Food security is a matter of national security. In recent years, China's grain production has developed steadily, market supply has been ample and overall operations have remained stable, the capacity to prevent and defuse major risks and challenges has continued to strengthen, and the level of food security safeguards has steadily improved.
The first task is to ensure stable grain production and supply. China has implemented a national food security strategy that is self-reliant, based on domestic resources, ensures production capacity, allows moderate imports, and is supported by science and technology. It has adhered to storing grain in the land and in technology, protected and improved comprehensive grain production capacity, and steadily raised grain production levels. Grain output has remained above 1.3 trillion jin for 10 consecutive years, and since 2024 it has steadily reached a new level of 1.4 trillion jin. In the first half of this year, summer grain output exceeded 300 billion jin for the first time, achieving basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security in staple foods.
The second task is to manage reserves, procurement, and rotation well. China has improved the grain reserve system and mechanism, coordinated market-oriented grain purchases and policy-based stockpiling, and in 2025 various enterprises nationwide purchased a cumulative 830 billion jin of grain, remaining above 800 billion jin for three consecutive years. At the same time, it has advanced grain storage and logistics projects, greatly improved grain circulation support capacity, and increased high-standard granary capacity year by year.
The third task is to strengthen emergency support capacity. China has solidly advanced the construction of a grain emergency support system. Finished grain and oil reserves in 36 large and medium-sized cities can continuously guarantee market supply for more than 15 days. By the end of 2025, grain emergency processing enterprises at all levels reached 6,872, with daily grain and oil emergency processing capacity of nearly 1.8 million tons, ensuring that in critical moments grain can be dispatched, processed quickly, and supplied, building a solid defense line for food security.
At the same time, it must be noted that the tight balance in China's grain supply and demand has not changed. In particular, disturbances such as geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather, and trade policies have intensified volatility in the international grain market, which affects China's grain market through transmission, requiring urgent analysis, judgment, and close attention.
On the one hand, internal pressure on grain production is clear. Constraints from agricultural resources and the environment are increasingly severe. Data from the Third National Land Survey show that China's arable land area decreased by 113 million mu compared with 10 years ago. Although it has increased somewhat in recent years, tightening arable land pressure is a long-term fundamental condition for grain production. At the same time, grain production costs have risen rapidly. The average per-mu production cost of the three major staple grains rose by 20.3% from 2015 to 2024, and the comparative returns from grain farming have long been low. In addition, global warming, frequent extreme weather events such as strong El Nino phenomena, greater frequency and intensity of agricultural droughts and floods, and worsening crop pests and diseases have amplified fluctuations in grain production in specific regions and across different years.
On the other hand, risks to the global grain supply chain have intensified. Non-traditional factors such as international oil prices, biomass energy development, and financial speculative capital have an increasingly significant impact on the international grain market and prices, worsening uncertainty in the international grain market. Apart from major global grain suppliers, other countries have relatively low grain production capacity, and countries tend to increase grain reserves. China faces potential risks in imports of agricultural products such as soybeans, including limited choice of trading partners and reduced reliability of external grain sources.
At present and for some time to come, to hold the bottom line of national food security and ensure a stable and secure supply of important agricultural products, it is necessary to continue consolidating and improving comprehensive grain production capacity, reserve regulation, and emergency support capacity, improve the policy system supporting grain production, and enhance grain import adjustment and supply chain resilience.
It is necessary to strengthen policy support and coordination in areas such as prices, subsidies, and insurance, and smooth fluctuations in agricultural inputs and the grain market through targeted subsidies, reserve releases and purchases, import and export adjustment, and market expectation management, preventing speculative behavior from worsening market turbulence. It is necessary to strengthen contingency plans for extreme scenarios and formulate graded and categorized emergency support plans. It is necessary to advance integrated emergency response, build a unified platform for food security information sharing and emergency coordination, and improve the comprehensive capacity to respond to compound crises.
In addition, the basic situation of ensuring fertilizer supply and stabilizing prices in China is generally stable, but close attention must be paid to imported risks triggered by changes in the international situation, and effective responses must be made to various uncertain and unexpected factors and their adverse effects on domestic fertilizer supply and price stability.
First, strengthen production support. Stabilize fertilizer production, raise the capacity utilization rate of fertilizer producers, and enhance independent supply capacity for potash fertilizer. Coordinate and guarantee the supply of raw materials for fertilizer production, and promote stable supply and reasonable prices for production factors such as raw materials and energy.
Second, improve circulation efficiency. Ensure smooth water and road transportation of fertilizers and production raw materials, actively participate in international coordination, safeguard the security of international corridors, and promote the smooth circulation of fertilizers and raw materials.
Third, strengthen reserve management. Improve supervision of fertilizer reserves, dynamically release national commercial reserves, and give play to the role of fertilizer reserves in ensuring supply and stabilizing prices. Strengthen linkage and coordination among fertilizer reserves at different levels and improve complementarity in reserve scale, varieties, and timing. Manage commercial potash fertilizer reserves well, smooth domestic market price fluctuations, and enhance the regulatory capacity of the potash fertilizer industry.
Fourth, adjust imports and exports well. Strengthen service management for fertilizer imports and exports, expand potash fertilizer import channels, increase sulfur imports as appropriate, and optimize the varieties and pace of fertilizer imports. Guide fertilizer production and circulation enterprises to comply with fertilizer trade management regulations, give priority to ensuring domestic supply, and block risks from the international market from spreading to the domestic market.