China Agriculture View

Acute shortages of reserve farmland and water resources are now the main restraints for the country to ensure its food security, Zhang Ping, minister of the National Development and Reform Commission, said on Thursday while making a report to the top legislature.

Facing a rising population, the central government plans to boost China’s annual grain output to more than 550 million tons by 2020, an increase of 50 million tons over 2007.

By contrast, the cultivable land in the country sharply decreased from 130.04 million hectares in 1996 to 121.72 million hectares in 2008 due to rapid urbanization and natural disasters, figures from the National Bureau of Statistics show.

Also, the current per capita cultivated farmland is about 0.092 hectares, which is only about 40 percent of the global average. Less than 4.7 million hectares in the country can be considered reserve farmland, Zhang told the legislature.

The country had its sixth consecutive grain harvest in 2009, with grain output rising 0.4 percent year-on-year to a record high of 530.8 million tons, the official figures showed.

“The increase of the grain output in recent years is mainly due to enlarging the planted areas, as the government encouraged farmers to produce grain by offering subsidies since 2004,” said Lu Bu, a researcher with the institute of agriculture resources and regional planning at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

“But these grain output increases cannot be continued since China does not have much additional farmland to be cultivated in the future,” he said.

More improvements should be made in other aspects, such as advancing planting techniques and increasing high-yield fields, he said.

Currently, China’s wheat yield is 4.61 tons per hectare compared with the world average of 2.76 tons. Per hectare rice and corn yields are 6.38 tons and 5.28 tons respectively, compared with the global average of 3.38 tons and 3.41 tons.

Although the country now is comfortably ahead of the global average in grain output, the potential demand is still overwhelming, Lu said.

Zhang also said in the report that so far, only 33 percent of the total planted areas in China are high-yield fields. That percentage needs to increase, he said.

Water-saving agriculture should also be encouraged, Lu said. Less than 20 percent of the country’s water resources are focused on large areas of farmland north of the Huaihe River, which account for two-thirds of the country’s total cultivable areas.

Several supporting policies to guarantee the country’s food safety will be implemented, according to the report from the National Development and Reform Commission.

“As more natural disasters hit the country, food security is becoming a top concern among the public, which forces the government to offer more concrete favorable policies,” said Zhang Hulin, a professor with the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee.

Cotton does not receive much attention, probably because nobody eats it or puts it in their cars. For a commodity, prices have not been very volatile, and anyway there are cheap substitutes for an already cheap good. Lately, though, some clothing retailers have threatened to increase prices, blaming the cost of cotton, which could soon reach a 15-year high.

Unlike wheat and barley, cotton is not just reacting to this summer’s crazy weather. True, large parts of Pakistan – the world’s fourth largest cotton producer and second largest importer – are under water. But cotton prices have been rising steadily for 18 months, after four years of consumption exceeding production, according to the US Department of Agriculture. The USDA predicts this year’s stockpiles will be only about 40 per cent of annual demand, the lowest level for 15 years.

The production problem has been centred in the US, the world’s biggest exporter (China is the biggest producer). Heavy government cotton subsidies notwithstanding, many American farmers switched from cotton to soya beans. Price was one factor: with the brief exception of the 2008 commodity-bubble spike (which was less dramatic for cotton than for other crops) cotton prices spent most of the past decade bumping around the levels of the 1980s. Soya beans, meanwhile, are about 50 per cent higher, and easier to grow to boot.

But farmers may be responding to higher cotton prices. The USDA says US acreage has increased by 20 per cent this year. Because India has curbed exports and Pakistan is swamped, American cotton farmers will likely rake it in this year. But the extra supply comes just as the global recovery is weakening and with a dispute on the legality of US subsidies still unresolved. Farmers (and cotton bulls) should make hay – or cotton – while the sun shines.

WUXI, Jiangsu, June 20 (Xinhua) — Yuan Longping, known as the “father of hybrid rice”, said on Sunday that his team was working on a new version of high-yield hybrid rice and might complete it in 2012.

Yuan, director of the National Hybrid Rice Engineering Technology Research Center and a faculty member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, made the remarks at the World Expo’s third theme forum, which opened on Sunday in Wuxi, in east China’s Jiangsu Province.

The new hybrid, the phase-III super hybrid rice, was expected to yield 13.5 tonnes of rice per hectare, Yuan said.

The previous hybrid, the second-generation super hybrid, was released for commercial production in 2006, yielding 9 tonnes of rice per hectare, on average

Rice is a major food crop that feeds more than half of the world’s population, Yuan said.

