Food security an issue shouldn't be overlooked
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Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao recently highlighted the issue of global food security during the 8th Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM 8) Summit and suggested that countries need to join hands to tackle food security and make every single effort to raise grain production.
According to the winter forecasts provided by many countries' climate scientists, this winter will be a severely cold winter that some regions will suffer from the millennium lowest temperature. If the cold winter really comes, there will be a large impact for the next year's crop market because climate has a strong relationship with the food production.
In September, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) cooperated to tackle hunger issue and build food security system in the Asian-Pacific region. In recent years, continuous flooding has occurred in the Asian-Pacific region; and as a result, many grain-producing regions were destroyed. These disastrous events directly challenged the issue of food supply. Moreover, climate scientists have estimated that the extreme weather will affect more countries and regions around the world.
Recently, the currency struggle of many countries makes them change their policies continuously. Europe and America saved their economies by printing more money, which will make many commodities become the target of the capital gathering and lead to the market balance disturbance. It has been reported that foreign capital has involved in China's autumn grain collection and storage, making local small- and medium-sized grain collection and storage enterprises to suffer.
According to a Xinhua News Agency report, self-sufficiency rate of grain in China has reached 95 percent. However, food security issue must be emphasized, especially in a country like China where there's a large number of population.
Although it is normal to trade food as long as it meets WTO framework, because food is also a commodity. It is also true that China's grain enterprises suffer from the impact of global capital. For example, the soybean processing industry is already monopolized by the foreign enterprises. These tell us that China has many things to do to protect food security.
For the domestic side, the Chinese government needs to fight to prevent natural disasters in order to increase the grain production. Also, it is essential to promote the agricultural science development and technology, and cultivate more scientists such as Yuan Longping. In addition, the government needs to improve grain distribution system in order to help private food collectors and storage enterprises to become stronger.
Food is a strategic commodity for every country around the world. Countries and the international organizations should cooperate and exchange their knowledge about the agricultural science and technology to raise grain production.
(This post was first published in Chinese and translated by Lu Na.)
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