Ji Mingfeng: China's Agriculture Should Have Ambition to Feed the World

Summer grain has had another bumper harvest this year, which is an increase of 11 in a row. Some people wonder if the grain data are watery in recent years. In fact, verifying its authenticity is very simple: there is no shortage of food. If we do not produce so much, where does the food come from?

The West has always doubted whether China can support itself. Chinese people are often not confident about their abilities. What you may be concerned about right now is, what is the capacity of China's agriculture now? As a long-time worker in agriculture, I would like to talk about my feelings. Twenty years ago, we carried the heavy burden of supporting ourselves. Although we firmly believed that we could carry it, we were still worried about how far we could go. Today, the burden of supporting ourselves is still heavy, but we have seen the dawn faintly. China now has 1.36 billion people, and the maximum population in 2025-2030 may be about 1.45 billion (United Nations World population Outlook: 2012 revision). Some domestic research institutions predict that there will be only 1.41 billion people. It has been reported that we are wasting enough food to feed 200 million people. We can be sure that we already have a realistic prospect that we can support ourselves, which is not just a belief.

It should be pointed out that the prerequisite for us to steadily acquire this capacity is that we must unremittingly strictly protect agricultural resources such as cultivated land, water, and the environment, unremittingly strengthen the construction of agricultural infrastructure, and unremittingly promote the progress of agricultural science and technology. we must not be relaxed in these aspects in unremittingly promoting the reform and innovation of the agricultural production and management model to keep pace with the times.

But is the responsibility of Chinese agriculture limited to supporting China itself?

No, Chinese agriculture should try to take on the important task of feeding the world, and we should have this mind and ideal.

Obviously, it is impossible to feed the world with the limited agricultural resources that China now has. Our way is to use China's strong agricultural technology and management capacity to develop and operate the world's agricultural resources, so as to supply the people of the country with the output. Grow the land of the world and feed the people of the world. We often say that China uses less than 9% of the world's arable land to feed nearly 21% of the world's population. In fact, this also shows the level of Chinese agriculture. Many agricultural weak countries welcome Chinese agricultural investment, and they are often worried about whether the agricultural products produced will be shipped back to China. The answer I used to give to these foreign friends is that we don't need it, and you can't ship it if you want to. We implement import quota management for staple grain products such as rice, wheat and corn.

In the past seven or eight years, the scale of China's industrial and commercial capital's intentional investment in agriculture is very large and continues to grow, but due to the limitations of China's agricultural management system and agricultural resources, agricultural enterprise management is mainly concentrated in prenatal, post-natal and mid-production services, so it is difficult to concentrate land on a large scale for enterprise management. As a matter of fact, the industrial and commercial capital that wants to operate agriculture does not have to be crowded at home, go out to develop and operate the world's agricultural resources, and bear some responsibility for feeding the world. Why not?.

Of course, the industrial and commercial capital that invests in agriculture must adhere to the market approach, and only a way that conforms to commercial principles is a sustainable way. At the same time, in order to fulfill the world responsibility of China's agriculture and promote Chinese capital investment in world agriculture, the relevant work of the Chinese government is essential.

We look forward to the day when Chinese agriculture effectively undertakes the important task of feeding the world.