Ensure the Stable and Secure Supply of Food and Critical Agricultural Products

Ensure the Stable and Secure Supply of Food and Critical Agricultural Products*

December 23, 2022

To be a nation with a strong agriculture, we must first of all be able to guarantee the supply of food and critical agricultural products. For years, we in China have secured our own food supply, providing food in sufficient volumes and quality to more than 1.4 billion people. Now, as inelastic demand for food is increasing, our efforts to maintain the food supply are under great pressure. We must take holistic measures to consolidate our food security. We should strengthen our material foundations by improving farmland management and promoting the development and application of technology. We should also provide institutional safeguards to increase production capacity, optimize structures, strengthen resilience, guarantee economic returns, and ensure that all parties assume their responsibilities.

Increasing production capacity remains our primary task. Grain production in China has remained above 650 million tonnes for eight consecutive years, but the higher it rises, the more difficult it becomes to achieve further growth. We need to launch a new round of initiatives to increase production capacity by 50 million tonnes, formulating work plans and assigning relevant tasks. In increasing production capacity, farmland and seeds are two vital factors. We must ensure China’s total area of farmland stays above the red line of 120 million hectares, firmly block any attempt to use cropland for any purpose other than agriculture, and adopt effective measures to prevent planting of non-grain crops on farmland designated for grain. In line with the general principle of reserving productive farmland for growing grain, fertile farmland should prioritize grain crops, while fruit trees and saplings should be grown on hillsides to the greatest extent possible. In producing vegetables and garden plants, we should rely more on protected agriculture and plant factories. Preventing non-grain production on grain cropland demands policy support and requires us to balance grain production against the need to supply other critical agricultural products and increase farmers’ incomes. This means that we should allow for transition periods and strengthen policy guidance. In addition, we should progressively upgrade all permanent basic cropland into high-standard cropland by working out practical measures as soon as possible, providing necessary funds, taking action to secure cropland quality, and putting in place management and maintenance mechanisms. We must maintain firm control over major seed varieties by identifying areas for breakthroughs and making sustained and concerted efforts to ensure that the seed industry revitalization initiative delivers solid outcomes. Bio-breeding is a major trend, and we should accelerate the industrialization of this field.

To safeguard food security, we must remain vigilant in normal circumstances, while strengthening our emergency supply capacity by systematically identifying potential risks in grain production, processing, circulation, storage, and trade.

Grain production can only be guaranteed if it is profitable for farmers. We must set up sound mechanisms to protect grain farmers’ profits, improve the integrated policy system for prices, subsidies, and insurance, and refine the mechanisms for ensuring the provision of agricultural production materials at stable prices. This will stabilize farmers’ expectations and reduce production risks. We must develop new ways of running grain production operations and extend the industrial chain to reduce costs and increase returns. We must introduce effective measures to improve compensation mechanisms for major grain-producing areas and open up multiple channels for grain-purchasing areas to compensate producing areas. We must safeguard grain farmers’ profits and ensure that major grain-producing counties are properly compensated.

To maintain food security, we must both increase production and reduce loss. At present, there are unnecessary losses in food collection, storage, transport, processing, sales, and consumption, and the problems are severe. According to assessments by relevant institutions, about 460 million tonnes of food is lost and wasted in China every year, accounting for 22.7 percent of the total food production. If we could reduce our loss by half, that would be enough to feed 190 million people per year. There is much to do regarding food consumption. In addition to preventing waste and carrying on with the Clear Your Plate campaign, we should promote a healthy diet. Per capita consumption of edible oils in China is double the amount recommended in dietary guidelines, and red meat is triple. Saving food and reducing loss can mitigate supply pressure and cut down resource consumption, which is of great benefit. We should foster a mindset in which saving food and reducing loss equals increasing output, and encourage this throughout the entire process from production to consumption. To this end, we need to establish regular and long-term working mechanisms, introduce targeted measures in each area, and focus efforts where loss and waste are most severe. We should continue to work even harder, carry out initiatives to save food, impose mandatory restrictions, and attend to the smallest details to deliver the most successful outcomes as quickly as possible.

To ensure the food supply, we should look beyond our limited farmland and adopt an all-encompassing approach to food. In addition to grain, our diet includes things like meat, eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables, fish, mushrooms, and bamboo shoots. All of these can be turned into delicacies. Beyond our farmland, we have more than 266 million hectares of woodland, nearly 266 million hectares of grassland, and numerous water resources in our rivers, lakes, and seas. This enables us to diversify our food supply. While ensuring eco-environmental conservation, our sources of food should be expanded beyond farmland to the entirety of our territory to make use not only of traditional crops, livestock, and poultry but also all of our rich biological resources. We should explore multiple channels to acquire food from forests, grasslands, rivers, lakes, and seas, and harness energy and protein from plants, animals, and microorganisms. Protected agriculture is very promising. To expand space for agricultural production, we should promote solar greenhouses, plant factories, and intensive animal farming, as well as land-based, deep-sea, and open-sea aquaculture.

While ensuring food security, we must also maintain a stable and secure supply of other critical agricultural products, with particular attention paid to soybeans and other oilseeds as well as hogs and vegetables. All this work has already been planned; the key is to ensure that it is fully and faithfully implemented.

Party committees and governments at all levels must shoulder their responsibility to ensure food security, an issue of vital importance to the country. Whether local officials are competent and qualified will not be assessed solely by GDP growth or their performance in managing projects. More importantly, they must act in line with the requirements of the Party Central Committee, fully, accurately and faithfully apply the new development philosophy, subordinate the interests of their localities to those of the whole, and successfully accomplish the major tasks assigned by the Central Committee, such as ensuring food security. We are clear in holding both Party committees and governments responsible for food security. The key now is to carry out strict evaluations and oversight to ensure that every locality genuinely shoulders its responsibilities.

* Part of the speech at the Central Conference on Rural Work.

(Not to be republished for any commercial or other purposes.)