China relies on farmers for food safety

BEIJING - Zhang Baohua's "enclosure movement" was rewarded after he leased a chunk of farmland from his fellow villagers.

The 61-year-old farmer in eastern Shandong Province rented 600 mu (40 hectares) of farmland plots and received 138,000 yuan ($21,940) in subsidies this year.

As part of incentives to spur enthusiasm for raising crops, the local government offered subsidies to farmers who leased more than 300 mu of farmland for the first time this year.

Rapid urbanization has left fewer people willing to grow crops, as toiling on farmland is widely regarded as less profitable than working in cities, said Hu Yuegao, an agriculture professor at China Agricultural University.

"The subsidies enhanced my confidence in farming," Zhang told Xinhua.

In order to boost the agricultural sector and spur crop-growing confidence, China earmarked 1.2 trillion yuan in 2012 from its central budget to support agriculture, up 17.9 percent from the previous year.

China's grain output hit 590 million tonnes in 2012, marking the ninth consecutive year of growth. The country achieved its grain output target for 2020 eight years ahead of schedule.

But China should not ignore the significance of food security even after years of good harvests, according to a statement released after the recently concluded Central Rural Work Conference.

China is expected to consume 720 million tonnes of grain by 2020, which means the country has to increase its annual grain output by more than 10 million tonnes in the coming years.

Song Hongyuan, an agriculture researcher with the Ministry of Agriculture, said China's grain production foundation is unstable.

China needs to work to make crop-growing profitable for farmers and modernize the agricultural sector, said Song.

In a tone-setting central economic work conference earlier this month, the country vowed to try to modernize the agricultural sector by upgrading farming technologies and equipment.

Like Zhang Baohua, Sun Mingjiang enjoyed a bumper corn harvest in northeastern Heilongjiang Province this year after drought lingered through the spring and summer. His success came from irrigation droppers.

The new technology, which conserves water and electricity, brought him 700 yuan more per mu than before.

The bumper harvest called for big buyers and good prices.

Food enterprises bought 105.9 million tonnes of newly produced grain as of November 25, 12 million tonnes more than in 2011, according to Ren Zhengxiao, head of the State Administration of Grain, adding that the minimum purchasing price program safeguarded farmers' interests.

China launched the minimum pricing program in 2006 to protect farmers from price volatilities, stipulating that the government will buy wheat for state reserves at a set price when market prices fall below it.

Agricultural authorities will further lift the minimum price of wheat to 112 yuan per 50 kilograms next year, up 10 yuan from 2012.

Minister of Agriculture Han Changfu said the wallets of Chinese farmers have grown fat in the past nine years alongside increasing grain output.

Official data show farmers' annual per capita net income rose to 6,977 yuan in 2011 from 2,622 yuan in 2003.

To guarantee food security, China has tightened its grip on farmland, and as a result, this land did not shrink amid the country's rapid urbanization.

In 2012, China's grain planting areas totalled 116.83 billion hectares, marking a slight rise of 0.6 percent from 2011, according to official data.

But food security remains challenging, as China's agricultural sector has remained at a low level of modernization and farmers will face rising production costs and risks in coming years, said the statement.

China will make unswerving efforts to underpin the development of agriculture and rural areas, according to the statement.