Analysis of Food Security and supply and demand in China basic balance between supply and demand

The total net imports of the three staple grains last year were about 19 million tons, and the total in the first seven months of this year has also reached 11.439 million tons. Not only that, after corn entered the "first year of full import" in 2011, China is expected to overtake Egypt to become the world's largest importer of wheat this year. The National Grain and Oil Information Center predicts that the total import volume will reach 6.5 million tons.

Domestic production is beset with difficulties, the space for increasing imports is limited, and overseas investment is difficult to achieve results in the short term. Although grain production has increased for a decade in a row, it has become increasingly difficult for China to live up to its promise of "self-supporting".

China Food Security report

China's total grain output reached 601.935 million tons in 2013, an increase of 2.1 percent over the same period last year, the National Bureau of Statistics announced on November 29th. Since 2004, this is the tenth year in a row that China's grain output has increased.

Behind the increase in production figures, the reality of "grain shortage in bumper years" is rarely mentioned: in the same decade, except for production slightly greater than demand in 2008 and 2009, China's grain situation in other years is insufficient, and the gap is growing. Although officials have been targeting a food self-sufficiency rate of 95% for years, by the end of 2012, that figure had fallen below 90%.

One of the reasons for the gap between goal and reality is that China has always included soybeans in grain statistics. Under the premise that imported soybeans have accounted for most of the domestic market, the self-sufficiency rate has been reduced by nearly 10 percentage points. But in addition, as the normalization trend of net imports of China's three staple grain crops has emerged, its impact is also becoming increasingly apparent.

According to specific data, the total net imports of the three staple grains last year were about 19 million tons, and the total in the first seven months of this year has also reached 11.439 million tons. Not only that, after corn entered the "first year of full import" in 2011, China is expected to overtake Egypt to become the world's largest importer of wheat this year. According to the forecast of the National Grain and Oil Information Center, the total import volume will reach 6.5 million tons.

The apparent reason for the normalization of staple grain imports is that the price gap between internal and external grain is narrowing day by day. However, under the premise that the scale of domestic grain production is difficult to be fully completed in a short time, the increasing shortage of arable land and multiple resource-based factors and other multiple reasons lead to high grain production costs and narrowing room for yield improvement, this situation may be in an "irreversible" state in the short term or even in the long term.

Under the current situation that the concentration of China's soybean and staple grain import countries is even higher than that of oil, how to maintain its own food security and how to reconstruct its security concept with the self-sufficiency rate as the core is becoming more and more urgent.

In fact, maintaining the balance between imports and exports is only one of the criteria for the overall balance of China's food security. In addition, the framework should also include the total balance (total demand and total supply), the structural balance (food and non-grain crops), the regional balance (grain producing and marketing areas), and the production and marketing balance (output and sales).

Restricted by its large population and wide geographical scope, it is not easy for China to basically achieve these five balances. As far as domestic conditions are concerned, it will face triple constraints of "fragility, coercion and tension". In other words, the resource conditions for protection are poor, the input of economic and social factors under the strong leadership of the government is large, and the ability to protect the food and food security of all the population is not abundant.

Therefore, how to make use of overseas resources has become a new topic that China has to study to maintain its own food security. However, in this field, in terms of current performance, China, with its huge size, can only be regarded as a "late pupil", inexperienced and hard to find opportunities.

On the one hand, if we buy land overseas and put aside the tightening policies of the selling country and the pressure of international political opinion, China will also face the same basic problem of how to improve efficiency as domestic production. In an unfamiliar foreign environment, the risks brought by multiple uncertainties such as production conditions, law and politics will double the success of China's fledgling overseas agricultural strategy and its executors.

On the other hand, if China wants to learn from the experience of the four major ABCD grain manufacturers in the world to implement order agriculture, it will face the dual dilemma of basically saturated mature markets and lack of infrastructure construction in emerging markets. Not only that, in this process, China will also face the problem of who is the executor of the strategy-enterprises with the background of state-owned enterprises have the advantage of resources to go out, but they are easily demonized and tied up; private enterprises and private enterprises are restricted by the lack of financing channels, small scale and other reasons, it is difficult to solve the overall problem. No matter who is the executor, there will be contradictions from time to time between the acquisition of simple commercial interests and the practice of national strategy.

China has put forward basic solutions to some of the above problems, but it is still difficult to implement due to multiple practical reasons; in addition, there are still a considerable number of them, and we are still unable to get rid of the awkward state of "having ideas and having no way".