China is now planting 440 million mu (29 million hectares) of rice per year, with an average output capacity of 6.3 tonnes per hectare.

Among the acreage, hybrid rice accounts for about 57 percent of the total, with an average output capacity of 7.2 tonnes per hectare.

“The average yield of hybrid rice is at least 20 percent more than that of inbred rice, feeding 70 million more people annually,” Yuan said.

China is faced with a challenging grain situation this summer because of strong rainfalls in the south during the summer harvest season. Other problems include droughts in northern grain production areas and lingering low temperatures in the south.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, China needs to maintain an annual grain output of 500 million tonnes to feed the nation’s 1.3 billion people.

China’s summer grain output rose six years in a row to top 123.35 million tonnes in 2009, which was 2.6 million tonnes more than the previous year.

“Hybrid rice will play a key role in ensuring food security worldwide in the new century,” Yuan said.

“If 50 percent of the world’s rice paddies were planted with hybrids, rice production could be increased by another 150 million tonnes, and 400 to 500 million more people could be fed,” he said.

Yuan believes food security is “a war people can not afford to lose” .

“The global economic downturn will always end, but food security is the problem we have to face every second,” Yuan said.

Statistics from the United Nations showed about 1 billion people were suffering from hunger and malnutrition and every six seconds saw a child dying of hunger or related diseases.

With the theme “science & technology innovation and urban future”, the two-day forum focuses on innovations in science and technology.

The previous two theme forums of the World Expo centered on communications and cultural heritages.

Yuan started working on hybrid rice in 1964.

“I often drive my car to go to rice paddies to do research,” said the 80-year-old, “The only difference is that when I was young, I rode a bicycle or motorcycle ….you could attribute it to improving life.”

Hybrid rice has also been commercialized in other countries, including India, Vietnam, the Philippines, Bangladesh and the United States.

“For the benefits of the world’ s people, we are well prepared to help other countries develop hybrid rice,” he said.

A shortage in the supply of a number of farm products like garlic, green beans and corn has partly led to rising prices, the Ministry of Agriculture said on Friday.

The price of green beans and garlic has tripled in the past weeks, business portal China Food Network reported.

Green beans are selling for about 20 yuan ($2.9) a kg and garlic is selling for about 10 yuan a kg, the network reported.

But the average price of 28 vegetables monitored by the authorities has continuously decreased for the past three weeks, latest figures from the ministry showed.

The supply of green beans and garlic has plunged because of lower production and increasing exports, said Ma Shuping, deputy director of the ministry’s crop farming department.

Green bean production alone was hit by bad weather, decreasing by more than 130,000 tons last year, Ma said. At the same time, 230,000 tons more of the produce were exported amid falling imports, she said.

Domestic supply of green beans fell by at least 400,000 tons last year, she said.

“Besides the supply shortage, more people are drinking green bean soup on hot days in line with health trends and that helps drive up prices,” Ma said.

Hoarding in garlic and green beans has also helped push up their prices because the products can be stored for longer periods of time, said Sui Pengfei, inspector of the ministry’s market information division.

“But the hoarding will not spread to other farm products and cause higher inflation, because we have a supervision system for major farm products like beans, pork and sugar,” Sui said.

Earlier this week, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the country’s top economic planner, pledged to crack down on the hoarding of farm products and curb rising food prices. It is the third time in the past two weeks that the commission has addressed the importance of checking rising prices.

Temporary intervention to stabilize prices is necessary and any one found to be involved in serious price manipulation may face criminal punishment, NDRC regulators said.

China’s inflation rate, or the consumer price index, jumped 2.8 percent in April, mainly fueled by the prices of farm products. The country’s inflation target for this year is 3 percent.

The NDRC and the Ministry of Agriculture said an improved system will be set up for supervising prices to keep tabs on any price fluctuations.

Land for vegetable cultivation hit about 8 million hectares with a year-on-year increase of 6.7 percent, latest statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture showed.

SHENYANG – Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu has encouraged local governments and farmers in northeast China to expand grain production to stabilize the nation’s food supply.

Hui made the call during an inspection tour to Liaoning province, a major rice-producing province in northeast China, from Friday to Saturday.

The grain planting situation this summer is challenging as persistent cold weather since last winter has ravaged major production zones in the north.

Hui said Northeast China is a key rice production area. With good quality, rice produced here has a great market demand. Hui encouraged farmers to plant more rice and expand production capacity.

