China and India, both with populations of more than 1.4 billion, need to import a large amount of grain every year, while the other exports a large amount of grain every year.
This is the basic understanding of the existence and development of human society, and any achievements made by modern society are based on sufficient food as the basic guarantee.
Agriculture is the basis of all social activity, and if it deviates from this foundation, the country will soon suffer a serious disaster.
As early as the Western Han Dynasty, the famous political commentator Chao Cuo put forward such a view in his "On Guisu Shu": "Therefore, Yao and Shun have nine years of water, and Tang has seven years of drought, and the country has no donors. ”
This sentence is to the effect that both the Yao Shun and Shang Tang periods encountered great disasters, but the country did not have a famine, all because of their abundant food accumulation.
It can be seen that the Chinese have always attached great importance to the food issue since ancient times, and food security is related to the life and death of the country and the nation.
Both China and India have experienced severe food shortages, so both countries are very focused on food production.
In particular, in the 21st century, China and India have ranked first and second in the world in terms of population, and their annual demand for grain is extremely huge, and the issue of food security is facing the governments of the two countries at the same time.
It stands to reason that the national conditions of China and India determine that both countries should be big importers of grain, and both China and India should have problems of grain shortage and food security; India, in particular, has less than half of China's grain output, and should be a net grain importer.
However, what is surprising is that although China produces more than 600 million tons of grain every year, ranking first in the world, it imports more than 100 million tons of grain every year.
Our neighbor India, on the other hand, exports 12 million tons of rice and more than 4 million tons of wheat every year, and India is also the world's largest rice exporter and the world's largest grain exporter.
Is there any "magic weapon" in India that can stop consuming grain? Could it be that India's "holy water of the Ganges" can quench hunger by drinking it? Obviously, this is all unrealistic.
Why, then, is it that India can export a large amount of grain, while China has to import a large amount of grain? We might as well talk about this issue today.
First of all, we need to talk about China's food problem to explain why China needs to import a lot of grain every year.
The territory of the mainland is vast, but the arable land area of the mainland is very limited.
According to statistics, the total area of cultivated land on the mainland is about 121.72 million hectares.
Although the total amount of cultivated land ranks fourth among all countries in the world, the per capita cultivated land area is only one-third of the world average.
Moreover, there are differences in the quality of cultivated land in these cultivated lands, according to the classification standard of cultivated land quality from first to third class, the area of first-class cultivated land with good quality and high yield accounts for only 41.33% of it, the cultivated land area with average quality and average yield accounts for 34.55%, while the cultivated land with poor quality and low yield accounts for 20.4%, and in addition, 3.65% of the cultivated land belongs to saline-alkali land that cannot be cultivated.
In addition, among these arable lands, the cultivated land area limited by natural conditions and other factors accounted for about 58.67%, such as 19.98% of the cultivated land that is susceptible to erosion threat or has potential threats, and 9.19%, 6.62% and 10.07% of the cultivated land that is susceptible to flooding, salinity and soil quality restrictions, respectively.
Another point is that with the continuous urbanization of the mainland, China's arable area has been gradually encroached, which further limits China's grain production capacity.
Generally speaking, the mainland's cultivated land is faced with the problems of low per capita cultivated land area, excessively high cultivated land carrying capacity, insufficient cultivated land reserve resources, low overall quality of cultivated land, and decreasing cultivated land area, which has greatly affected the mainland's grain production.
However, despite the existence of various constraints, with the mainland government's increased support for agriculture, the extensive use of agricultural technology and chemical fertilizers, and the intensive cultivation of hard-working peasants, the mainland's grain output has maintained a fluctuating trend in normal years.
This trend is particularly evident in the 10 years from 2010 to 2020.
In 2010, the mainland's total annual grain output was 559,113,100 tons, while in 2020 it reached 669,492,000 tons, an increase of 0.85% year-on-year.
Although judging from the data of previous years, the growth of grain output on the mainland has slowed down, the mainland has generally maintained an annual output of more than 600 million tons of grain, and the per capita grain output has reached 474 kilograms, which is 74 kilograms higher than the international food security line of 400 kilograms, and has built a solid "fence" for China's food security.
