult for China's wheat to be exported, but more than 2 million tons of high-quality wheat are imported every year. Why import so much? Can't we produce it ourselves? Where do the underlying problems lie?
In recent years I have attended quite a few forums large and small related to the wheat industry, and have gained first-hand understanding of the current state of development and the existing problems of China's wheat industry. How can these problems be better solved? Here I record some of my thoughts.
Wheat is China's most important staple grain. With the improvement of people's living standards and changes in dietary habits, such as the growing proportion of household kitchens being outsourced, the proportion of processed foods consumed in China has been rising, and the amount of bread and pastries consumed has also increased sharply. In response to this trend, China's wheat production should move beyond the current initial stage that focuses only on yield and not on quality, and take big strides toward the moderately prosperous living standard of pursuing quality and brands. The wheat industry chain must strengthen cooperation among breeding, introduction of varieties, farmers, cooperatives, production bases and processing enterprises. Of course, it is also possible to enhance the overall competitiveness of China's wheat industry through the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, so as to meet the ever-growing demand of real society for quality, health and safety.
1. What are the main problems currently existing in China's wheat industry? There is a gap of more than 2 million tons of high-quality wheat.
Wheat should be the most important staple grain for people in northern China, and it is extremely important for China's food security. The staple food of people in northern China is flour-based food, while the staple food of people in the south is rice, and wheat is the main source of flour-based food. China is the world's largest wheat-producing country. In recent years, China's wheat output has grown at a rate of more than 2.5 million tons per year over the past 5 years, reaching 130 million tons in 2015, making it a major wheat-producing country in the world. The largest wheat-growing areas in China are 11 provinces including Henan and Shandong, accounting for about 90% of the country's total wheat area. From the perspective of supply and demand, China's total wheat output and consumption are basically balanced, or even slightly in surplus. Although China is a major wheat country, it is not a strong one. The world's top exporters are countries such as Canada, Australia, the United States and Russia. Among flour-based products, pasta from Italy enjoys a world-renowned reputation, while bread from France has enormous influence. Although some of China's flour-based products have gone abroad in the form of Chinese restaurants, Chinese cuisine is still better known. Recently, Chongqing xiaomian has gained some fame abroad, but overall it is still insignificant. From the perspective of imports and exports, China's wheat is not only rarely exported, but in recent years quite a lot has actually been imported. In particular, the gap in wheat raw materials for emerging flour-based food industries such as bread and pastries is very large, with imports reaching 2 million tons per year. Therefore, China's current wheat production still cannot meet the rapidly growing demand of the processing industry and consumers, and there is still huge room for improvement in varieties, quality and brands.
A little knowledge about wheat: China's food industry output value is about 11 trillion yuan in total, and convenience foods made from wheat account for an important proportion. As a staple grain, the main processed products of wheat include steamed buns, noodles, bread, cakes, biscuits and so on. Different wheat products have different requirements for wheat quality. Wheat can be divided into strong-gluten, medium-gluten and weak-gluten types, mainly judged by grain, protein content, wet gluten content, dough stability time and so on. Strong-gluten wheat has strong gluten strength and a long dough stability time, making it suitable for bread and noodles; medium-gluten wheat has moderate gluten strength and good extensibility, making it suitable for noodles and steamed buns; weak-gluten wheat has low protein content and a short dough stability time, making it suitable for crispy foods such as biscuits and pastries.
2. The source of high-quality wheat: the long-term pursuit of maximum yield has led to few high-quality wheat varieties, and the contradiction between breeding for superior quality and increasing yield is prominent.
For a long time, China's wheat industry has mainly focused on pursuing increased yield. Ordinary wheat is mostly used to make noodles, and medium-gluten wheat accounts for a very large proportion, resulting in the phenomenon that "strong gluten is not strong, weak gluten is not weak", or in other words, what should be strong is not strong enough, and what should be weak is not weak enough. The development of China's strong-gluten wheat and weak-gluten wheat has been relatively slow, while in recent years domestic demand for strong-gluten and weak-gluten wheat has grown very rapidly, leading to continuously increasing imports. The reason for the increase is the rapid growth in demand for bread and pastries. The younger generation of consumers, influenced by Western lifestyles, eat fewer and fewer steamed buns, while the number of those eating bread and pastries rises very quickly.
3. Problems farmers face in growing high-quality wheat: the traditional industry chain cannot solve the problem of high-quality wheat production.