As Brzezinski, a former national security assistant of the United States, said in the book "the Big Chess": "Food and energy will be the weakness of China's economic growth." Reliance on grain imports will strain China's economic resources and make China more vulnerable to external pressures. " How to solve the above multiple problems and how to make China avoid being hit by this weakness is the original intention of this report, which can be called "dangerous words in the bumper year".

Report one

The basic characteristics of China's food security are fragile balance, forced balance and tense balance. The so-called fragile balance is the lack of guaranteed resources; the forced balance is the large input of economic and social factors and the strong leadership of the government; the tense balance is the lack of total supply to ensure the food and food security of all the population.

Basic balance of supply and demand

Food security, energy security and financial security are regarded as the "three major security" issues in the economic development of various countries today.

What is food security?

Food security in the modern sense stems from the decline in global food production in the early 1970s, when global food reserves fell from 18 per cent to 14 per cent and food prices tripled, leading to the worst food crisis since World War II.

In order to deal with the crisis, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (hereinafter referred to as "Food and Agriculture Organization") held its first World Food Summit in Rome in November 1974, adopted the "International Agreement on World Food Security" and put forward the concept of "Food Security" for the first time.

At that time, the concept was defined as ensuring that anyone could get enough food for survival and health at all times. Governments are required to take measures to ensure the minimum safety factor for world grain at the end of the year, that is, grain stocks at the end of the year are equivalent to at least 17% of the next year's grain consumption. If the safety factor of grain inventory in a country is less than 17%, it is unsafe, and if it is less than 14%, it is a state of emergency.

In November 1996, at the second World Food Summit held in Rome, FAO made a new formulation of this concept: food security can only be achieved when all people have access to adequate, safe and nutritious food at all times to meet their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life. This includes achieving food security at the individual, family, national, regional and world levels.

Then Premier Li Peng made a commitment to ensure China's food security at the conference. In the same year, the State Council issued a white paper entitled "China's Food Security", which made it clear that China can achieve basic self-sufficiency in grain on its own. Its policy of basing on domestic resources and realizing basic self-sufficiency in grain has become the general outline of China's grain strategy.

Under the guidance of this policy, the self-sufficiency of agricultural products represented by grain has been highly valued by the authorities, and has formed a mainstream concept of food security in China: planting is an important foundation of agriculture, grain, cotton, oil and sugar is an important commodity related to the national economy and people's livelihood, ensuring effective food supply is the primary task of agricultural development.

In the 12th five-year Plan of Agriculture formulated by the Ministry of Agriculture, it also gives a specific numerical measure of China's concept of food security: strive to achieve "one guarantee, three strives". That is, to ensure basic self-sufficiency in grain, to achieve basic self-sufficiency in China, and to ensure that the self-sufficiency rate is more than 95%, with the self-sufficiency rate of rice, wheat and corn reaching 100%.

Analysis of Grain supply and demand in China

China ranks 42nd out of 107 countries in the world, according to the Global Food Safety Index report released by the Economist Intelligence Unit. Compared with the 52nd place in per capita GDP, China is one of the few countries where the level of food safety exceeds its social affluence.

This is partly due to China's "ten consecutive increases" in grain since 2004. But behind the increase in production, the even greater increase in demand is intentionally or unintentionally ignored: China has actually been in a state of insufficient production and demand for many years in a row. In 2008, China's grain production exceeded demand for the first time. Since 2009, the relationship between supply and demand has become more and more tense, with an annual output of only 7.82 million tons more than needed. In 2010, it returned to a state of insufficient production and demand, with a shortfall of 3.523 million tons in that year.

This situation has not changed so far. Based on 2012 data, China imports 16.6% of its grain output, which means that about 14% of China's grain consumption needs to be imported. The grain self-sufficiency rate is less than 86%, which is lower than the 95% grain supply self-sufficiency target.

Therefore, from the perspective of supply, China's grain situation has the following basic characteristics: fragile balance, forced balance and tense balance. The so-called fragile balance is the lack of guaranteed resources; the compulsory balance is the heavy input of economic and social factors and the strong leadership of the government; and the tight balance is the lack of total supply to protect the food and food security of all the population.

