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Grain network to safeguard supplies
(China Daily)
Updated: 2004-06-05 00:04 China will improve its national and provincial
grain reserve systems to ensure the nation's food security.
Han Jun, an agricultural expert at the State Council Research Centre, said
the aim of establishing grain reserves is to keep them at a rational level in
order to guarantee a balance between supply and demand.
The nation's grain production has slumped by 15 per cent over the past six
years, from 512.3 million tons in 1998 to 430 million tons last year.
And fluctuating prices on the international grain market have made matters
even worse in the second half of last year, sparking domestic and international
concern over the nation's food security.
Han said an important step towards ensuring the nation has enough grain is to
break up the State-owned grain trading monopoly.
He added that private enterprises should receive equal treatment when they
try to enter the grain reserve sector, but only once their qualifications have
been verified, Fan Xinhong, an official at the National Development and Reform
Commission, stressed the value of a comprehensive investigation and reporting
system covering the nation's grain reserves. This could help the central
government exercise overall control over the nation's grain market.
"With the intensification of the market reform of the nation's grain
circulation system and the multitude of grain businesses, the central government
should ask grain trading enterprises to report their own grain reserves at given
intervals and make it a prerequisite for market access that certain reserves are
maintained," he said.
Investigations into rural and township reserves should also be highlighted,
Fan added.
State Grain Administration Vice-Director Zhang Guifeng said the two emergency
programmes which the organization launched in September to increase its
regulation of the nation's grain market had been a success.
"The domestic grain market has been stabilized and grain prices are
approaching a proper level," Zhang said.
Zhang also called for effective measures to reduce the post-harvest losses of
grain to increase the nation's effective reserves.
She made the call at the recent launch ceremony of a scientific project on
grain production in Beijing.
While decreasing post-production losses in rural reserves, State grain
trading enterprises will also intensify their efforts to maintain the quality of
the central grain reserves, Zhang said.
Post-harvest losses of grain amount to 18.2 per cent, according to a survey
conducted in 547 counties in 24 provinces by the China Agricultural University.
That means 85 million tons of grain will be wasted annually during storage,
transportation, trading and consumption, said Jin Chuxun, a chief expert on
grain storage technology at the State grain authority.
More than 15 million tons could be saved every year if the grain storage,
processing and transportation equipment can be improved to reduce the loss rate
by 5 per cent.
China Grain Reserve Management Corp, a State-owned enterprise under the State
Grain Administration, has promoted a new grain storage system among grain
reserve agencies across the country.
The system, developed by the Shanxi Qinpeng Science and Technology Co Ltd,
help kill harmful bacteria and prevent the grain from going mouldy without
causing pollution.
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