This is a gratifying achievement, and the 510 million hard-working Chinese farmers have contributed the most fundamental impetus to the security and sustainable development of China's economy, and their contributions cannot be expressed in words.
However, although the mainland's food security has been guaranteed, there are still some problems in the use of grain, which is much more than the normal food ration, and can be used as a staple food less than half.
A research institute released a report on China's grain, saying that China will have a gap of about 130 million tons of grain production and demand in 2025.
First of all, the first problem is that with the development of China's economy and the improvement of people's quality of life, people have a strong demand for pure grain winemaking and animal husbandry products, and whether it is winemaking and animal husbandry, a large amount of grain will be consumed every year.
Second, there is a relatively serious problem of food waste on the mainland.
Most of the Chinese people live on three meals a day, and few areas will also have two meals a day, but many people have the problem of food waste in eating, and these wasted food nutrients can feed about 250 million to 300 million people, and nearly one-fifth of the food ration is wasted.
The combination of these problems has created a food security problem that cannot be ignored in China, which is why China needs to import more than 100 million tons of grain every year, and every year it invests a lot of money to hoard national grain reserves to cope with a possible food crisis.
Let's take a look at India's food problem and understand why India has become the world's largest grain exporter.
India is a world-class agricultural country, although after the founding of the country has carried out decades of industrialization, but the effect is not ideal, the urbanization rate is low, the rural population still accounts for 72% of the total population of India, and a large number of people are engaged in agriculture or related agricultural labor.
Therefore, from the perspective of the affluence of agricultural labor, it is clear that China, which is aging, cannot be compared with India.
In addition, although India's total territory cannot be compared with China's, India's arable land area is more than China's, probably more than 60 million hectares more than China's, ranking first in the world.
As for why there is so much arable land in India, there are generally two main reasons:
One of the reasons is climatic.
India is located in the northern hemisphere, and most of the latitude and longitude of its country is in the tropical monsoon climate zone, only the Thar Desert in the west belongs to the tropical desert climate, coupled with the high Himalayan mountain system to block the cold air, such a climate makes India in a normal year with abundant rainfall, a humid climate, and a temperature suitable for crop growth.
The second reason is geographical.
The Indus-Ganges Great Plain in the center, the Deccan Plateau in the south, and the coastal plains on the east and west sides of India are largely cultivated areas, except for some mountainous areas in the north, which are less suitable for farming.
Of India's 2.98 million square kilometres, 40 per cent of the country's total land area is plain, 25 per cent is mountainous, and 33 per cent is highland.
What is even more enviable is that most of these so-called mountains and plateaus in India are not more than 1,000 meters above sea level, and even India's so-called "arid land" receives about 750 mm of precipitation.
Another characteristic of India's arable land is that most of the land is under the influence of the tropical monsoon climate, with very suitable temperature and precipitation for cultivation, and crops can grow all year round.
For example, India's rice can be harvested three times a year, basically killing most of China's cultivated areas, and we only have some areas such as the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River Plain, the Sichuan Basin, the Yunnan-Guizhou Plateau, and Hainan that can be compared with India's "universal" three-cropping cultivated land a year.
It stands to reason that it is not surprising that India, with such excellent farming conditions, must produce much more grain than China, or even twice as much as China.
But the reality is quite the opposite, India's annual grain production is only about half of China's, or even slightly lower.
According to statistics, in 2017, China's grain output was 617 million tons, while India's was about 280 million tons, in 2018, China's grain output was 658 million tons, India's was 280 million tons, and in 2020, China's grain output was 669 million tons, India's was 308 million tons.
If the grain output of China and India is calculated according to the average value, the average ration of the Chinese can reach about 500 kilograms, while the average ration of India is only about 200 kilograms, and the average ration of India is far lower than the international average ration standard, and it is in a state of not being able to eat at any time.
So why does China produce twice as much food as India with less arable land than India?
