The current situation and problems of food security in China

The impact of the new crown epidemic on the security of China's agricultural supply, especially food security has become a hot issue of great concern, in particular, the World Food Organization warned that the new crown of the virus is likely to spread on a wide scale on the supply of food ﹑ global trade and food security pose a great risk to the severity of this issue further highlighted. China is a large country with a large population and a large country with large food consumption, food security is the "ballast" for maintaining social stability and the "linchpin" for realizing national development, which is a matter of great importance and should not be taken lightly. Based on the fact that national grain output has been stable at over 130 million kilograms for many consecutive years, per capita grain consumption has exceeded 470 kilograms, far exceeding the international safety standard of 400 kilograms per capita, and the ratio of stock to consumption is also far higher than the FAO's safety level of 17% to 18%. Therefore, China's food security is fully guaranteed, and as long as the bottom line is not touched by large-scale panic buying, it will not lead to a widespread imbalance between supply and demand of food, which in turn will induce a serious food security crisis. Although it is not necessary to over-amplify the impact of the epidemic on China's food security contradictions, but China's food security situation must be cautiously optimistic, on the one hand, the impact of the new crown epidemic on the development of China's food industry will inevitably have a lag in the fermentation period, the subsequent impact will gradually appear. On the other hand, many long-term challenges to China's food security still exist, the impact of the recent epidemic and long-term deep-rooted contradictions superimposed on each other, will likely constitute a greater pressure on China's food security strategic goals can not be underestimated. Any blind optimism about China's food security is extremely dangerous, we must always keep a clear mind, and always maintain a due sense of worry and crisis awareness, not only should be a timely response to the complex aftermath of the impact of major epidemics, but also attach great importance to effectively resolve the medium- and long-term contradictions affecting China's food security.

From a comprehensive analysis from the perspective of development, in addition to the grain seed industry, which is currently of great concern, China's food security is also facing five challenging contradictions that also require great attention:

One is the difficulty of guaranteeing the area for grain sowing.

Under the existing infrastructure and technological conditions, the stabilization of China's grain supply capacity must be supported by a basic grain sowing area. But in reality, mainly affected by three factors, China to maintain the existing grain sowing area facing unavoidable practical difficulties. First, the "de-farming" of arable land is difficult to reverse. Under the condition that the reserve resources of cultivable arable land in China are very limited, the trend of large-scale reduction of arable land brought about by the rapid advancement of urbanization and industrialization is still developing, and even in the process of implementing the linkage between increasing and decreasing the amount of land, the balance of the formal occupation and replenishment is also achieved at the cost of the actual quality of arable land decreasing. The continuous reduction of a large amount of fertile land has formed a significant "crowding out effect" on food production, and the space for increasing the area of cultivated land and thus increasing the area sown with food is extremely narrow. The second is the continuous development of "non-food" cultivated land. Promote land concentration and industrial structure adjustment is the basic direction of China's agricultural transformation and development, due to the comparative efficiency is obviously low, the process of land transfer speed is the process of high value-added cash crop production scale continues to expand the process of the larger the scale of land transfer, the arable land, "non-food" development of the corresponding faster. Thirdly, the rough management of arable land is still serious. Although some regions of China's grain scale operation has achieved rapid development, but the vast majority of areas of grain production of small and medium-sized farmers scattered production of the basic pattern remains unchanged, a large number of rural young and middle-aged labor force out of the countryside, agricultural production in the aging contradiction is more and more prominent, in general, the farmers' incentive to grow food is still not high. Not only is sloppy management very common, but also arable land perennial desertion and seasonal desertion phenomenon also exists in large quantities, thereby expanding the area of grain cultivation to effectively increase the supply capacity to form a serious constraint.

The second is that the food supply chain is facing a comprehensive impact.

Food security requires not only the security of the production chain, but also the formation of a complete supply chain of front-end agricultural materials and back-end processing in order to ensure an orderly and stable food supply. Specifically analyzing the impact of the new crown epidemic on China's grain industry, it can be determined that the impact on the production process is short-term, while the impact on the front and back end of the grain supply chain is more long-term. From the agricultural supply point of view, in the context of the overall economic operation difficulties intensified, the rising trend of production raw materials and labor costs are difficult to restrain, a large number of small and medium-sized agricultural production enterprises into a serious survival difficulties, and some of the enterprises can not even escape the fate of closure. Undoubtedly, the impact of the epidemic on the front end of China's grain supply chain is more impactful and long-lasting, which will inevitably have a greater impact on the subsequent supply of agricultural materials and then transmitted to the grain production process. From the perspective of food processing, the complexity of the food value chain, as well as the importance of trade and transportation, so that the vulnerability of the international food market under the impact of the epidemic has been highlighted as never before. At present, the international food supply has entered a special stage of relative vulnerability, the global food supply chain suffered a serious impact of the epidemic will not only form a severe constraint on China's food processing industry processing raw material shortage, and the rising trend of international food prices will inevitably be rapidly transmitted to the domestic market, resulting in the survival of the food processing industry, which is generally in a state of micro-profitability is more difficult to survive, the result may be to make the existing processing capacity passively tend to shrink, and the impact on China's food industry chain will be more and more difficult. The result may make the existing processing capacity passive tend to shrink, the overall stability of China's grain industry chain to produce a more unfavorable impact on the development.

Thirdly, the main body of the grain scale operation is not enough development capacity.

Relative to the higher value-added vegetables, fruits and other cash crops, the grain industry is traditionally weak industry, especially small farmers decentralized grain production is inefficient, it is difficult to form a competitive industrial advantage, and thus the development of various forms of grain scale operation has become an inevitable development choice. Because of this, in recent years, governments at all levels to promote the development of moderate-scale operation has made great efforts, grain scale operation main body is gradually become an important main body to protect China's food security. However, it must be soberly recognized that, due to the cost of land, agricultural costs, labor costs continue to rise, the cost of food production "floor effect" continues to rise, the profitability of food production space is very limited. A large number of surveys show that the vast majority of large-scale production of grain is mainly relying on government subsidies to achieve profitability and even survival, because incentives for the development of food scale operation of the market mechanism has not yet been truly formed, many of the current large-scale grain business is still in the process of difficult development in general, is still facing the development of insufficient capacity to lead the outstanding problems, which constitutes the balance between supply and demand of Chinese grain This constitutes an important factor affecting China's grain supply and demand balance, which is still fragile. Especially in the epidemic impact and the overall economic downward pressure to increase the background, grain-scale business subjects are facing greater difficulties and challenges, how to accurately support them to strengthen the ability to boost confidence, is China to ensure sustainable food security must be cracked bottleneck of the problem.