Agriculture Chatter at China's "2 Sessions"

Discussion of agriculture has not been prominent at China's "two sessions" this week. The emphases were on raising money for stimulus through bond issues, boosting lending by state banks, stimulating consumption, supporting advanced industries (biological manufacturing, quantum technology, 6G, AI+), addressing local government financial problems, solving the property market crisis, "green development," private enterprises, and higher education.

In his "Minister's Channel" press conference discourse on food security, Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun reported that China had produced more than 700 million metric tons of grain last year despite drought and typhoons. Minister Han went on to stress the importance of raising yields through science and technology and implementing policies to ensure grain is profitable and prices are reasonable. He noted that grain supply and demand is overall in tight balance, but China has a persisting deficit in feed grains while having achieved self-sufficiency in staple food grains rice and wheat. Han blamed last year's weak demand and big imports for depressed farm prices. He said government departments are intervening in the market by buying up grain for reserves and "adjusting" imports and exports.

Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs Han Jun speaks
at a "2 sessions" press conference Source: Farmers Daily.

China Feed Information Net highlighted comments by feed and livestock company executives at the Chinese Peoples Consultative Committee (CPCC). 

Liu Yonghao, founder and CEO of New Hope Group--a leading producer of feed, pigs, poultry, and milk--and Qin Yinglin, CEO of Muyuan Group--China's largest pig-farming company--echoed the science and technology theme. Liu noted the strategic importance of improving China's livestock and poultry breeding system to improve the core competitiveness of the industry and called it "a top issue" for agriculture. Muyuan's Qin cited the importance of promoting intelligent development of the pig farming industry and called for building a scientific breeding system. 

At the National Peoples Congress (NPC) a county-level official from Heilongjiang Province raised concerns about the plight of China's high-end beef cattle industry. He pointed to the weak breeding system and reliance on imports for basic genetic material as problems that need to be addressed to bring down production costs. 

The CEO of a poultry company in Hunan Province cited an apparent contradiction between the detection of chloramphenicol in national food safety testing while he claimed that no chloramphenicol-based veterinary drugs are sold on the market. He claimed that food contaminants are introduced throughout the supply chain, and businesses like his are unfairly hurt by detection of food safety hazards. He called for more clarity of responsibilities, more rigor in sampling of food for testing, and insisted that production enterprises should not be required to prove their innocence.

A village party official in Henan Province told the NPC that policy banks should make more loans to support the agricultural industry, improving connections between banks and industries, streamlining the loan process, and setting quotas to ensure that funds actually flow to agriculture. 

The Party Secretary of China Agricultural University jumped on the theme of improvements in higher education at the CPCC to request "urgent" support for agricultural professors, improvements in the evaluation system for professors, and stable support for young faculty. He recommended collaboration with foreign institutions but also called for Chinese agricultural universities to raise their international profile to create a "Chinese brand" of international cooperation and to promote Chinese-style higher education in agriculture worldwide.

Not to be outdone, a dean from Sichuan University demanded investment to create leading agricultural universities in China's western provinces. He called for constructing major platforms for biological breeding to create self-reliance and self-improvement in the field.