According to the Ministry of Agriculture, northeast China’s grain output accounted for about one fifth of the country’s total food yield last year.

Grain output reached 530.8 million tons in 2009, the sixth consecutive year of growth in grain yield.

As an old Chinese saying that food is the first necessity of man.The agricultural way of life, centered around rice, has played an important part in the country’s history.

For thousands of years, the Chinese have been diligently cultivating their land. Blood, sweat and tears have been shed over their soil in the pursuit of favorable harvests. This reliance on the land for so many thousands of years accounts for China’s strong rural essence. The need for rice production has led the Chinese to pay particular attention to irrigation technologies, improving cultivation. The agricultural way of life, centered around rice, has had a strong influence on the social, economic, political and ideological developments of ancient China. In this sense, traditional Chinese culture may be considered a “rice culture.”

The cultivation of rice led to the development of an economic lifecycle centered around agriculture: ploughing in spring, weeding in summer, harvesting in autumn, and hoarding in winter. In ancient China, vast amounts of land, including the present middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River region and North China region, were suitable for planting rice, with most Chinese working the land in particular ways during the different seasons.

First, rice is a central part of the Spring Festival (or lunar New Year) Eve dinner. On this occasion, Chinese families make New Year’s cake and steamed sponge cake from flour turned from glutinous rice. The cake is called “gao” in Chinese, a homophony to another “gao,” meaning high. People eat these cakes in the hope of a better harvest and higher status in the New Year. The cakes and the New Year’s dinner symbolize people’s wishes for a better future.

Second, rice dumplings are made on the 15th night of the 1st lunar month. This is the first day the full moon can be seen each New Year. People eat rice dumplings, known as Yuanxiao in the north and Tangyuan in the south (“yuan” means of satisfaction in Chinese), hoping everything will turn out as they wish.

Third, zongzi, eaten during the Dragon Boat Festival on the 5th day of the 5th lunar month, is also made of glutinous rice. It is said that people eat zongzi on this day to remember Qu Yuan, an official of the Chu State (about 340 BC – 278 BC), who committed suicide by jumping into the Miluo River. People throw zongi into the river to prevent fish eating Qu Yuan’s body.

Fourth, rice is made into “Double Nine” festival cakes on the 9th day of the 9th lunar month each year. As people have just harvested their crops during autumn they can make these cakes with fresh new rice. Many people also follow the tradition of climbing a mountain on this day.

Finally, people consume porridge on the 8th day of the 12th lunar month. The porridge is taken with rice, cereals, beans, nuts and dried fruit. It is said that Sakyamuni attained Buddhahood on this day, drinking chyle showed to him by a shepherdess, which he believes led him to enlightenment. As a result people bathe Buddha statues and eat porridge on this day.

April 29 (Bloomberg) — Corn gained for a second day, extending yesterday’s steepest climb in nine weeks, after China bought more than 100,000 metric tons of the grain from U.S. exporters. Soybeans also gained.

China’s 115,000-ton purchase is to be delivered by Aug. 31, the U.S. Department of Agriculture said yesterday. Production in China, the biggest corn grower after the U.S., is expected to drop 6.6 percent this year, the department said this month.

“The purchase turned the speculation that China will buy U.S. corn into a conviction,” said Han Sung Min, a grains futures broker at Korea Exchange Bank Futures Co. in Seoul. “China needs to import more and has a long way to go to become a net exporter. The news is driving up corn, coupled with cold and wet weather in China.”

Corn futures for July delivery rose as much as 0.5 percent to $3.6575 a bushel on the Chicago Board of Trade and traded at $3.655 a bushel at 11:24 a.m. Seoul time. The most-active contract jumped 2.9 percent yesterday, the biggest gain since Feb. 22. Corn has lost 12 percent this year because of rising stockpiles in the U.S., the world’s biggest grower and exporter.

Snow and cold weather in northeast China will delay planting of spring crops by more than 10 days, the Ministry of Agriculture said in an online briefing on April 27.

Soybean futures for July delivery were little changed at $9.9425 a bushel in Chicago. The price has declined 5.2 percent this year, partly because of rising global output. Wheat for July delivery advanced 0.3 percent to $4.895 a bushel.

In the physical market, Nonghyup Feed Inc., South Korea’s biggest feed-grain buyer, passed on a tender late yesterday to buy as much as 110,000 tons of U.S. corn for arrival in September and October because of higher-than-expected prices.