Self-Sufficiency Is Not Food Security
Recently, Ren Hanjun, deputy director of the State Council Development Research Center, said that “China's grain self-sufficiency rate has fallen below 90%” in the Forum of County Economic Development in China. This means that the imported for food consumption has reached 10% which leads to the food security concerns from the government agencies and some scholars.
What is the food security? In November, 1996, the Rome Declaration and Plan of Action adopted in the World Food Summit is defined as follows: "Everyone at any time can physically and economically access to sufficient, safe and nutritious food to meet the dietary needs and food preferences for active and healthy life. " This means the following three levels of objectives: First, to ensure the food supply; second is to ensure that consumers have the ability to buy and third is to ensure the food is of hygiene and safety.
However, in the practice of Chinese policy, food security is simplified to guarantee the food supply and understood as food self-sufficiency rate. Related views believe that once the proportion of domestic food production in the year and the total food consumption in the year is less than 90%, the risk of food supply and demand will increase. They believe that appropriate food imports are reasonable as China has large population and huge food demand, but rely heavily on international trade cannot ensure the food security of our country.
To ensure the food self-sufficiency rate, the key lies in two points: the protection of arable land and grain yield per mu which is one of the greatest policies impacting on agricultural production and urbanization. For the former, the implementation of the policy is to "stick to the 1.8 billion mu of arable land”; for the latter, is to prohibit the annexation of land, ensure agricultural labor invested per mu and advocated intensive.
Obviously, any policy has a price. So what is the cost of maintaining food self-sufficiency rate? The policy of sticking to 1.8 billion mu of arable land provides an excuse for Ministry of Land and Resources to limit the arable land and convert it to construction land. As a result, the arable land in the outskirts of city slips appreciation opportunities, while the prices of land for construction in the city is high and the local government makes windfall profits in the name of land leasing and let the middle-class home buyers in the city bear the cost. The protest voice based on this make the regulation of real estate of government inadequacy which is one of the greatest marvels in the Chinese economy.
But the most critical data which support the policy is never exact. According to recent data from the Ministry of Land and Resources, in 2011, the amount of arable land in China was 1.825 billion mu, but the more critical data from the second national land survey which started by the Ministry of Land and Resources a few years ago has not been announced. Earlier media reported said, we not released because we cannot release. The survey showed that: the actual arable land in China is about 2.026 billion mu, more than 200million mu comparing with the previous official data which is undoubtedly a slap on the face of the government for their attitude “stick to the 1.8 billion mu”. This is not the first time of confusion statistics of arable land. From the land survey data in 1999, arable land increased from the original 1.425 billion mu to 1.951 billion mu, 526 million mu is extra.
Meanwhile, the maintenance cost of grain yield per mu is astonishing. In order to ensure the grain yield per mu, it is necessary to prohibit the annexation of land, ensure the labor input per mu and increase the amount of fertilizer and pesticide use. On one hand, such a policy sacrifices the agricultural labor productivity and increases the production costs per mu, as a result, the income of farmers is long-lasting slump. Over the ten years, the central No. Document is always concerning agriculture and a lot of agriculture-related subsidies have been handed out to farmers aiming at encouraging the farmers to stick on arable land, but significant increase on agricultural income has not been seen, instead, non-agricultural income has become the main source of income for farmers.
As a matter of fact, the rise of food imports rate does not mean that the domestic food production is incapable. The reason is that the production cost per mu is too high which leads to high food prices. As a result, the imported food prices have obvious advantages. From 2012, the working-age population appears absolute decline for the first time in quite a long period. It means that the price of the agricultural labor force is gradually rising. The costs of maintaining grain yield per mu continue to rise. The Non-agriculture of farmer will become increasingly apparent. The policy has been difficult to maintain the situation.
Even we recognize that China as a big country, the food should ensure a certain degree of self-sufficiency rate, we should also clearly aware of the consequences of this policy, which is based on the cost of low income of farmers, high house prices in urban and food of low quality and high price. Looking at food security by food self-sufficiency rate is obviously a pseudo-problem.
When the food self-sufficiency rate is 100%, some western regions still lack of food. They have land and labor, but they are unable to support themselves, while the eastern coastal cities lack land and labor (agricultural labor), however, even in the “three-year famine”, there are also rare cases of starving people. Today, even if the food does not rely on import, according to per capita grain consumption a decade ago, we can still ensure provide "sufficient, safe and nutritious food". Why the children in the individual areas of the western regions still cannot have enough food for lunch?
Today, for farmers, the more important is to improve labor productivity. On this perspective, the farmer become worker (urban labor and industrial workers for agriculture) is the only way. Although it may be associated with a short-term decline of the grain yield per mu, per capita income and food quality will be significantly improved. For city residents, the large-scale agricultural production and the improvement of labor productivity will help to control the long-term upward trend of food price. They can also buy high-quality food (organic food etc.). Then perhaps we do not have to import so much food.
Originally published on Times Weekly | 2013-2-7