For a long time, China has established a system for the production, supply and marketing of wheat, that is, farm households grow wheat, it is purchased by intermediaries, and then it is purchased by the reserve system or processing enterprises. This system is suitable for the demand for ordinary flour-based foods, but for new markets such as strong-gluten and weak-gluten wheat it faces the problem of market failure. Farmers also do not dare to plant it lightly, because after planting, high quality does not necessarily bring a high price, and high-quality wheat generally has low and unstable yields, with a lack of relevant cultivation technology guidance. As a result, high-quality wheat is not only hard to sell at a high price, but may even fail to sell at all because of poor variety stability and the possibility of unexpected risks. If farmers grow traditional wheat, they can at least sell it into the national grain reserve system, and of course there are also many intermediaries to help. However, China has not yet established a purchasing and storage system for high-quality wheat. The solution, of course, is to establish a graded purchasing and storage system for wheat as soon as possible and to establish quality indicators for different grades. At present, processing enterprises with demand also find it very difficult to buy wheat that meets their requirements from the current reserve system, so they can only either import or build their own bases. Another approach is to establish planting bases for high-quality strong-gluten wheat, but such regionalized planting bases may, because large-scale planting is not sufficient, find it difficult to obtain a high order rate.
4. The wheat industry chain urgently needs integration and reshaping
The wheat industry chain is a whole process from production, storage and transportation, processing to sales and consumption. If high-quality strong-gluten and weak-gluten wheat are to develop rapidly, then integration of the industry chain before, during and after production must be strengthened in order to avoid risks and obtain profits. In other words, all parties in the industry need stable cooperation to avoid market risks. However, China's current company plus farmer model has long found it difficult to carry out effective cooperation. Each farmer has less than ten mu of land, so the scale is limited, and it is very difficult for a company to deal with thousands or even more farmers. The default rate of the company plus farmer model has long remained high, becoming a chronic problem. That is, when the market price is high, farmers will break the contract; when the market price is low, enterprises will also use various tricks to refuse to purchase farmers' products. This pattern makes the contracts originally signed between companies and farmers become a mere scrap of paper. Companies face so many farmers that it is difficult to sue, while farmers, when facing a company several times their size breaking the contract, also find it very difficult to pursue accountability. The solution may require the intervention of local governments, by linking both ends and enabling both supply and demand sides to establish closer ties, so as to avoid the risk of contract default caused by market instability. Based on the above problems, China must achieve upstream and downstream connectivity in the wheat industry chain and improve the degree of industrialization in every link of planting, circulation and processing. It is necessary to promote the alignment of production and sales, order-based purchasing and so on to realize the regional layout of China's high-quality wheat production; it is possible to use townships or villages as units to implement one village one product, one township one industry, or even one county one industry to build high-quality wheat production bases, promote supporting production technologies for high-quality specialty wheat, achieve unified varieties, unified cultivation measures and unified purchasing and storage, and improve the organization and industrialization of every link of agricultural planting, circulation, processing and sales. Through large-scale planting, standardized production and industrialized development of specialty wheat, we can meet the needs of the market.
5. Practices in various places: build a community of interests in the wheat industry; to make truly good products, we must start from the farmland.
Yanjin in Henan has been exploring a high-quality wheat production model. At present, high-quality wheat planting has reached 500,000 mu. On May 17, 2016, the China High-Quality Wheat Industry Technology Innovation Alliance was also grandly established in Yanjin County. The main purpose of the alliance is to promote the upgrading of "high-quality" wheat. Yanjin County also established the Xinxiang Wheat Industry Group, forming a "wild goose formation" development layout with wheat as the "leading goose" and with two industry chains, "flour - noodles - dim sum - quick-frozen food" and "baijiu - packaging - printing - logistics", as the two wings. It has become the core production and processing area of Xinxiang wheat, and has also blazed a new path for China's high-quality wheat production.
Processing-demand enterprises have not been idle either. Jinmailang Group launched the "Jinmailang High-Quality Wheat Project" in 2005, developing more than 10,000 mu of "Jinmailang Agricultural Demonstration Park" in places such as the Heilonggang River basin in Longyao, Hebei, and has now promoted it to one million mu. Fan Xianguo, chairman of Jinmailang Group, said: "We develop high-quality wheat, which has increased farmers' incomes, and we have proposed that 'the first workshop is in the farmland.' To make truly good products, we must start from the farmland."
The biggest difficulty for China's high-quality wheat still lies in breeding. How to reform the breeding system so that more wheat with high quality but low yield can be cultivated, and change the past pattern of single-mindedly pursuing yield, still requires a long road ahead.