On the basis of increasingly tight supply, what China has to face is a growing domestic food demand market. According to the current situation, the three decisive factors leading to the increase in grain demand are: first, the increase in the total population. The State Family Planning Commission predicts that by 2030, China's population will increase to 1.53 billion-1.63 billion; second, the income level of urban and rural residents will increase rapidly, and the demand for feed grain caused by changes in dietary structure will continue to increase significantly; third, the level of urbanization will continue to improve. In the 20 years from 2011 to 2030, China will increase its urban population by about 300 million, directly driving the growth of consumption.

Taking 2020 and 2030, which are of great concern to both the government and the school, how large the demand scale will be caused by the above three factors? At present, it is recognized that there are two more authoritative forecasting reports. One is the outline of the medium-and long-term Plan for National Food Security demand (2008-2020), which predicts that the per capita grain consumption in 2020 will be 395kg, with a total demand of 572.5 million tons; the second is the previously published White Paper on Grain of the State Council, "China's Grain problem", which predicts that the population will reach a peak of 1.6 billion in 2030, with a total demand of about 640 million tons.

In addition, for China's grain demand in 2020, various relevant departments have also given their own forecast results: in 2005, the relevant research group of the Ministry of Agriculture gave a forecast of 565 million tons; in 2006, the forecast given by the National Bureau of Statistics increased to 558 million tons; in 2008, the forecast result of the "National New 100 billion jin Grain Plan" rose again to 575.88 million tons.

"looking at these statistics and forecasting reports, we can find that the closer the time is to today, the more the results of the forecast, and the previous forecasts have been proved to be too conservative." An official from the Ministry of Agriculture said.

From the perspective of supply and demand, none of the above forecasts mentioned the possible grain gap in China. In the book "Research on the Road to Agricultural Modernization with Chinese characteristics" published by the Development Research Center of the State Council (hereinafter referred to as the National Research Center), it is pointed out for the first time that by 2020, based on a population of 1.43 billion and a per capita consumption of 409kg-414kg, the total demand will reach 584.87 million-592.02 million tons. According to China's grain production capacity, at that time, the domestic grain (excluding soybeans) supply gap will be 40 million-50 million tons.

The total net imports of the three staple grains last year were about 19 million tons, and the total in the first seven months of this year has also reached 11.439 million tons. Not only that, after corn entered the "first year of full import" in 2011, China is expected to overtake Egypt to become the world's largest importer of wheat this year. The National Grain and Oil Information Center predicts that the total import volume will reach 6.5 million tons.

The possibility and disadvantage of self-sufficiency

Under the urgency that the gap may appear at any time, what cards can China play in order to fulfill its promise of "self-supporting"?

To ensure basic self-sufficiency in grain, there are only two ways to "increase revenue and reduce expenditure."

In terms of open source, one is to increase per unit yield, and the other is to increase or at least stabilize the area of arable land. According to past experience, the increase in grain production in China by about 2/3 depends on the increase in per unit yield, and the contribution of the increase in sown area is about 1/3. At present, it seems that there is still room for both approaches to open source, but both are limited. "there is a reason for increasing production, and for not increasing production, there are reasons for not increasing production." The above-mentioned Ministry of Agriculture official said.

From the perspective of per unit yield: in 2010, China's grain per unit yield increased by 96.83% over 1978 and 26.47% over 1990. On the face of it, the numbers are encouraging. According to the official explanation, organizational system, marketization, construction of agricultural infrastructure, improvement of labor and material input, and improvement of technical means are all the reasons for China's grain production. But the more important direct cause is the increased use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. In 2010, the use of chemical fertilizers in China was 55.61 million tons (net discount), an increase of 529.07 percent over 1978, and the use of pesticides was 1.712 million tons, an increase of 229.23 percent over 1978. This is the main reason for the "forced balance" of China's food security.

For this reason, there is indeed a lot of room for per unit grain yield in China at present. The average per unit yield of rice, wheat and corn in China is 75%, 70% and 65% of the average level of the top 10 countries, respectively. The per unit yield of rice, wheat and corn ranked 13th, 20th and 21st in the world, respectively. In addition, for the same crop in the same planting area in China, there is also a large gap in per unit yield between provinces.

In order to increase per unit yield, the main measures taken by China in recent years include:

First, transform the medium-and low-yield fields, strengthen the construction of water conservancy infrastructure, and build the medium-and low-yield fields into high-standard farmland with high and stable yields, saving water and increasing efficiency.

