Will the state of grain trade deficit change?

As early as 2006, Cheng Guoqiang, currently secretary general of the academic Committee of the Development Research Center of the State Council and director of the Bureau of International Cooperation, said at an international seminar on globalization and rural development strategies: "since 2005, the transition period for China's agriculture in the WTO accession negotiations has basically ended, and China has become one of the countries with the most open agricultural products markets in the world."

Since China's entry into WTO, the grain trade deficit has been the norm. Data provided by the China Business Intelligence Network show that in the first two months of 2015, China imported 11.138 million tons of soybeans, imported 32.52 billion yuan, 5.025 million tons of oil products, and imported 14.82 billion yuan. Compared with 2005, soybean imports quadrupled.

With the full end of the "protection period", will the state of grain trade deficit change?

The international competitiveness of China's grain production is still insufficient.

The comprehensive end of the "transition period" means that China's agriculture has entered a new stage of opening up to the outside world and will be further integrated into the process of economic globalization. At the same time, the pressure of international competition facing China's agriculture will be enhanced in an all-round way. In particular, the situation that it is difficult to compete between China's small-scale decentralized traditional agriculture and foreign large-scale modern agriculture will not be fundamentally changed in a long period of time.

China's land fragmentation management is serious, land transfer is only 380 million mu, accounting for 28.8% of the total area of cultivated land, most of the cultivated land is still in the hands of individuals. A large amount of arable land in rural areas is still cultivated by individual farmers.

Huang Ji, director of the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, said in an interview with the media that the real wage of Chinese labor force has increased at an average annual rate of about 8 per cent since 2008, and the rent of cultivated land has increased by 51 per cent and 70 per cent respectively in the northeast and north China between 2005 and 2013.

Huang Jixing also believes that the change in the cost of material (tradable goods) is global, but the change in the cost of labor and land (non-tradable goods) is within the country and is a significant factor affecting the competitiveness of agricultural products in the international market. The loss of China's agricultural comparative advantage is not phased.

Due to the complexity of various interests and the difficulty of negotiation, it is difficult to establish new rules and order of international agricultural trade. For quite a long time in the future, China's grain exports will face an extremely complex international competitive environment.

Large imports of grain are needed to ensure the strategic bottom line.

Recently, there has been a "simultaneous increase in three quantities" of grain in China, that is, production, imports and stocks are all at an all-time high.

A large number of grain imports are constrained by the shortage of arable land and water resources in China, which is also the need to ensure the bottom line of agricultural development strategy.

Taking soybean as an example, according to the current technical conditions and per unit yield level of soybean (113kg per mu), if 26.59 million tons of soybean are produced in China, it will take up 234 million mu of cultivated land (equivalent to adding 4 sown areas of soybean in Heilongjiang). If you import 26.59 million tons of soybeans, it is equivalent to "farming" 234 million mu of arable land abroad. Importing 2.57 million tons of cotton is equivalent to cultivating 34.24 million mu of arable land abroad (equivalent to increasing the cotton planting area of two more cotton areas in Xinjiang). If we want to achieve self-sufficiency in soybeans and cotton, we have to give up the production of 270 million mu of grain and other agricultural products. Equivalent to reducing grain production by 166.3 billion jin. If this is the case, it will shake China's food security based on domestic production and solving the problem of self-sufficiency in grain.

The cost of grain production is relatively high, and the operation scale of our agriculture and farmers is relatively small. In recent years, the price of agricultural means of production, labor price and land price have all risen rapidly, the operation scale of farmers has not been expanded accordingly, and the disadvantage of price is obvious.

In addition, the state continues to raise the minimum purchase price of grain or the price of retail reserves, which makes the price of grain in our country quite different from that in the international market.

Among the internationally recognized food security, the most important thing is food rations security. In the face of the increase in grain production and stocks, Ren Zhengxiao, director of the State Grain Administration, said during the "two sessions,"this is a pleasant burden." What we look forward to most is a bumper grain harvest every year, and an increase in the amount of purchase will also be good for farmers to sell grain and increase production and income. of course, the higher the inventory, the better, but'if you have grain in hand, don't panic, 'and the warehouse is full. the country's food security will be guaranteed. "

The increasing trend of grain imports has basically been determined.

From 2006 to the present, the RMB has appreciated by 25% against the US dollar, making imported grain much cheaper; the fall in energy prices has also led to lower grain freight and lower cost of imported grain; and international food prices have also fallen because of the strong dollar.

At present, under the situation that the price of domestic grain is much higher than the international price, no matter from the pressure of low prices in the international market or the upper limit of WTO subsidies promised by China, China has no room to subsidize farmers by continuing to raise prices.

It is unrealistic for farmers to guarantee their income by producing grain. With the rise in production costs, the net profit of agricultural production is declining in an all-round way, and wheat even has a negative profit. At present, the income of most rural families in rural areas mainly comes from some sideline and operating income.

A 2012 survey by the Hunan Provincial Grain Bureau showed that the benefits of planting cucumber, pepper and lotus root from 2005 to 2012 were 3.1 times, 2.5 times and 3.9 times that of double-cropping rice, respectively.

In addition, a large amount of grain imports also play a positive role in the ecological environment of our country. China's grain production depends on a lot of costs and pesticides. Studies have shown that during the 10-year period from 2002 to 2012, the use of nitrogen fertilizer (nitrogen content) increased from 28.93 million tons to 44.98 million tons, an increase of 50%, which is five times the world average.

Large-scale use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will cause air pollution and water pollution. One of the important reasons for the formation of haze is ammonia pollution. In the North China Plain, over-extraction of groundwater irrigation is one of the important reasons for the continuous expansion of groundwater funnel. Groundwater consumption for agriculture in this area accounts for more than 80% of total groundwater consumption.

In an ecological sense, importing grain means importing water resources and land. For a country where per capita water resources and cultivated land resources are very scarce, it is of great significance to improve the ecological environment.