Sunday, March 6, 2005 · Last updated 8:51 a.m. PT
China says more support needed for farmers
By ELAINE KURTENBACH
AP BUSINESS WRITER
BEIJING -- China has more than enough grain reserves to cover its immediate needs, but farmers need more help if the country is to ensure future food supplies, officials said Sunday.
The communist government has long viewed food self-sufficiency as a matter of national security and worries about feeding its population of 1.3 billion people.
"Judging from current figures, I think that in the near future there won't be any problem in the food supply," Duan Yingbi, deputy director of the Chinese Cabinet's Central Leading Group for Rural Work, told reporters during the annual meeting of China's parliament, which has made boosting support for farmers a priority.
However, Duan said, "in the long term I don't think we can say we've solved the problem of food security."
China's grain reserves exceed the U.N. standard of 17 percent to 18 percent of its annual needs, said Nie Zhenbang, director of the State Grain Administration.
He declined to give specific figures - China has kept the size of its grain reserves a state secret. But he expressed confidence the country would continue to meet its goal of limiting grain imports to 5 percent of total demand.
The grain harvest peaked at 512 million tons in 1998, boosting combined state and local grain reserves as high as 500 million tons, according to state media reports.
By 2003, those reserves had fallen to their lowest level in 20 years as harvests declined due to bad weather and reductions in the amount of land planted to grain.
To encourage farmers, the government has ordered an end to farm taxes, boosted subsidies and promised more money for irrigation and other infrastructure projects. The government raised grain prices and ordered that more land be devoted to grain production.
Good weather last year helped bring in a bumper grain crop of 469.5 million tons, up 38.8 tons or 9 percent from 2003, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.
However, China's countryside is in the midst of convulsive changes.
Local officials frequently seize farmland in the most fertile regions, often the most industrialized and affluent, for property development, golf courses and factories.
Freed from grain quotas, farmers now may switch to more lucrative crops. Many have migrated to cities to find jobs in construction or other manual labor.
Local governments and farmers have neglected irrigation works and excessive farming has depleted soil, Duan warned.
Much land in mountainous and hilly areas is being returned to forest and grassland. That cuts erosion and undoes environmental damage but can deprive farmers of a livelihood: The problem often is not an overall shortage of grain but access and affordability.
"Those regions are isolated. It's not easy to get grain to those regions," Duan said. "Even if grain gets there, the local people don't have the money to buy the food."
Wealthier industrialized regions should invest more in agriculture to ensure grain production continues to increase, he said.
"Those areas used to be our lands of 'milk and honey' but they've focused on industrial development rather than agriculture," Duan said. "The grain consuming areas must mobilize resources to spend on improving farmland." |
