【Daily Quotes】Always keep food security in mind

Xi Jinping: We must plan ahead, always keep food security in mind, and always adhere to the principles of putting ourselves first, relying on domestic resources, ensuring production capacity, moderate imports, and scientific and technological support.

This passage is from the speech delivered by General Secretary Xi Jinping on March 6, 2022 when he visited members from the agriculture, social welfare and social security sectors attending the Fifth Session of the 13th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.

It is the "three summer" season, which is a critical period for the planting of crops throughout the year. The fertile fields across my country are busy with labor. Henan, Anhui, Shandong and other places are entering the winter wheat harvest period. Agricultural machinery shuttles back and forth in the golden wheat fields, busy harvesting the mature wheat and storing it in warehouses; in rice-producing areas such as Yunnan, Hunan, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang, farmers are actively seizing the farming time to irrigate and plow fields for late rice planting, striving to lay a solid foundation for this year's autumn harvest; in Heilongjiang, the largest grain-producing province in my country, intelligent equipment such as fertilization drones and insect monitoring lights are widely used, making summer management work more accurate and efficient...

When the granaries are full, the country is at peace. Food security is related to the stability of the consumer market, the healthy development of the economy and the long-term stability of the country. Since the new era, the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping as the core has attached great importance to food security and has always regarded solving the food problem of more than 1.4 billion Chinese people as the top priority in governing the country. It has established and implemented the national food security strategy of "taking ourselves as the main body, relying on domestic resources, ensuring production capacity, moderate imports, and scientific and technological support" to continuously improve my country's comprehensive grain production capacity.

Today, with the strict implementation of the farmland protection system, my country's total farmland has achieved net growth in the past three consecutive years, further safeguarding the 1.8 billion mu farmland protection red line. At the same time, all localities have accelerated the comprehensive management of saline-alkali land, selected and bred salt-alkali-tolerant crops while improving the soil, and strived to find more effective ways to improve and utilize saline-alkali land, awakening more "sleeping" farmland resources. For example, in the coastal saline-alkali area of ​​Cangzhou, Hebei, a 2,800-mu saline-alkali land, only 1,400 mu of which could be used for cultivation ten years ago, can now be cultivated after management. 2,300 mu. To stabilize the area, we must also increase the yield. From accelerating the construction of high-standard farmland to continuously cultivating high-quality seeds, from organizing agricultural experts to provide professional training to farmers in the countryside, to promoting the use of intelligent agricultural machinery and equipment, all localities have continued to work hard on good fields, good seeds, good methods, good machines, and good systems, and continuously improve the scientific and technological content, production efficiency and comprehensive production capacity of all fields and links of grain production. In 2023, the national grain output was 1.39 trillion jin, an increase of 17.76 billion jin over the previous year, and has remained stable at more than 1.3 trillion jin for nine consecutive years.

Recently, North China and the Huanghuai region have experienced continuous high temperatures and drought, and Jiangnan and South China have experienced heavy rainfall. The sudden extreme weather is bound to have an adverse impact on agricultural production in various regions. All regions should strengthen monitoring and early warning, actively take emergency measures, help farmers better cope with natural disasters, minimize the impact of disasters on agricultural production, especially grain production, and lay a solid foundation for achieving a bumper grain harvest throughout the year.