Prof. Yi Hongmei Interviewed by China News Weekly on Northeast Grain Capacity Enhancement

Release date：2024/04/09　　Source： CCAP

Recently, Professor  Yi Hongmei, School of Advanced Agriculture Sciences, vice president of New Rural Development Institute, PKU, accepted the "China News Weekly" interview, on the Northeast grain production capacity to enhance the relevant issues to express their views.

Professor Yi Hongmei said, China's overall food security situation is relatively optimistic, the self-sufficiency rate of food rations to achieve 100%, the self-sufficiency rate of cereals in more than 95%, but with the upgrading of the structure of the population's food consumption, the demand for feed grains continues to rise, the gap between production and demand continues to widen, which is China's food security is facing the main challenge. And China's arable land area is limited, the future from increasing the area of arable land to dig the potential for increased grain production, the space will be relatively small. Total grain production is grain cultivated area multiplied by grain yields, in the case of limited arable land resources, to enhance food production capacity will need to rely on improving yields.

In promoting the scale of agricultural operations and improve yields, Professor Yi Hongmei said that the scale of agricultural operations is not the bigger the better, the need for "moderation". When the scale of operation exceeds a certain degree, on the contrary, the phenomenon of declining yields. This is because the large-scale business subjects can expand the planting area to improve profits, even if the decline in yields, large-scale business subjects can still be expanded from the planting area to earn profits, but also lost the impetus to improve yields, so the scale of operation or to have some limitations.

Harvesters unload freshly harvested soybeans on Oct. 11, 2023, at the head of a soybean plot in Fujin City. Photo/Xinhua

Professor Yi Hongmei emphasized that how to protect the interests of farmers in the process of transforming rural industries, so that farmers can enjoy the benefits of agricultural value-added is an important topic. Prof. Yi Hongmei's research team found that in the next 5 to 10 years, more and more farmers in the main grain-producing areas will gradually withdraw from agriculture and stop farming. For the farmers who still remain in the countryside, over the years, the state has cultivated many new business subjects, which can steadily increase farmers' income while guaranteeing food security through the development of appropriate scale operations in agriculture. She also pointed out that in the process of developing agricultural moderate and large-scale management, attention must be paid to the protection of the interests of aging farmers and small farmers. On the one hand, with more and more young farmers to urban employment, if the process of urbanization encountered problems, not only the young people can not take care of the responsibility of the traditional society, and may even appear in the economic "chewing the old" phenomenon, while the rural pension level is low, the welfare of the elderly farmers will be affected by the larger. Therefore, Professor Yi Hongmei believes that in order to promote farmers to increase their income and ensure food security, we should mainly look for ways outside of agriculture, continue to promote non-agricultural employment, and eliminate systemic barriers to urban-rural integration, so that the agricultural transfer population can be truly integrated into the city. On the other hand, as the large-scale operation of agriculture continues to advance, the number of small farmers' households decreases, and their negotiating power with the main business entities will be weakened. In the process of promoting large-scale agricultural operation, it is imperative to ensure that these farmers can share the prosperity through institutional improvements.

Original news source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/AUVezc92Gs9D4ScFhtFYaQ