November 4, 2009---Recently, with the consent of State Council, General Office of the State Council has officially issued a New National Plan to Increase 100 Billion Kilogram (kg) Grain Production Capability (from 2009 to 2020) (hereafter referred to as the Plan). In order to accurately comprehend and fully grasp the spirit of the Plan, which envisages to ensure smooth execution of the Plan, promote comprehensive grain production capacity and ensure national food security, our reporter interviewed relevant authorities of NDRC.
Reporter: Could you please introduce the formulation background of the Plan?
Answer: Food security is always a top priority for administering state affairs well and ensuring national security. It is also an important foundation for expanding domestic demand and coping with international financial crisis, to which Party Central Committee and State Council have always attached importance. Since the reform and opening up, especially in recent years, grain production in our country has made great achievements and effectively supported rapid development of national economy smoothly. However, it must be recognized that at the accelerating stage of industrialization and urbanization, agriculture is still the weak link in the national economy, grain and food security still faces severe challenges: first, influenced by variable factors such as arable land, water resources and climate, it becomes more and more difficult to increase grain production; second, demand for food show continuous growth, and has long been in the state of tight equilibrium; third, the contradiction between structure of grain varieties and layout of production is particularly acute. Grain price in international market fluctuates sharply, and macro-economic regulation and control become more difficult; fourth, comparative effectiveness of grain production will remain low, policy support needs to be consistently enhanced, and it is a difficult task to establish permanent mechanism of promoting stable development of grain production.
In July, 2008, the 15th meeting of State Council standing committee examined and passed Medium and Long-term Planning Outline of National Food Security and explicitly required speeding up the preparation of the Plan. The Decision of the Third Session of 17th Central Committee of the Party and No.7 Document of Central Government and government work report both explicitly proposed the requirement to speed up the compilation and implementation of the Plan. Vice Premiers Li Keqiang and Hui Liangyu both gave important instructions directly for the compilation of the Plan. In this respect, in July 2008, NDRC cooperated with 14 sections and units including the Ministry of Agriculture, Ministry of Water Resources, Ministry of Finance, Ministry of Land and Resources, Ministry of Science and Technology, Ministry of Environmental Protection, Ministry of Railways, the People’s Bank, State Administration of Grain, National Bureau of Statistics of China, State Forestry Administration, China Meteorological Administration , China Banking Regulatory Commission and China Grain Reserves Corporation compiling the Plan. After the examination and approval of the State Council, State Council Document No. [2009]47 is officially printed and distributed.
Reporter: How do you understand the guiding ideology and primary objective of the Plan?
Answer: The meaning of the Guiding ideology proposed by the Plan are at three levels : first, based on the fundamental reality of our country and emphasizing the policy of relying on domestic markets and realizing self-supply in grains to ensure national food security; second, emphasize the establishment of effective mechanism of long-term stable development of grain production, further strengthen policy support, reinforce investment, improve basic conditions, promote equipment level, transform development pattern in order to strengthen comprehensive grain production capability, risk resistance capability, international competitiveness and capacity of sustainable development; third, emphasize the protection and encouragement of the enthusiasm of 3 parties, that is farmers’ enthusiasm of growing grains, scientists and technicians’ enthusiasm of making innovation and local government’s enthusiasm of supervising grain production, in order to promote the stable increase of grain production.
According to the prediction of Medium and Long-term Planning Outline of National Food Security to grain demands of our country in 2020, the Plan puts forward the primary objective that in 2020 grain production capacity will reach more than 1100 billion kilos and increases 100 billion kilos compared with current production capability. In order to realize these goals, the volume of land tenure needs to be kept over 1.8 billion acres, basic farmland size of 1.56 billion acres, and grain acreage should be kept more than 1.58 billion acres; grain yield level arrives at 700 kilos, grain variety coverage should be kept over 95%, the rate of sic-tech contribution reaches 55%. At the same time, for the convenience of inspection and evaluation, the Plan also proposes the phased target from 2010 to 2015.
