Cracking down on Grain smuggling to ensure National Food Security

In 2014, customs across the country launched an one-year special campaign to crack down on the smuggling of agricultural products, focusing on cracking down on illegal and criminal activities of smuggling agricultural products, with positive results.

Food is an important strategic material and special commodity related to economic development and social stability, and food security plays an important role in national economic security. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council have always attached great importance to the issue of food security, established a national food security strategy of "giving priority to ourselves, having a foothold at home, ensuring production capacity, appropriately importing, and supporting by science and technology", and made it clear that "grain is basically self-sufficient." the food security goal of absolute safety of rations. In recent years, in order to protect the interests of grain farmers, stabilize grain production capacity, achieve a basic balance between total grain supply and demand, and ensure the basic stability of grain market supply and prices, the state has adopted a series of policies and measures to support grain production at the same time, a number of macro-control policies and measures have also been taken in circulation, mainly in the following aspects. First, while opening up the grain purchase and sale market in an all-round way, we have implemented the policy of purchasing rice and wheat at the lowest purchase price in some major producing areas, and implemented the national temporary purchase and storage policy in some major producing areas of corn and rapeseed. The second is to increase the effective supply of the market and guide the grain market price to operate within a reasonable range by means of open bidding and auction of policy grain. Third, establish and improve the central and local grain and oil reserve systems, and regulate the grain market through reserve grain and oil huff and puff. The fourth is to guide and encourage the establishment of a long-term and stable cooperative relationship between production and marketing areas in order to promote the regional balance of grain. Fifth, a grain monitoring and early warning and emergency supply system has been established to ensure the need for emergency grain supply in special cases such as natural disasters and abnormal market fluctuations. Judging from the actual situation in recent years, the implementation of the national policy of strengthening agriculture and benefiting farmers and the implementation of grain macro-control policies and measures have achieved remarkable results and played an important role in ensuring national food security. The continuous bumper harvest of grain throughout the country has laid a solid material foundation for national food security. The total amount of domestic grain production and demand is basically balanced, the inventory is relatively abundant, and the market operation is generally stable.

Grain smuggling such as rice is not only an illegal act of evading national taxes, but also has a negative impact on the national grain macro-control and national food security. First, it has an impact on grain prices in the domestic market. At present, the upside-down of grain prices at home and abroad is relatively obvious, the smuggled grain prices evade the state tax revenue, and the cost after entering the country is even lower, which has a greater impact on the domestic grain market and increases the downward pressure on the prices of domestic grain markets. in a certain range, it leads to domestic raw grain and finished grain prices upside down, production areas and marketing areas prices upside down and other problems, disturbing the normal circulation order of the domestic grain market. It not only seriously affects the orderly circulation of domestic grain regions, but also has a great impact on the normal operation of domestic grain processing enterprises. Second, it affects the balance of domestic grain supply and demand. At present, there is a periodic oversupply of corn and rice in China. Smuggled grain is not included in import statistics, and a large number of smuggled grain into the country will aggravate the contradiction that supply exceeds demand, increase the pressure of collection and storage in the main producing areas, and affect the effectiveness of the national market purchase policy to protect the interests of grain farmers. Third, it brings certain hidden dangers to food quality and food safety. The grain smuggled into the country has not gone through the necessary inspection and quarantine, and there is no guarantee in terms of quality, health and safety, which will pose a threat to food safety. Therefore, cracking down on grain smuggling is of great significance for implementing the national food security strategy, protecting the interests of grain farmers, maintaining the order of the domestic grain circulation market, ensuring grain quality and security, and so on.