This measure has great potential. By strengthening the transformation of medium-and low-yield fields, the unit yield of medium-and low-yield fields can be increased by 1500 kg per hectare. According to the national arable land area of 121.78 million hectares in 2007, China's existing medium-and low-yield fields account for 2/3 of the existing arable land, and 2/3 of the existing arable land is used for grain cultivation. If half of the medium-and low-yield fields can be transformed, grain production can be increased by 40.59 million tons.

However, compared with "doing everything possible" to keep the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, the improvement of the quality of cultivated land in China is still in the stage of "having ideas but few ways".

Over the past decade or so, China has built 200 million mu of high-standard basic farmland (hereinafter referred to as high-base farmland) through land renovation. At this rate, it will take nearly a hundred years to complete the renovation of 1.8 billion mu of arable land.

According to the National Land renovation Plan (2011-2015) approved by the State Council in March 2012, China's land renovation is expected to speed up greatly: during the 12th five-year Plan period, China will build 400 million mu of high-base farmland and 24 million mu of arable land. In numerical terms, the number of new high-base farmland in China each year during this period will be four times that of the previous decade.

The surge in digital targets highlights the chronic problem of shortage of funds for rectification. The "poor money" caused by the lack of incentives and unwillingness of local governments to pay for the food security goals concerned by the central government, such as limited sources of funds and high volatility, is the biggest constraint on the "snail trip" of land renovation in the previous decade, but in the new round of planning, this issue is up in the air. The above-mentioned "plus" planning tasks may not be realized.

According to the existing regulation fund investment model, only 400 million mu of high-base farmland has been built, with a shortfall of 75 billion yuan. In addition, the necessary maintenance costs are not taken into account in the current rectification funding system. Over time, the cost gap will increase day by day. At present, there is still no solution to all these.

Second, scientific and technological progress. The progress and application of improved varieties and methods, prevention and control of diseases and insect pests, soil testing formula, water-saving irrigation, disaster prevention and mitigation conservation tillage technology and disaster avoidance technology, agricultural mechanization technology, and even the comprehensive management technology of agricultural industrial chain, the improvement of the division of labor and cooperation among different regions and different links of the agricultural industrial chain are all conducive to the improvement of grain yield per unit area and total yield.

In recent years, in order to ensure food security, compared with the "first green revolution", China has put forward the idea of "the second green revolution". According to this goal, China's crop production should not only continue to increase yield and improve quality, but more importantly, greatly reduce the use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and water resources.

Therefore, in crop improvement, China has taken increasing the resistance to diseases and insect pests, efficient utilization of nutrition, drought tolerance and stress resistance as an important goal. However, in practice, the relevant research on agriculture in China is uneven, which shows that breeding techniques are paid more attention to than cultivation, and the funds obtained by the former are tens or hundreds of times more than those of the latter. In the field of breeding, genetically modified plants are more popular than non-transgenic ones.

"A large amount of money has been invested in GM-related research. However, due to security and other reasons, the relevant results can only be used as a technical reserve. A large number of conventional technologies are either unattended or poorly managed. " Relevant sources said.

In view of this situation, scholar Wen Jiayun pointed out: "the second green revolution we need is not limited to reductionist science represented by transgenes, but to agroecology as the center, integrating multidisciplinary research and practice. It also includes a systematic approach to both traditional knowledge and local knowledge."

In terms of cultivated land resources: due to the constraints of various non-agricultural needs (development zone construction, real estate development, etc.), the amount of cultivated land in China in 2012 has been less than 1.818 billion mu, about 100 million mu less than a decade ago, and it is not easy for cultivated land to stabilize the existing scale.

In this regard, most studies believe that the development of reserve land resources can become an important way for China to increase grain production in the future. The survey of land change in 2005 pointed out that the exploitable reserve land resources in China is about 1.312 billion mu, the arable land is about 200 million mu, and the key area is about 80 million mu. Among them, the cultivated land reserve resources in the northwest region, such as Hexi Corridor, Zhungeer Basin, Yili River Basin and Tarim Basin, are the most concentrated, which can be developed and utilized of 60 million mu; the Sanjiang Plain, Songnen Plain, the Upper reaches of Nenjiang River, Liaohe Plain and the West Liaohe River Basin in Northeast China also have potential to develop and utilize 10 million mu.

Whether or not to have the above large-scale arable land suitable for agriculture is one of the key factors that determine China's grain production in the future, but at present, there are major differences in the evaluation of China's cultivated land reserve resources by the competent functional departments of the state.

