This aerial photo taken on Oct. 19, 2023 shows a villager drying harvested corns at Dongsheng Village of Zhaodong City, northeast China's Heilongjiang Province. Heilongjiang has remained China's top grain producer for 13 consecutive years. The total grain output of Heilongjiang accounted for 11.3 percent of China's national grain output in 2022.(Photo: Xinhua)

China has purchased more than 100 million tons of autumn grain, in a bid to protect the interests of farmers and secure food supplies, the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration (NFSRA) said on Saturday. 

Since autumn grain hit the market, purchases have been active and prices have remained relatively stable, said the NFSRA.

In Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province, one of the nation's major grain producers, local governments have set up more than 200 grain depots with total storage capacity of more than 8 million tons.

Han Fulong, an official from a grain storage enterprise in Heilongjiang's Qinggang county, said that the grain purchase process - from collection to distribution - can be finished within one hour, and the purchase volume has increased by 6 percent year-on-year, or 100,000 tons, according to a report by the NFSRA. 

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's autumn grain output in 2023 stood at 1.04 trillion jin ($521 million tons), up 1.9 percent year-on-year. 

China's total grain output in 2023 reached a record high of 1.39 trillion jin (695 million tons), having exceeded the target of 1.3 trillion jin (650 million tons) for a ninth consecutive year.

The annual Central Rural Work Conference held from December 19 to 20 emphasized strengthening food security by ensuring the area of farmland, in parallel to the increase of the grain yield. Efforts will be made in agricultural disaster prevention, mitigation and relief.

Thanks to years of endeavor, China feeds nearly 20 percent of the world's population with 9 percent of the world's cultivated land area and 6 percent of the world's fresh water resources, said Liu Huanxin, head of the NFSRA, in an article published on Wednesday.

Food security has been and will remain among China's most fundamental interests, and rural work in 2024 will focus on strengthening food security, analysts said.

"Next year's rural work will focus on improving food security capacity through enhancing the resilience and stability of the supply chain," Li Guoxiang, a research fellow at the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

Global Times