One is that mainland agriculture has strong support at the national level and has been fed back by industry.
If modern agriculture wants to continue to develop with high quality, it is inseparable from the support of strong industry, pesticides, fertilizers, modern planting technology, hybrid seeds, agricultural machinery, etc. are all products of industry feeding agriculture.
India obviously cannot be compared with China in this regard, it has not established an effective and continuous national plan for industry to feed back agriculture, and the investment in agriculture is insufficient, for example, the level of chemical fertilizer use in Indian agriculture is still not high, and even some land still does not use chemical fertilizers.
The second is that China has a huge scale of water conservancy projects, and the water conservancy and irrigation system is relatively developed.
It is precisely because of the many unfavorable factors in China's cultivated areas, the typical one is drought and lack of rainfall, which also made the determination of the founding of New China to build many water conservancy and irrigation systems, covering a considerable area of cultivation, and effectively guaranteeing normal agricultural production.
India's agricultural infrastructure is relatively weak, "watching the sky to eat" has become the norm in India's agriculture, most areas of agricultural production rely on India's subtropical monsoon rainfall, once a certain year's rainfall is abnormal, India's agriculture will be hit by a huge blow, disaster resistance is not as good as China's.
The third is that India has not carried out land ownership reform, and a lot of land has been occupied by a small number of people, resulting in many Indian farmers having no land or little land, which has forced a large number of Indian farmers to become tenant farmers and wage farmers, and their enthusiasm for farming is not high.
So the question is, since India's grain production and per capita rations are far inferior to China's, especially since the per capita rations are still lower than international standards, and the hunger index is high, why does India still export tens of millions of tons of grain every year?
In fact, there are many reasons for this situation, and let's talk about the main ones.
One of the reasons is India's urgent need for foreign exchange.
Although the British Raj period laid a solid industrial foundation for India, India's industrial level has not been high since independence, with a GDP of about $2.6 trillion in 2020, compared to China's $14.7 trillion.
Under such circumstances, India is really short of money and urgently needs a large amount of foreign exchange in exchange for the equipment, raw materials, etc. needed for the country's industrial development, and the industrial products that India can export in large quantities are really counted, and the only thing left that can be exported in large quantities is grain, after all, grain is hard currency in any country.
The second reason is that India's eating habits are not quite the same as ours, and they consume less food.
The general eating habit in India and other countries is two meals, which is not quite the same as our eating habits of three meals a day, in India there is only Chinese food and dinner, and few people have the habit of eating breakfast.
If India's 1.3 billion people eat one less meal, not only will they reduce their food consumption by almost one-third, but they will also reduce food waste during meals, saving a lot of food every year.
The third reason is the indifference of the Indian elite to the lower classes of Indians.
Although India abolished the caste system in the form of a constitution as early as 1947, more than 70 years later, the ideological remnants of the caste system in India are still serious, and they still have a negative impact on Indian society.
According to relevant statistics, in 2002, 5% of India's high-caste elite controlled 32% of the country's wealth, in 2012 this proportion increased to 47.6%, and by 2019, 10% of India's high-caste elite had controlled more than 60% of India's total national wealth.
A large number of low-caste "untouchables" can only go to work as tenant farmers, hired farmers, fishing, dung, coolies and other low-level jobs at the bottom of society, with meager incomes, almost living an underfed life, with very low political participation in the country, and almost no right to speak.
The solidification of classes has been deeply rooted, and under such circumstances, these so-called high-caste elites in India rarely consider the problem of food and clothing for ordinary people in India, and would rather export the surplus grain in their hands for foreign exchange than consider using these grains to solve the problem of food and clothing for the lower classes.
These are the fundamental reasons why India produces less than half of China's grain and can still export a large amount, while China has to import a large amount.
Compared with most countries such as India, we living in New China are almost born in "honey", and the great party has not only led the 1.4 billion people in China to solve the problem of food and clothing, but also led us to achieve a well-off life, and will continue to lead us to achieve a "great well-off" life of common prosperity with a high degree of material civilization and spiritual civilization.