AgriChina News Alerts

In 1994, Lester Brown wrote a book, "who will feed China", predicting that China would turn to international grain markets to meet the expanding food demand with its increasing population. Many people opposed Lester Brown's view at that time. However, over ten years have passed, people in China have turned to agree with that view. Ensuring enough food for over 1.3 billion people may be the most important task for Chinese government.

China has carried out many measures to increase domestic grain production and will surely take more in the future. However, the country still has to import lots of agricultural produces to meet the strong demand in domestic market, even under the condition of its record high grain production in 2011. China's import value of agricultural produces rose sharply by 30.8% to USD94.9 billion in 2011, expanding the trade deficit to USD34.2 billion, up 47.4% year on year, and this momentum is expected to continue in the future.

According to the target released by the government in 1996, China's grain self-sufficiency rate should not be lower than 95%. However, if edible oil seeds are involved in the statistics, China has failed to achieve this goal. China imported over 60 million tonnes of grain (edible oil seeds included) in 2011, equaling to over 10% of the grain produced in China in the same year. Besides, the import of corn has surged sharply in recent two years, although it only accounted for a small market share of the consumption in China.

It seems inevitable for China to turn to the global market for grain supply. The question is: will the global market have enough grain to meet its huge appetite?