China moves to strengthen food security across grain supply chain

China is moving to strengthen food security over the next five years by enhancing its capacity to coordinate grain production, purchasing, storage, processing and sales, as it seeks to build a more efficient and modern grain circulation system.

The country will focus on facilitating grain purchases and sales and maintaining market stability, strengthening grain reserves, and improving the quality and resilience of the grain industry, Liu Huanxin, head of the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, said at a media conference Monday.

Liu said China's grain industry is expected to see its annual industrial output value exceed 4.5 trillion yuan (about $666.8 billion) during the 15th Five-Year Plan period (2026-2030), as the country seeks to better meet growing demand for higher-quality, more nutritious and healthier food.

On grain purchasing and sales, China will encourage more grain businesses to enter the market, organize policy-based grain purchases and storage, improve grain trading platforms, strengthen links between grain production and consumption and maintain order in the grain market.

The country will continue to optimize the structure and regional distribution of grain reserves to better meet market regulation and emergency supply needs, and will steadily expand high-standard grain storage capacity and upgrade eligible older warehouses.

Efforts will also be made to extend the grain industry chain, support major grain-producing counties in expanding processing capacity, promote grain conservation and reduce losses across the entire post-harvest chain, and support the grain industry's transition toward innovation-driven, higher-quality development, said Liu.

China's grain industry has maintained steady growth in recent years, with the total industrial output value of grain enterprises rising from 3 trillion yuan at the end of the 13th Five-Year Plan period (2016-2020) to over 4 trillion yuan at the end of the 14th Five-Year Plan period (2021-2025).

A national crop farming development plan for the 15th Five-Year Plan period released last week calls for steadily enhancing comprehensive grain production capacity, holding the bottom line of basic self-sufficiency in grains and ensuring absolute security in staple foods.

The crop farming plan is aligned with a broader agricultural and rural modernization plan for the same period, which sets a target of increasing China's comprehensive grain production capacity to 1.45 trillion jin (about 725 million tonnes) by 2030.

The crop farming plan also calls for breeding and promoting breakthrough varieties, applying intelligent machinery, conserving water in agriculture and using fertilizers and pesticides more precisely.