Reporter: What are the major approach and building mission for increasing grain production proposed by the Plan?
Answer: For current major restraining factors of national grain production, the Plan focuses on the increase potential of national grain production and put forward major approaches for future increase from 6 aspects: first, improve irrigation conditions, transform medium and low yield field and enhance output capacity of arable lands; second, breed and spread fine varieties, speed up updating and realize matching support of advance breeding and planting; third, improve farming method and increase multiple-cropping index; fourth, popularize major technique measures and enhance success rate; fifth, improve the level of farming mechanization and promote saving cost and increasing benefits; sixth, intensify the prevention and control of plant disease and insect pests in order to reduce loss rate.
Considering factors such as agriculture division features, manufacturing technique and yield potential of our country, the Plan will divide national grain production areas into 4 categories: core areas, minor grain producing counties, back-up areas and other areas. Core grain production areas are 680 major grain producing counties(cities, districts, fields) chosen from 17 major grain producing provinces, the functional localization of which is to improve marketable grain output capability. Minor grain producing counties are 120 chosen from 11 minor grain producing provinces (districts), the functional localization of which is to improve self-supply capability of the region. Back-up areas are part of the pilot areas of provinces such as Jilin, the functional localization of which is to strengthen national grain strategic reserves; other areas are regions apart from the above 3 categories, and its functional localization is to promote the general level of grain production.
According to agricultural production features, restraining factors and yield increase approaches of different areas, the Plan proposes 8 building tasks: building water conservancy backbone projects including large and medium sized irrigation districts, adding and improving effective irrigated areas; building field engineering projects such as small sized farm irrigation facility, transform medium and low yield field; strengthen researches of fine varieties and advanced planting technique, improve scientific research on grains and innovative ability; improve system of fine variety breeding and technique popularization, promote the transformation of agricultural sci-tech achievements; promote full mechanization of grain production, improve the level of mechanical work; perfect system of preventing and reducing disasters, promote the anti-disaster ability of grain production; strengthening the construction of agriculture ecological environment system, protect water and soil resources, contain agricultural non-point (??) source pollution; perfect grain warehousing and logistics system and so on.
Reporter: According to these approaches and building mission, whether the yield increase target proposed by the Plan can be achieved?
Answer: according to the said yield increase approaches to explore yield potential, it is possible to finish the building tasks comprehensively and yield increase target proposed by the Plan. At the same time, it needs to be clarified that influenced by factors such as climates, water and soil resources and farming system of our country, while realizing sum objective of grain yield increase in the next 12 years, there are still problems of imbalance of grain variety structure, among which the production of wheat and rice will be larger than the demands, and there are still gaps between production and demands of corn and soybean. Rice and wheat are important varieties of grain ration, especially for the fact that wheat can not only be used as grain ration, but also suitable to be transformed to fodders with storage property, and has good regulating effect on the balance of supply and demand between years, and production capability properly larger than consumption can help to stabilize grain market. In order to alleviate contradiction of grain variety structure, the Plan proposed to actively promote planting structure adjustment, energetically develop grain production, expand corn planting areas; guide general public to adjust dietary structure, increase the consumption of wheat, rice and corn and flour-made food. Considering the requirements of safety, high-quality nutrition and convenience, there is a need to further develop various purposes of wheat, speed up the development of instant food made of wheat, promote modernization and industrialization of traditional staple food. For ensuring grain ration consumption, the country should actively encourage the development of feed processing with the raw material of wheat; regulate and control grain processing and transforming, properly control the scale of deep processing industry with raw materials of wheat; strengthen control over grain market price, rationally determine price relation of grain varieties according to supply and demand of grain sub-species, raise corn prices at a proper time and to an appropriate degree, encourage farmers to expand corn production, rationally release producing capacity of wheat and rice, and make adjustments to varieties according to international market on occasions realizing grain supply and demand balance.
