Firmly grasp the initiative of food security

The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs recently issued a notice on promoting the recovery of production after floods to achieve a full year of grain and agricultural harvest, requiring all regions to take unconventional measures, implement ten measures for the recovery of agricultural production after disasters, stabilize the production of grain and important agricultural products, and resolutely win the tough battle against disasters to achieve grain and agricultural harvest. Grain is crucial to national development and people's livelihoods, and food security is an important foundation of national security. From the perspective of medium and long-term development trends, China's food security will face severe challenges due to changes in factors such as population, arable land, and water resources. Further optimization and expansion of ways to ensure food security are needed in order to form a higher-level, higher quality, more efficient, and more sustainable national food security guarantee system.

Increasing grain production is the fundamental way to ensure food security, but increasing grain production should not overutilize or overdraw agricultural resources such as arable land and water resources. We should combine the agricultural wisdom, ecological ideas, and other elements contained in traditional agricultural culture with modern information technology to develop resource-saving and environmentally friendly agriculture such as ecological agriculture and precision agriculture, in order to achieve the dual goals of increasing grain production and sustainable agricultural development. We also need to develop the ecological industry to assist grain production entities that adopt sustainable intensive agricultural technologies to obtain higher returns, in order to stimulate their intrinsic motivation for long-term sustainable grain production. By managing the relationship between short-term and long-term, production and ecology in the food system, a solid foundation is laid to ensure food security.

Affected by production conditions, technological level, and consumer awareness, China's grain loss and waste exist to varying degrees in various links such as production, storage, transportation, processing, and consumption. Carrying out grain conservation and loss reduction actions from the entire chain and multiple links of production, storage, transportation, processing, and consumption is equivalent to increasing "intangible fertile land". It not only increases food supply, but also saves land, water, fertilizer, and medicine, promoting sustainable agricultural development.

According to the 2023 report on the development of China's agricultural industry, by 2035, if the loss rates of grain harvesting, storage, processing, and consumption in China are reduced by 1 to 3 percentage points respectively, and the loss rates of the three major staple foods are reduced by 40%, it can reduce the loss of the three major staple foods by about 110 billion kilograms, which is equivalent to a 100 billion kilogram increase in grain production action. Promoting grain conservation and loss reduction in all links of the grain industry chain helps to stabilize production and supply, and is the most practical, feasible, and economically reasonable way to ensure food security. At present, China has achieved significant results in grain conservation and loss reduction, but further improvement is needed in the system, standard system, monitoring system, and long-term governance mechanism of grain conservation and loss reduction. Measures for grain conservation and loss reduction in all links of the grain industry chain need to be further strengthened, implemented, and refined.

Establishing a national food security industry belt is another important way to ensure food security. Due to the typical public goods attributes of food security, for a long time, it has been mainly ensured by a series of policies such as agricultural subsidies, minimum purchase prices, and rewards for grain producing counties adopted by the government. However, relying solely on government leadership and investment at all levels can also lead to problems and shortcomings, such as structural contradictions such as oversupply of low-end products and insufficient supply of high-quality products. In the trend of continuously rising grain production costs, relying solely on financial support to protect farmers' enthusiasm for grain cultivation has limited space and weak effects. We still need to fully leverage the role of the market, reduce the cost of ensuring food security, and improve the efficiency of ensuring food security. Building a national food security industry belt can promote a reasonable division of labor and complementary advantages between the government and the market in food security, and achieve overall coordination of strategic requirements for enhancing food security capabilities and fully leveraging market regulation and allocation functions.

The construction of the national food security industry belt is carried out under the planning, guidance, and support of the government, with a focus on the main production areas with concentrated grain producing counties and good agricultural production conditions. It is based on the production and supply of rice, wheat, corn, and other crops, which helps to further enhance the comprehensive grain production capacity. The national food security industry belt takes the construction of a modern food industry system that integrates and coordinates the development of the food industry chain, value chain, and supply chain as its core. It can transform the advantages of food resources into economic development advantages, thereby further mobilizing the enthusiasm of farmers to grow grain and local governments to seize grain. Strengthen top-level design, increase policy support, consolidate the foundation of industrial development, accelerate the construction of a national food security industrial belt with stable production foundation, perfect industrial chain, cluster integration, green, high-quality and efficient, and provide key support for ensuring food security.