Chinese Communist Party Premier Li Keqiang said at an executive meeting of the State Council on Thursday (May 6), “Ensuring food security is a matter of national security and development, and is the primary task of promoting the modernization of agriculture and rural areas.”
Li Keqiang said that China’s bumper grain harvest for consecutive years, basic self-sufficiency in cereals and absolute security of food rations have provided solid support for effective response to the impact of CCP pneumonia, etc. Winter wheat area to achieve the first increase in nearly four years, the summer grain is expected to be another bumper crop.
Li Keqiang stressed the need to grasp the grain production stability and abundance, stable minimum purchase price of rice and wheat, corn and soybean producers of subsidies, so that farmers grow food money to earn. At the same time do a good job of grain acquisition, reserves and market regulation, to ensure supply and price stability. In addition, to strengthen the protection of arable land and quality construction, resolutely curb the “non-agricultural” arable land, strictly adhere to the 1.8 billion mu of arable land red line.
China is the world’s most populous country, with about 1.4 billion people. Ren Zeping, former director of the China Evergrande Institute of Economic Research, pointed out in a 2019 article, “Are China’s land resources scarce? pointed out in an article that China’s arable land per capita is about one-half of the world average, supporting 18.4 percent of its population with 9.3 percent of the world’s arable land.
U.S.-based economist He Qinglian wrote last August that China has a long-standing food deficit problem. China’s food self-sufficiency rate is about 82.3 percent, and the food gap is 17.7 percent. China does not meet the UN FAO’s food security standard of 90 percent self-sufficiency.
Although China does not currently have a grain supply gap (by importing large amounts of grain to make up for the domestic grain production gap), China has a long-standing grain gap problem. 2021, for the first time, China’s top leadership has included grain production in its macroeconomic control targets, requiring production to remain above 1.3 trillion jins.
However, the CCP has said in all years that grain production has been abundant and bountiful, and even when many provinces were hit by floods last year, a bumper crop of grain was declared as usual. Chinese people have become concerned about food security after Communist Party General Secretary Xi Jinping called for a “halt to food waste. In the Chinese political context, it is generally believed that if the leader emphasizes an issue, then “something must be wrong with the issue being emphasized.
On April 20 this year, Liu Lihua, deputy director of the Department of Plantation Industry of China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said at a press conference that to achieve the target tasks of grain production this year, it is necessary to stabilize the area, improve yields and reduce losses. She said that although the cultivated area as a binding target has been issued for implementation, but this year’s meteorological year is not optimistic, drought and flood, extreme cold, extreme heat and other extreme weather may be more frequent, and major pests and diseases are also showing a heavy trend.
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