Ensuring food security can’t just focus on the main producing areas
Liu Hui
To ensure food security, it is necessary to calculate economic accounts as well as political accounts.
The main producing areas must continue to shoulder the important task of food security, and the main sales areas and production-sales balance areas must also take action. All localities must take the lead in stability, seek progress while maintaining stability, and jointly shoulder the important task of ensuring food security.
To stably develop grain production, it is necessary for farmers to make money from growing grain, and for the main producing areas to have the enthusiasm for grabbing grain. It is necessary to give full play to the role of the market mechanism and the role of the government.
One porridge, one meal is hard to come by.
This year, my country's grain production has increased at a high level, and grain output has stabilized at more than 1.3 trillion catties for seven consecutive years.
While firmly maintaining the "Chinese food and Chinese rice bowl", we must also realize that there is an objective regional imbalance in food supply.
Therefore, to ensure the security of food supply, one should not only focus on the main producing areas. The main sales areas and production-sales balance areas should also shoulder the important task of food security, so that the rice bowls and responsibilities should be carried together.
At present, my country's grain production and marketing still present a basic pattern of "transporting grain from the north to the south".
According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2021, 13 major grain producing areas produced more than 70% of the country’s grain, of which, Heilongjiang, Henan, Shandong, Jilin, Inner Mongolia, Hebei, and Liaoning produced 50% of the country’s grain. The three northeastern provinces and Inner Mongolia produce more than a quarter of the country’s grain.
Among the 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), 27 increased grain production, of which the three northeastern provinces and Inner Mongolia contributed 70.3% to the national grain production increase, which played a role in ensuring the national food security "ballast".
There have been sayings in history that "Su Lake is cooked, the world is sufficient", and "Huguang is cooked, the world is sufficient". The South was once an important base for my country's food supply.
Since the reform and opening up, the industrialization and urbanization of the South have been advancing rapidly, and the national grain production and marketing have realized the transition from "transporting grain from the south to the north" to "transporting grain from the north to the south". Wheat is the main supply base, while the self-sufficiency rate of grain in the main sales areas such as Guangdong, Zhejiang and Fujian is generally low, and the imbalance of grain supply in the region is prominent.
The three provinces and one district of Heilongjiang, Jilin, Liaoning and Inner Mongolia are veritable "China's big granary", shouldering the dual responsibility of ensuring national food security and developing the regional economy.
On the one hand, a large amount of grain is continuously transported from the main producing area in the northeast to the main selling area in the south every year.
Since the beginning of winter this year, due to the impact of the new crown pneumonia epidemic and cold wave weather, the demand for food in the main sales areas in the south has increased, and the transportation department has taken multiple measures to organize the "North-to-south grain transportation" to meet the demand for food in the sales areas.
On the other hand, the main production areas of Northeast China rely on the advantages of grain resources to develop the grain industry economy with high quality. The deep processing of corn, feed breeding and food processing industries have risen rapidly, and the ability of on-site grain processing and transformation has been significantly enhanced.
However, the production and marketing pattern of "transporting grain from the north to the south" has not changed. Heilongjiang still ranks first in the country in terms of commodity volume and export volume, and Jilin's per capita grain export volume ranks first in the country.
To ensure food security, it is necessary to calculate economic accounts as well as political accounts.
The main production areas should continue to shoulder the important task of food security, and the main sales areas and production and sales balance areas should also take action. All localities should take the lead in stability, seek progress while maintaining stability, and jointly shoulder the important task of ensuring food security, focusing on stabilizing policies and areas. Stabilize production and comprehensively enhance the ability to ensure food supply.
We must implement a strict arable land protection system, strictly prevent the "non-agriculturalization" and "non-grainization" of arable land, and continue to maintain a steady and increasing trend of grain sown area.
It is necessary to continue to promote the construction of high-standard farmland, increase the level of scale, intensification, and mechanization of food production, and promote agricultural efficiency and farmers' income.
It is necessary to thoroughly implement the seed industry revitalization action, increase the research and development of grain varieties, and continuously tap the potential for increasing grain production.
It is necessary to improve the level of agricultural equipment, vigorously promote agricultural mechanization and intelligentization, and give the wings of science and technology to agricultural modernization.
To stably develop grain production, we must let farmers make money from growing grain and let the main producing areas have the enthusiasm for grabbing grain.
In this regard, it is necessary to give full play to the role of the market mechanism and to better play the role of the government.
It is necessary to increase support for grain production, gradually establish and improve the benefit compensation mechanism for the main producing areas, strengthen financial rewards and subsidies for major grain-producing counties, and increase the enthusiasm of the main producing areas to focus on grain production.
We must take multiple measures to ensure the reasonable income of farmers growing grain, adhere to the improvement of the minimum purchase price policy, strengthen the subsidy for grain farmers and strengthen the supervision of grain subsidy funds, and fully implement the full cost and income insurance of grain, so that farmers can grow their grain. , To better mobilize the enthusiasm of growing grain.
Nongshensheji, food security the world.
In the current complex situation of international food security, only when we go all-out to do a good job in food production, stabilize the "ballast stone" of food security, and hold our jobs firmly in our own hands, can we be more confident and confident in dealing with various issues. This kind of risk challenge.