New law in China to achieve food security

China has passed a law on Saturday on food security. It has entrusted the provincial and local governments with the responsibility of increasing local food production, and there are to be fines on organisations and individuals if they violate the law. The fines range from 20,000 yuan to 200,000 yuan on individuals, and 20,000 yuan to 2 million yuan for organisations. The government seems to have brought in this law to reduce agricultural imports and to make China self-sufficient. China is the biggest importer and it wants to achieve ‘absolute self-sufficiency’ in food production. The Communist Party is to oversee the implementation of this law. It might seem that China wants to cut off all food imports as such through Chinese exports of manufactured goods, and this is sure to be seen as breaking the open market concept.

The law however says that China “will strengthen international food security cooperation, and allow international grain trade to play its role.” The details as to how this to be done is not spelled out. Experts believe that there is nothing new in the food security law. It only reinforces what is already there at the ground level. It doesn’t change the realities on the ground for local officials who were already under significant pressure to deliver on food security. The food security law enshrines existing practices in law, but isn’t set to change anything. Food security was already among the top national priorities, and can’t go any higher,” says Even Pay, agricultural analyst at Beijing-based consultancy Trivium China.

The new food security law however has interesting elements. Apart from the general principle “that puts China first”, there is the provision to import moderately, and to use science and technology to boost food production.

The law states, “It shall adhere to the principle of storing grain in the ground and using technology to improve grain production,” and ensure “basic self-sufficiency in cereal grains and absolute self-sufficiency in staple grains for food use.” The law says that there should be a national grain emergency plan and a food security monitoring system.

China has been continuously working to increase food production to feed its 1.4 billion plus population. China is now the second most populous nation, and India is the most populous one. But its food production has been positive. Its food grain production has been over 650 million metric tons for the last nine years. In 2023, it reached the record level of 695.41 million tons. But there have been fluctuations within the total production. While corn output rose by 4.2 per cent in 2023, wheat production fell by 0.8 per cent and rice by 0.9 per cent. China faces the problem of limited arable land, and the challenge of farmland getting lost to urban expansion. The new food security law wants to protect the agricultural land, and also prevent the change in the use of land from farm to urban.

China’s challenge is to increase its food production with improved technology and limited land, and it is a formidable task at the best of times, especially with the widespread impact of climate change. This has caused rise in temperatures, and made the monsoons erratic, with heavy rains unleashing immeasurable damage to crops. It is this change in weather patterns that makes the food grain production precarious. A country with a huge population like China cannot hope to meet food scarcity through food imports because it would change the global grain price dynamics drastically. Self-sufficiency in food production is as important to China as it is to the world. An inflationary impact on world food prices will impact the poor countries in Africa and Latin America, and parts of Asia.