Why is food the most important but the least valuable

Recently, Huang Yanxin, deputy director of the Department of Economic Management of the Ministry of Agriculture, said at a conference: grain is not as valuable as mineral water, which is unfair and unreasonable. He suggested that the state should raise the minimum purchase price of grain year by year.

Food is the most important but the least valuable, simply because of the unified pricing of the country. In order to ensure CPI and the interests of consumers, China has established a huge grain collection and storage system. On the one hand, through the national unified grain pricing, and on the other hand, through the collection and dumping of reserves to adjust the changes of grain prices in the market. Under such a price adjustment mechanism, basically, there is little room for grain prices to rise.

Grain is the least profitable of all agricultural products at present. Its value is not reflected in the price, which shows that there is something wrong with the current grain pricing mechanism in our country.

A linkage mechanism should be established to find a reasonable quantity of food prices among the closest factors affecting food prices, rather than a small increase of only 5 per cent a year.

Of course, if you are worried that rising food prices will affect inflation, you can increase subsidies to grain farmers. Subsidies to urban low-income groups can also be increased. In this way, food prices can be kept in a normal state of operation.