Ensuring Food Security for All
Ensuring food security is the top priority for any country in the world. It is more so for China, a developing country with 1.4 billion people. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China in 2012, China has attached greater importance to its agriculture, farmers and rural development, which has led to increased grain production, updated agricultural technologies and revitalized rural areas.
China has been able to feed nearly 20 percent of the world population with 9 percent of the world’s tillable land and 6 percent of fresh water resources. This is a hard-won accomplishment, which has also made a great contribution to the food security for the whole world.
This accomplishment must be consolidated and expanded. For the world’s most populous country, it is important to fill the rice bowl of Chinese people mainly with Chinese grain. President Xi Jinping noted that it is wrong to think that food supply is no longer a problem in an industrialized society, or to count on the global market to solve the issue. He underscored keeping the annual grain output over 650 million tons. Fortunately, China has been able to accomplish it. The annual grain production has exceeded 650 million tons for seven years in a row. This means China has sufficient self-grown grain to feed its people.
However, China’s grain supply and demand at the current stage is still tight. China is in short supply of some agricultural products such as soybeans and oilseeds. In addition, China’s rapid industrialization process has also led to a decline in the number of people who are directly engaged in agricultural production. Therefore, China should do its best to further increase its per-unit grain production and more importantly, beef up farmland protection to ensure no less than 120 million hectares of arable land.
In the Report on the Work of the Government delivered at this year’s session of the National People’s Congress in March, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang stressed that China will designate a sufficient amount of good land as permanent basic cropland, and firmly stop any attempts to use the cropland for any purpose other than agriculture.
China is also working with other countries, especially African countries, to help reduce hunger or poverty. In Madagascar, China’s hybrid-rice technology has enabled local people to have sufficient food on their table; in Rwanda, Chinese mushroom experts are helping more than 30,000 local farmers in 90 companies and cooperatives; in Nigeria, a China-built agricultural technology demonstration center covering 80 hectares has become the new platform for agricultural technology transfer and cooperation.
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, China has dispatched more than 2,000 agricultural experts and technicians to over 70 countries and regions in Africa, Asia, South Pacific and Caribbean Sea, benefiting nearly 100,000 local farmers. At the Beijing Summit of the Forum on China-africa Cooperation in 2018, President Xi noted that China will support Africa in achieving general food security by 2030.
China and the world are in the same boat when it comes to ensuring food security. In this context, China needs to work closely with other countries, so as to make new contribution to building a community with a shared future for humanity.