China able to secure its own food supply

By Luo Shanshan, People's Daily

The State Council Information Office (SCIO) of China issued a white paper titled "Food Security in China" and held a press conference to introduce and explain the white paper on Monday.

70 years on, despite starting from a weak agricultural foundation and extreme poverty, the New China is now basically realized self-sufficiency in food supply through unremitting hard work since it was founded in 1949, said Hu Kaihong, spokesperson of the SCIO.

He added that China now has enough food to feed its nearly 1.4 billion population, and has remarkably improved the people's nutrition and life quality. China's food security is a success of worldwide significance.

The white paper provided convincing evidence of China's food security. Since 2015, China's total food output has surpassed 650 million tons for four consecutive years. Besides, the storage capacity of qualified grain warehouses reached 670 million tons in 2018.

From barely feeding its own people to stepping forward to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, China has not only ensured domestic food security, but also made positive contributions to the global food security.

China is able to secure its own food supply. Its grain production has recorded bumper harvests for 15 consecutive years and this year's grain output is expected to continue to surpass 650 million tons. Over the years, China has been self-sufficient in grain supply and the country now supplies 95 percent of its own needs for grain.

Sufficient food reserves lay down a solid material foundation for maintaining national food security.

As for the grain storage structure of both the central and local government, staple grains such as wheat and rice account for over 70 percent of the total reserves, said Huang Wei, deputy head of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration (NFSRA).

According to him, China has sufficient grain reserves to meet market demand and handle emergency situations.

Apart from secure raw grain storage, emergency food reserves for 10-15 days are available in large and medium-sized cities and areas prone to price fluctuation, Huang said.

China has taken a series of measures to keep farmers motivated, which is of primary importance to ensure food security, said Su Wei, deputy secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission.

The country has rescinded the agricultural tax, reducing the burden on farmers by an average of over 130 billion yuan per year. It has also improved the grain pricing mechanism and the policies to support and protect agriculture, encouraged farmers to develop appropriately scaled agricultural operations and reduced the costs of growing grain.

Besides, China has established professional post-production grain service centers to provide cleaning, drying, storage, processing and marketing services for farmers to meet their demands for grain sales.

Zhang Wufeng, head of the NFSRA, believes that with the steady improvement of China's comprehensive grain production capacity, domestic consumers' needs have shifted from "having enough food" to "having quality food", which brought about an urgent need to develop grain industry.

China has accelerated the construction of a modern grain industry system, with the number of enterprises included in the statistics of the grain industry reaching 23,000 in 2018. The total industrial output value exceeded 3 trillion yuan last year, and 11 provinces had an output value of more than 100 billion yuan.

Guided by the strategies for food security and rural vitalization, China has promoted refined and deep grain processing and the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries to maintain a higher-quality balance between food supply and demand.

As Zhang said, as a primary industry, the grain industry connects production and consumptionand affects various aspects of China's economy.

China will accelerate the innovative development and transformation of the industry, and improve the overall quality and efficiency, competitiveness and social benefits, consolidating the industrial foundation of national food security comprehensively.

Farmers thresh corn in a village of the Yinjiang Tujia and Miao Autonomous County, Tongren, southwest China's Guizhou province on Sept. 13, 2019. Photo by Zuo Yuhua