Gollum-esque Food Bowl Grip

Chinese leaders--apparently concerned about threats to national food security--have no new ideas after 8 years of Xi Jinping rule. The same Gollum-esque aphorisms about clinging tightly to food bowls were trotted out to address the "complex" and "severe" environment full of "uncertainty." These slogans were introduced in Xi's first year in power in 2013 and have been repeated over and over since then with no change or adjustment.

Get a grip on food security. Don't let anyone grab it!

A cloud of pessimism hung over the annual "economic work meeting" of China's top officials held December 8-10. Speakers moaned about the pandemic of the century, changes at a pace not seen in 100 years, weak demand, supply pressure and changing expectations. Officials were exhorted to "face up to the difficulties" and "restore confidence." 

 An official media account declared this the most pessimistic economic work meeting in the last three years. The article remarked that the meeting's orders to maintain "stability," and protect supplies in the face of a complex external environment full of uncertainties was pretty much the same as the last two years. Leaders are expected to resort to fiscal stimulus next year to pull the economy out of its doldrums.

Xi Jinping recited his well-worn trope of "keeping Chinese peoples' food bowls firmly in their own hands at all times", a catch phrase that first appeared 8 years ago when Xi ascended to power. Since then it has been the main statement of China's national food security policy. 

A Peoples Daily feature on Xi's food security remarks contains mostly incomprehensible aphorisms like, "Passing through dangerous beaches and rushing through difficulties, the grass shakes the leaves to know the deer." 

Another Xi utterance is slightly less inscrutable: "We must not let others become a choke point for the basic national survival issue of eating." This appears to be a worry that the United States will try to bring China to its knees through a food embargo. 

Xi's concerns about food security are also nearer to home. The article cited the latest national land survey results showing that cultivated land is still shrinking. 

Xi commented (sounding a lot like Mao) that farmers "...in a few localities don't want to plant grain in their fields; instead they want to build livestock farms or plant flowers and fruit trees...what about grain?" Chairman Xi moaned. 

In another State media commentary on the food security discussion at the meeting, State Council think tank researcher Ye Xingqing also recited the "food bowl" slogan and recited two more slogans chanted over the past 8 years about "storing food in the ground" and "storing food in technology." 

Ye cited initiatives to boost grain production in order to keep up with steadily rising demand: improving the overall production capacity in agriculture, building "high-standard fields," jump-starting the seed industry (a featured theme at last year's meeting), raise the level of agricultural machinery and equipment, and maintain reasonable net returns for farmers. None of these are new. 

Ye warned that China is undergoing changes not seen in a century and must remain alert to volatility in global supply chains and diversify its sources of agricultural imports. Ye has written about this many times over the years. In a later post we will discuss China's progress in nurturing new soybean suppliers like Ethiopia (civil war) and Tanzania (covid-denying president died of covid).

China's corn production boom resumes

China produced another record grain harvest, according to a communique on 2021 grain production released by the National Bureau of Statistics. Output was 682.9 million metric tons (MMT), up 13.4 MMT or 2 percent from last year. 

Compiled from China National Bureau of Statistics data.

A Bureau official attributed the rise in grain production to strict control of cultivated land by each level of government carrying out their responsibility for grain production. Local leaders prevented farmland from being left idle, demanded that crops be planted on idle land, ensured cropland was not diverted to nongrain crops, reclaimed land for agricultural use, and increased farmers' enthusiasm for planting grain crops, the Bureau official explained. The report said 117.6 million hectares of land was planted in grain, up 0.7% from the previous year. 

Corn production resumed to its historic steep path of growth after a 5-year interruption. Corn accounted for most of the increase in this year's grain production. Soybeans were the only major crop to post a decline in production.

Just six years ago China was suffering from a glut of corn. The agriculture ministry's "supply side structural adjustment" initiative called for cutting back on corn production and rotating corn with beans, minor grains, fodder crops, and other less environmentally damaging crops. Corn was to be cut back in an environmentally fragile "sickle-shaped region" stretching from northeast provinces through semi-pastoral areas, arid northwestern provinces, and the mountainous southwest. The plan called for cutting back corn area from 38.1 million hectares in 2015 to 34.7 mil. hectares in 2020. 

That plan was conveniently forgotten after several years of corn auctions emptied out warehouses and corn prices shot up in 2020. 

The 2020 target was also forgotten because calling attention to it would necessitate explaining a big statistical blip in corn data. The Statistics Bureau's 2017 agricultural census discovered an additional 6.85 million hectares of land planted in corn, and corn statistics were revised upward by 20%. The statisticians decided they had been undercounting corn production for a decade and revised their numbers retrospectively back to the previous census in 2007. The current data published by the Bureau show that area planted in corn in 2020 was 41.26 million hectares, 6.6 million hectares above the target set in 2015. 

The area planted in corn this year is 43.32 million hectares, just 1.6 million hectares below the 2015 peak that produced a huge glut of corn. 

Corn is also leading the way in this year's grain imports, with 26 million metric tons imported in the first ten months of 2021. This year's corn imports (so far) are triple the 7.8 mmt imported in the first ten months of last year and more than double the 11.6-mmt increase in this year's corn output.

The statistics bureau spokesperson noted that the expanded plantings of high-yielding corn contributed to the growth in overall grain output. Chinese farmers added over 2 million hectares of corn (with a yield of 6.29 kg/ha) and reduced area planted in soybeans by 1.47 million hectares (with a yield of 1.95 kg/ha).