MA XUEJING/CHINA DAILY
Sept. 18, 2024 -- The National Bureau of Statistics recently released data showing that China's total grain production has increased 5.1 times over the past 75 years. China uses only 9 percent of the world's arable land and 6 percent of its freshwater resources to feed nearly 20 percent of the global population. This can only be described as a miracle, made possible by the leadership of the Communist Party of China.
Since the founding of the People's Republic of China 75 years ago, the CPC Central Committee has attached great importance to food production. As a result, grain production has steadily increased, ensuring food security for the country.
China has had a"20-year bumper harvest", with the total grain output increasing almost every year. China's total grain production was 695.41 million tons in 2023, with its self-sufficiency rates in staple food and grains being more than 100 percent and 95 percent, respectively. Thanks to the continuous bumper grain harvest, people no longer have to worry about not getting enough food.
Prolonged warfare before the founding of the People's Republic had made grain production, let alone increasing grain production, difficult. Outdated production techniques and abandoned fields led to insufficient grain production, with famines and floods worsening the situation.
To address the problem, the central government implemented a series of policies to safeguard grain production. In 1950, land reform overthrew the feudal land ownership system, unleashing the productive forces in rural areas and encouraging farmers to increase grain production. But despite the improvement in grain output, the mismatch between supply and demand remained.
So, in 1953, the government introduced a unified grain purchase and marketing policy, which helped stabilize grain prices and supply. The same year the CPC Central Committee issued the "Resolution on Agricultural Mutual Aid" and the "Resolution on Developing Agricultural Producers' Cooperatives" to promote cooperative/collective farming in order to boost grain production. This allowed agricultural resources to be more rationally allocated, making farming more efficient, which in turn prompted farmers to work diligently and researchers to give valuable inputs to raise production.
One such researcher, the legendary Yuan Longping, discovered "natural male-sterile rice varieties" in 1964 that led to the development of high-yield hybrid rice, which was first cultivated in China in 1973. The breakthrough in hybrid rice technology was a major achievement; it not only raised China's total grain output but also helped address the global food shortage problem.
Five years after that, in 1978, 18 farmers from Xiaogang village in Fengyang county of Anhui province put their thumbprints on a contract to individually cultivate collective plots of land, becoming the pioneers of basic rural economic system reform. Due to the painstaking efforts of the Party and the people, China's overall grain production from 1949 to 1983 showed an upward trend, albeit with fluctuations. And despite the three consecutive years of natural disasters from 1959, per capita share of grain increased from 208.95 kilograms in 1949 to 375.97 kg in 1983, ensuring basic grain security.
In fact, in 1985, China, for the first time in history, faced "difficulty in selling the harvested grains", prompting the CPC Central Committee to abolish the compulsory purchase system and replacing it with a contract purchase system, while allowing free purchase and sale for grain outside the contract. By the early 1990s, the increase in grain prices led to a steady increase in grain output.
But since the dual-track pricing system created a huge fiscal burden on the government, the leadership decided in 1992 to reform the purchase and sale system. Subsequently, in 1993, to safeguard the interests of farmers, ensure food security and prevent a decline in grain prices due to increased supply, the State established the grain purchase protection price system. This pricing system has helped stabilize grain production, and safeguarded farmers' interests by preventing wild fluctuation in grain prices.
A year later, in 1994 to be precise, the State Council introduced the "Grain Bag" provincial governor responsibility system through the "Notice on Deepening Reform of Grain Purchase and Sales System", while in 1997 the CPC Central Committee issued the "Occupation of Farmland Compensation System"-written into law in 1998 — to stabilize grain production.
Although grain production reached new highs between 1997 and 1999, the country was yet to solve the problem of "purchase and sale price inversion", which had caused a loss of more than 100 billion yuan ($14.04 billion) in just two years from 1996 to 1998. To address the issue, the State Council issued the "Regulations on Grain Purchase" in 1998 aimed at reforming the purchasing and marketing system of agricultural products, which reversed the situation.
China's influence on the global stage has been constantly increasing with the turn of the century, especially after it joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. The gradual increase in grain imports by China has helped stabilize global grain supply and demand.
The "Green Super Rice for Africa and Asia's Resource-poor Regions", the large-scale international agricultural science and technology poverty alleviation project, was launched in 2008 to cultivate high-yield, high-quality, multi-resistant green super rice. In July 2021, China signed a food aid agreement with the World Food Programme, which benefited about 168,000 people in Congo (Brazzaville) who were suffering the devastating effects of COVID-19.
In fact, China has been helping other countries increase their food production and has made significant contributions to maintaining global food security.
From "not having enough to eat" to "eating well", from "insufficient output" to playing an important role in ensuring global food security, China has covered a long journey, achieving many successes on the way under the leadership of the Party and for choosing the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress in 2012, China has been following a policy of "storing grain in the land and in technology" to better safeguard food security and continuously increase grain supply. In summary, China's agricultural progress over the past 75 years has made significant contributions to global food security.
The author is Qiushi distinguished professor and director of the Institute of Food and Agribusiness Management, Zhejiang University. The views don't necessarily represent those of China Daily.
