Not going against the grain

Third, in these times of globalization, external factors also play a role in China's food security. For example, China's grain processing industry and its seed sector are, more or less, controlled by foreign enterprises, and without a secure seed industry there can be no food security. Also, potash, which plays a key role in increasing grain production, is scarce in China. So China has to produce and have a sufficient reserve of potash fertilizer. This shows that China's food security depends not only on farming, but also on the strategic deployment of its agricultural industry.

The No 1 Central Document gives food security top priority in governance and emphasizes that China has to devise a national food security strategy. While devising a national food security strategy, the authorities should focus on three aspects.

To begin with, the authorities should cultivate and develop new agricultural management bodies to increase the comparative effectiveness of agriculture and ensure agriculture yields enough profit to keep farmers rooted in the profession. To maintain and stabilize land contract relations, the authorities should allow and guide farmers to develop scale management by transferring to them the land contract rights, which would allow them to become shareholders or leasers. They should encourage new-style agricultural management bodies such as professional large families, household farms, rural cooperatives and agricultural leading enterprises. And to create new management bodies, the authorities should respect farmers' wishes.

Second, the authorities should improve the price control mechanism for core agricultural products such as grains in order to prevent grain prices from dropping to very low or rising to very high levels, because "low grain prices undermine the interests of farmers" and "high grain prices undermine the interests of consumers". Besides, they should gradually establish a subsidy system for target prices and strengthen the control mechanism of agricultural products, and strike a balance between demand and supply in the market by having enough grain reserve, and through imports and exports.

Third, the authorities should encourage the development of environmentally friendly, resource-saving and sustainable agriculture, and support recycling and organic agriculture suited to local conditions, for that will help build a harmonious, eco-friendly social environment in China.

The author is a researcher at the Hunan provincial bureau of grain.