Reporter: What are the effective mechanisms proposed by the Plan to promote grain production?
Answer: The Plan put forward effective mechanisms to promote grain production from 9 aspects: first, implement overall responsibility of mayors in grain production, clarifying grain security responsibilities of central and local governments; second, insist on household contract management institution, steadily carry forward scale management of land; third, tighten protection of cultivated land resources, stabilize grain sowing area; fourth, speed up agriculture sci-tech innovations, enhance technology and equipment level; fifth, increase infrastructure investment and perfect regulatory mechanism; sixth, expand the scale of fiscal subsidy, perfect policy of incentives and subsidies; seventh, deepen the reform of grain distributing system, perfect grain distributing system; eighth, strengthen macro regulation and control of grain market, safeguard national food security; ninth, guide grain production and consumption, promote structural balance of grain varieties. These effective mechanisms to promote grain production are vital to realize the increased target of per unit grain yield under the premise of limited arable land of our country. Hereby I want to emphasize 3 points: first, effectively protect arable land, ensuring that arable land will no longer decrease, and at the same time, protect and motivate the farmers’ enthusiasm of planting grain, and stabilize sown area of grain, which is the foundation of grain yield increase; second, speed up sci-tech progress, strengthen construction of agricultural infrastructure, improve grain production conditions, promote grain per unit yield level and anti-disaster capability, which is the major approach of grain yield increase; third, deepen the reform of system and mechanism, speed up the exploration of establishing benefit mechanism between major producing areas and key distributing areas, stabilize and improve rural basic management systems, integrate grain producing capability construction funds and improve agricultural infrastructure regulatory mechanism, which is institutional guarantee of grain yield increase.
Reporter: How to fulfill the yield increase tasks and measures proposed by the Plan?
Answer: In order to fulfill the yield increase tasks and measures proposed by the Plan, the Plan clarifies working responsibilities of related departments and governments at different levels. Firstly, provinces (districts, cities) responsible for building tasks should strengthen organizational leadership, carry out responsibilities, set up leading teams of plan implementation under the supervision of related leaders of governments, implement coordination work of planning organization, formulate implementation plan of local districts according to the tasks proposed by the Plan, assign yield increase tasks to every county, establish target responsibility system, clarify main responsibilities and related policies and measures of government at county level and ensure that grain yield increase tasks can be realized. Secondly, related departments of State Council should strengthen guidance and coordination, intensify support according to the principle of division of duty and close cooperation, support grain core areas and minor grain producing counties with funds as per the requirement of the Plan and fulfill the tasks of connecting project arrangements. Thirdly, strengthen the implementation of the Plan and its supervision and monitoring in due time. Related departments of State Council should reinforce follow-up investigation according to divisions of duty and promote local government to fulfill the implementation of the Plan. Performance and construction effectiveness of the tasks proposed by the Plan will be considered as important basis for arranging related investment and policy support as well as evaluating the performance of local governments. Fourthly, start phased evaluation of the Plan implementation and following evaluation of environmental influence, carry out implementation evaluation of each province (district, city) every 5 years, promptly rectify and improve the Plan in accordance of the evaluation results.
Earlier, some media had reported that grain yield increase plans calculations made by provinces, show that grain yield increase will be more than 200 billion kilograms, which is twice as much as the yield increase task proposed by the Plan. They believe that local government’s grandiose style of work is intended to win more investment. Here I would like illustrate 2 points: first, plans of each province are formulated before the national plan, some provinces have already actively compiled plans of their provinces before the compilation of the national Plan; second, yield increase targets, which are based on demand prediction, integrating production with demands and abundant consideration of investment needs and possibility, are determined according to local grain yield increase potential instead of the target proposed by the Plan. I think the initiative of local government to attach importance to agriculture and grain production should be fully affirmed, at the same time, in order to strengthen guidance, the Plan has already explicitly required relevant provinces to clarify yield increase tasks according to the Plan in order to revise and improve plans of provincial level.
