To eat old grain is to contribute to food security.

Recently, the media has been hyping Jilin National Grain Depot to store old grain as new grain and obtain state subsidies.

In China, the grain problem is of great importance, and it is easy to arouse public anger to play tricks on grain. Therefore, when the report came out, the people were seething with resentment. Rats crossed the street and everyone shouted.

The crux of this incident lies in the new grain and the old grain. The so-called new grain refers to the grain of the most recent production year. For now, that is, the food produced in 2014, the food produced in 2015 has not yet been produced, and there is no food newer than that produced in 2014. The so-called old grain refers to the grain produced annually before 2014. Normally, the price of new grain is more expensive than old grain, because old grain has a longer storage time and its quality is generally lower. In fact, it is not the state subsidy, but the price difference, that Chen grain is impersonated as new grain.

However, in terms of food security, there has been little damage. After all, this was not an empty warehouse. So much grain was still there, but it was just a little older. When many readers hear Chen Liang, they are easy to equate with aged grain. This is wrong. The aged grain has been corrupted and cannot meet the edible requirements. All indexes of Chen grain still meet the edible requirements. Moreover, strictly speaking, it is impossible to distinguish the quality of grain only from new grain and old grain. If the storage conditions are good, such as low-temperature cold storage, the grain may be fresh for several years. On the contrary, newly listed grain, if not properly kept, may go mouldy and deteriorate in a few days.

The ultimate purpose of grain reserves is to eat, fundamentally speaking, should not ask whether old grain or new grain, but to establish an edible standard. If they could meet the edible standards, they could store and store food, even if it was food from a few years ago. Why does the state not emphasize the quality of food but the freshness of food? There's a reason for that. The new grain comes from farmers, and the grain depot only receives new grain, which can ensure that farmers 'grain sells at a good price. This is the minimum grain purchase price policy to be implemented in the next ten years. Every year new grain is listed, and the state's bid (the lowest purchase price of grain) is much higher than the market price. In this way, the new grain every year is basically monopolized by the state. The state cannot only import but not export. New grain will be stored for a period of time and sold to the market sooner or later. At this time, the sales price is basically market-oriented. That is to say, we have to follow the market pricing. If we sell too high, the market will not accept it, and we will not sell it.

In this way, China's grain market is actually divided: a new grain market and an old grain market; the price of the former is determined by the state and has a strong policy tendency, while the price of the latter reflects the real demand. The price of the former is much higher than that of the latter, but the quality of the former is not much higher than that of the latter. In fact, the difference is not much. Since the quality difference was not big, but the price difference was huge, some granaries had the incentive to buy old grain as new grain, which could not be detected by laboratory inspection anyway. Once this arbitrage behavior is carried out on a large scale, the two separate markets will tend to unify, which means that grain prices will fall and the policy of supporting the market at high prices will fail, which the government does not want to see.

Why are most of the grain depot incidents reported in recent years in Northeast China? This is not accidental, because in recent years the northeast grain production has been so high that the market cannot digest it, and most of it has been forced into the national grain reserve. Such a large number of temporary acquisitions by the state involve a large amount of funds and interests, and it is only natural that accidents will occur easily.

In the granaries of Northeast China now, the grain harvested six or seven years ago is still lying in the warehouses. Northeast China has the highest ratio of rice to grain. So if you don't want to eat too old rice, it's best to avoid northeast rice. Of course, given that China has the highest proportion of grain reserves in the world, the proportion of Chinese people eating old rice is also the highest in the world. No way, who told us to store so much food for food security? Eating old grain every day is also contributing to food security.