China's annual grain production is expected to hit a new high of
520 million tons in five years but rising consumption will still
leave a shortfall, a top government think-tank said yesterday.
Consumption may surge to 550 million tons in 2010, when the
population is projected to reach 1.345 billion.
In addition to soybeans, the country may need to import around
20 million tons of grain in 2010, the last year of its 11th
Five-Year Plan, estimated Cheng Guoqiang, deputy chief of the State
Council Development Research Center's (DRC) Market Economy Research
Institute.
In China, the main foodgrains include rice, wheat, corn and
soybean.
Stockpiles and imports will ensure that there will be no threat
to food security in the short term, even though consumption has
been outpacing production, said Han Jun, a division director of the
DRC.
Agricultural officials and policy advisers have been analyzing
data and making forecasts on supply and demand as the country's top
legislators meet for their annual session early next month to
discuss the country's new five-year plan.
The country's food supply will become a more pressing problem in
the long run because of an irreversible increase in food demand as
a result of population and income growth as well as accelerating
urbanization, Han said.
The key to guaranteeing food security is to raise production by
increasing productivity, he said.
Minister of Agriculture Du Qinglin said the country will strive
to raise grain production capacity to 500 million tons annually
during the 11th Five-year Plan period (2006-10), when per-unit
yield will be improved.
Starting this year, China will activate a "grain production
capacity enhancement program" which includes measures to render
more policy support to the agricultural sector, protect farmland,
stabilize crop acreage, and improve quality of arable land, the
minister said.
The ministry will see to it that per-hectare harvest will top
4.88 tons between 2006 and 2010, compared with an average of 4.42
tons for the previous five years.
China's domestic grain needs are expected to increase by at
least 2 million tons annually, pushing its total demand to up to
550 million tons in 2010, Han said, quoting the latest forecast by
DRC's Department of Rural Economy.
In addition to per-unit yield, grain output is also contingent
on crop acreage, which is unlikely to expand by a big margin in the
years ahead, forecast Han and his colleagues Qin Zhongchun and
Zhang Yunhua.
Accordingly, it might be difficult for the country's total grain
output to surpass 520 million tons by 2010, they said.
Cheng of the DRC said that to ensure food security, the country
must rely on its own production, while importing
"appropriately."
"The food security of a populous country is more than just
economics and trade," Cheng said. "A drop of 1 percentage point of
China's grain output means extra imports of nearly 5 million tons
or 2.5 percent of the world's total grain trade volume."
Li Xiaozhong, a farm trade expert with the Southern Yangtze
University in east China's
Zhejiang Province, yesterday said there is still a "large room"
for the country to use the international market to ensure its food
security.
(China Daily February 24, 2006)