Consolidate the foundation of national food security in all aspects

In the process of building a modern socialist country in an all-round way, ensuring food security has always been a major strategic issue that has a bearing on the overall situation. Recently, the State Council issued the "Action Plan for a New Round of 100 Billion Jin Grain Production Capacity Improvement (2024-2030)", which further clarified the task book and roadmap for a new round of 100 billion jin of grain production capacity improvement from this year to 2030, which will further consolidate the foundation of national food security and provide a more solid guarantee for the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country. The implementation of a new round of 100 billion catties of grain production capacity improvement action, all-round consolidation of the foundation of national food security, the focus should be on the "five overall planning".

Coordinate the construction of material foundation and safeguard mechanism. Ensuring food security is the unity of strengths and weaknesses at the material level and effective incentives and constraints at the actor level. It is necessary to solidly promote the storage of grain on the ground and the storage of grain in technology, grasp the two key points of cultivated land and seeds, and start with cultivated land, water conservancy, seeds, agricultural machinery, chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and farming technology, strengthen cohesion and cooperation, and technological integration and innovation, and improve the level of material equipment; it is also necessary to strengthen the building of mechanisms, improve the mechanism for guaranteeing the income of peasants who grow grain, explore the establishment of an inter-provincial horizontal interest compensation mechanism in grain production and marketing areas, and enhance peasants' enthusiasm for growing grain and grasping grain in the main producing areas.

Co-ordinate the responsibilities of the main production area, the main sales area, and the production and marketing balance area. The gradual concentration of grain production on the mainland to the main producing areas is conducive to giving play to the comparative advantages of resources, but this does not mean that ensuring food security is only the responsibility of the main producing areas. It is also unrealistic to secure the jobs of more than 1.4 billion Chinese and rely entirely on the main producing areas. Whether it is to stabilize the overall output capacity of grain, or to effectively prevent the hidden danger of concentration of grain production and dispatch risks, to ensure food security, it is necessary for the main production areas, main sales areas, and production and marketing balance areas to work together to ensure area and output. The main producing areas should continuously improve their overall grain production capacity, the main marketing areas should conscientiously stabilize and increase the grain self-sufficiency rate, and the production and marketing balance areas should ensure basic grain self-sufficiency.

Coordinate the whole chain of grain production, purchase, storage, and sales. Generally speaking, the higher the level of modernization of the industrial chain and supply chain, the stronger the endogeneity, stability and autonomy of industrial development. Improving the modernization level of the food industry chain and supply chain is the proper meaning of ensuring food security. General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed that "grain production must be stepped up every year, the area and output must not fall, and the supply and market must not have problems." It is necessary to systematically sort out and open up the blocking points of the food industry chain and supply chain, and make overall plans to improve the comprehensive production capacity, reserve regulation and control capacity, processing and circulation capacity and emergency supply guarantee capacity.

Co-ordinate both domestic and foreign aspects. It is very difficult for the mainland to rely entirely on itself to ensure that the mainland's water and land resources and ecological environment carrying capacity are completely guaranteed, and it is necessary to rationally allocate resources, concentrate efforts on ensuring key points, and ensure that grain is basically self-sufficient and food rations are absolutely safe. At the same time, we should improve the food security cooperation mechanism, play the card of agricultural trade, grasp the stability and initiative of imports for the shortage of food varieties that have to be imported, improve the ability to control key logistics nodes, and enhance the resilience of the supply chain.

Coordinate and promote production increase and loss reduction. In order to hold the rice bowl more steadily and firmly, we must not only rely on increasing grain production to "open source," but also "reduce expenditure" through grain loss. "Reducing expenditure" is also increasing output, and it is necessary to put the reduction of grain losses and the increase and stability of production in an equally important position, and it is necessary not only to cultivate the "tangible fertile land" but also to expand the "intangible fertile land" to save grain and reduce the loss. Improve the normalized and long-term working mechanism, focus on grain planting, harvesting, transportation, storage, processing, consumption and other links, and promote the whole chain of saving and reducing losses.

At present, uncertainties such as geopolitical conflicts, public health emergencies, and environmental and climate crises continue to impact the global food supply chain. The mainland's grain demand is still growing rigidly, and ensuring food security is still quite complex and challenging. To fully implement a new round of 100 billion catties of grain production capacity improvement action and consolidate the foundation of food security in an all-round way, it is necessary to deal with several relationships.

The first is the relationship between the security of food output and the security of industrial and supply chains. Food security is first and foremost quantity security, and the amount of food will have an important impact on food security, but food security is not only quantitative security. To measure food insecurity, we need to see whether the output capacity can be maintained at a high level, and whether there will be a "broken chain" in all links of grain production, distribution, circulation, and consumption after external shocks, and whether it can be kept unimpeded. In addition to stabilizing the grain sowing area, promoting a large area to increase yields, consolidating the foundation of quantity and quality safety, and further grasping the high yield and high quality of grain production links, it is also necessary to systematically sort out the risk points from the perspective of the construction of the grain industry chain and supply chain, strengthen the construction of the whole chain and full coverage of the support policy system, further optimize market regulation and control, effectively break through the circulation blockages, and promote the balance of grain supply and demand to a higher level.

The second is the structural change relationship between population and food. Population is always the primary factor that we must consider to ensure food security, but the relationship between population and food is not a simple total matching relationship, and population size, structure, quality, and migration will all have an impact on food security. Moreover, in different periods and at different levels of development, the structure of the relationship between the two is different, and the focus of efforts to deal with the relationship between the two will also be different. At present, the mainland's population growth is undergoing inflection point changes, the degree of aging is deepening, the trend of population agglomeration to urban agglomerations is still continuing, and a large number of grain producers are turning into net consumers of grain, which will have a profound impact on the balance of total grain supply and demand, structural balance, regional balance, and balance of production and marketing. To ensure food security, it is necessary to give full consideration to the new characteristics and trends of population development, and make overall plans to achieve a balance between total grain supply and demand, structural adaptation, and layout optimization.

The third is the relationship between the use of cultivated land and the overall utilization of national land resources. The "Big Food Concept" is put forward in the context of the mainland's ability to achieve and maintain a high level of food security and the profound changes in the food structure of the people, and comprehensively considers the needs of satisfying high-quality life and promoting the sustainable development of resources and environment. To practice the "big food concept", the foundation is food, and the balance between supply and demand of all kinds of food is the key. In the coming period, it is necessary to demand grain from cultivated land as well as from forests, grass, water, and so on; we must ensure that we have enough to eat, and that we can also ensure that we can eat well and eat healthily, so as to realize the transformation of food supply from single production to diversified supply. In terms of resource utilization, it is necessary to expand from cultivated land resources to the entire national land resources, and "ask for food from forests, rivers, lakes and seas, and facility agriculture."

Fourth, the relationship between ordinary security and emergency supply. In the face of complex and changeable internal and external situations, the supply and demand conditions of grain and important agricultural products on the mainland are constantly changing, and various risk factors are constantly rising. In this context, to ensure the stable and safe supply of grain and important agricultural products, it is necessary to grasp the relationship between peacetime and emergency response, and make necessary adjustments to the development-oriented and peacetime production and supply system formed over the past years, so as to enhance the resilience of the system. It is necessary to coordinate development and security, integrate and promote the construction of high-quality grain projects and food emergency security systems, establish a reserve inventory of finished grain that combines ordinary and emergency situations, strengthen the comprehensive efficiency of peacetime services and emergency supply, and ensure that "ordinary production can be obtained, emergency dispatch can be obtained, and key use can be achieved".