In 2010, when the National Development and Reform Commission reported on food security to the National people's Congress, it was believed that less than 70 million mu of land could be reclaimed in China, while in 2011, data released by the Ministry of Land and Resources believed that China concentrated 110 million mu of arable land reserve resources, mainly distributed in the arid areas of the north and west.

With regard to this divergence, the National Research Center pointed out in a report, "generally speaking, it is unrealistic to attempt to rely on reserve resources to make up for the gap of cultivated land from agriculture to non-agriculture in the future." It is generally estimated that the current reliable national reserve arable land is about 30 million mu, but it cannot make up for the gap of 45 million mu occupied by 2020. "

This conclusion is supported by four aspects:

First, it is difficult to provide large-scale arable land in the northwest region in the long run. In 2003, the "study on the Strategy of Water Resources allocation, Ecological Environment Construction and Sustainable Development in Northwest China" provided by the Research Group of the Chinese Academy of Engineering to the State Council pointed out that the amount of water resources in Northwest China (Xinjiang, Qinghai, Gansu, Ningxia, Shaanxi and Inner Mongolia) accounted for only 5.84% of the national total. The development and utilization of water resources is seriously ultra-high, with some rivers in the Hexi Corridor in Gansu, the Tarim River in Xinjiang and the rivers on the northern slope of the Tianshan Mountains even exceeding 100%. Even if the western route of the South-to-North Water transfer Project is completed, it will not change the serious water shortage in the northwest. Therefore, in the future, the region should adjust the industrial structure and reduce the water use of land for grain production, instead of continuing to reclaim land for grain production.

Second, the renovation of villages and the transformation of farmers into citizens to save land will be difficult to achieve in the short term. After nearly a decade of village renovation, there is little land left for easy consolidation and saving, and most of the rest are in mountainous areas, arid and semi-arid areas and deserts.

Third, it is inevitable that the quality of cultivated land continues to decline. The overall quality of cultivated land in China is not high. Of the 1.8 billion mu of arable land, high-standard basic farmland accounts for only 30%, and medium-and low-yield fields account for 600 million mu and more than 500 million mu respectively. According to the urbanization strategic pattern of "two vertical and three horizontal" put forward by the National main functional area Planning, the construction occupies 30, 000 square kilometers of cultivated land (that is, 45 million mu) by 2020, which is still the traditional idea of land expansion. The distribution of cultivated land quality in China has the characteristics of highly compound among densely populated areas, economically developed areas and high-quality cultivated land distribution areas. According to the plan, by 2020, 45 million mu of arable land will be occupied, most of which are good land, equivalent to more than 100 million mu of inferior arable land, and grain output should be reduced by no less than 20 million tons. In other words, in the first 20 years of this century, China's grain production will be reduced by 30 million tons because of the "superiority and offset" of arable land.

Fourth, in order to improve the ecological environment, the state began to implement the project of returning farmland to forests in 1999, with a total of 140 million mu in 2007. However, the purpose of stopping increasing the area of returning farmland to forests from 2007 is to ensure that the cultivated land during the Eleventh five-year Plan period is not less than 1.8 billion mu. China's excessive land reclamation is still in debt in terms of ecological security, and a little conversion of farmland will break through the safety line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land.

"China's food security conditions are very fragile, and a slight relaxation will lead to serious problems in the overall situation. If the cultivated land falls below 1.8 billion mu, coupled with the decline in unit output and drought and other factors, the total grain output can easily drop to 500 million tons, then it is inevitable to import 80 million-100 million tons of grain, which means 15% of domestic output. 20%. " Xiao Junyan, a researcher in the Rural Economic Research Department of the National Research Center, pointed out.

In addition, the annual post-natal loss and waste of grain is about 80 million tons, equivalent to 15% of the total grain production, that is, the amount of grain consumed by 200 million people. In order to realize the self-sufficiency of grain in China and reduce the postpartum loss and waste of grain, it can also constitute "saving expenditure".

In this regard, the main ways that the state is planning are as follows: first, to control the consumption of grain as inputs. The first is to reasonably control industrial grain consumption, the second is to vigorously develop grain-saving aquaculture, the third is to save species, and the second is to reduce the loss of grain storage and storage. The first is to reduce the loss of grain storage by farmers, the second is to reduce the loss of transportation, and the third is to reduce wasteful consumption.