The demand for the cancellation of temporary storage has become louder and louder as the import of summer grain has soared.

While the domestic summer grain has had a bumper harvest for 12 consecutive years, on the other hand, there has been a substantial increase in grain imports.

According to data released by the General Administration of Customs, from January to June this year, grain imports totaled 16.293 million tons, an increase of 66.5 percent over the same period last year, of which net imports were 16.05 million tons, an increase of 68.3 percent over the same period last year.

In specific categories, in addition to the decline in wheat imports, imports of corn, rice, barley and sorghum all increased significantly, especially sorghum imports increased 1.6 times year-on-year.

"the surge in sorghum imports is partly due to the fact that there are no import quotas for sorghum, while corn and wheat are subject to quota restrictions." Zhang Zhixian, director of information research at China Grain Network, told China Business Daily that "due to restrictions on corn quotas, there is a large price gap at home and abroad, and imports have soared because sorghum can replace corn."

According to the USDA, China imported 9 million tons of sorghum in 2015, an increase of more than 3 million tons compared with 5.78 million tons in 2014.

"in order to maintain the bottom line of grain security that can be sold by growing grain and bought by food, the state has been collecting and storing at a price for a long time, and now it has gradually liberalized the collection and storage policy to allow the prices of agricultural products to return to the market, which may have stimulated a surge in imports of some agricultural products." Said a grain system official in a northwestern province.

The implementation of the quota system is intended to stabilize the impact of corn import "price upside down" on domestic corn producers, but it has led to a surge in sorghum imports.

This "press the gourd to float the ladle" situation, to some extent, let the price collection and deposit policy to an awkward crossroads.

Behind the surge in imports

"behind the surge in imports, we carefully analyze the import data of agricultural products and find that imports of some agricultural products have continued to increase this year, but imports of wheat and corn have always been stable. This is mainly based on China's quota restrictions on the import of wheat and corn, and most of these quotas are in the hands of state-owned enterprises. " Zhang Zhixian said.

In fact, this situation has been on the horizon since 2014. Under the management of the quota system, imports of wheat, rice and corn totaled 8.184 million tons, down 26.1 percent from the same period last year, but in the same period, barley imports were 5.413 million tons, an increase of 131.8 percent over the same period last year, and sorghum imports were 5.776 million tons, 4.4 times higher than the same period last year.

After the import quota system restrictions on wheat, rice and corn were implemented in 2014, the contradiction of high domestic grain inventory and periodic supply pressure was alleviated to a certain extent.

"however, because the price of corn is relatively high in the domestic market, and because there is no quota in the world, most feed enterprises prefer to import sorghum and barley without quota restrictions in order to save costs. Sorghum and barley are used as feed sources." Zhang Zhixian said.

Since the start of temporary corn collection and storage, the collection and storage price has shown a steady upward trend, rising from about 1500 yuan / ton in 2008 to more than 2200 yuan / ton in 2014. At present, the international corn price in Hong Kong is about 1600 yuan / ton, while the domestic corn price is as high as 2480 yuan / ton.

"as a result of the collection and storage policy, there is no market price for domestic agricultural products, only set by the government, so the prices of wheat, corn or sorghum are almost mostly related to the policies promulgated by the government." An agricultural analyst told reporters.

According to statistics from the China Corn Network, the cost of planting corn by farmers in northeast China in 2015 was more than 10000 yuan per hectare, a sharp increase of 1,000,2000 yuan per hectare compared with the same period last year. Under the pressure of rising grain costs year by year, the biggest supporting force for farmers still determined to grow corn is the government's purchase to support the market.

But against the backdrop of upside-down prices, the consequence of high corn production is high inventories. The state acquired more than 3000 million tons of temporary reserves in 2012, more than 7000 million tons in 2013, and more than 8000 million tons in 2014. It is estimated in the industry that the stock of corn in China is currently more than 100 million tons, while the total annual output of corn is only 200 million tons.

In this situation, there are more and more calls to abolish the temporary collection and deposit policy.

A recent obvious signal comes from the "Summary of the reply to recommendation 1480 of the third session of the 12th National people's Congress" (hereinafter referred to as the "reply summary") released by the Ministry of Agriculture a few days ago. It is stated that for varieties with large demand elasticity, long industrial chain and high correlation between domestic and foreign markets, such as corn, soybean, cotton and rapeseed, attention should be paid to giving full play to the decisive role of the market in forming prices. guide production and adjust supply and demand through market price signals to promote the sustained and healthy development of the industry.

As a result, the market expects that China's corn collection and storage policy will continue, but the scale of government reserves will gradually shrink, and the government's minimum purchase price will also fall.

"at present, China is already adjusting the collection and storage policy, has cancelled the collection and storage of cotton and soybeans, and carried out the pilot reform of target price subsidies at the same time, and corn may also abolish the collection and storage policy in the near future." Ma Wenfeng, an analyst of Beijing Oriental Iger Agricultural Information, said.