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Grain-For-Green Project Will Cause No Grain Shortages: Experts
Chinese agricultural experts said that the large-scale returning of low-yielding farmland to forests and grassland in western area will cause no grain shortages in China.
Under the government-initiated "grain-for-green" program, China 's resource-rich, economically backward hinterland is expected to be afforested with trees and grass in the upcoming decades.
Successive grain harvests over the past few years have provided a solid foundation for the "grain-for-green" project that is currently being carried out in China's vast western regions, said Zhu Zijun, a professor with the Southwest China Agricultural University.
Statistics showed that China's grain output increased at an annual average rate of 2.7 percent over the past two decades, far exceeding the population increase rate during the period.
Since 1995, China has had grain harvests for five successive years, reaching a record high of 500 million tons. The central government had to spend more on building granary. At present, the country's grain reserve stood at 194 million tons.
In a bid to improve the environment in western China, some 3.3 million ha of farmland on the slopes of mountains will be turned into forests and grassland in the coming ten years. Farmers can get 150 kg of grain in subsidy for returning one mu (one hectare = 15 mu) of farmland to forests and grassland.
Chongqing Municipality in southwest China, for example, plans to return 200,000 ha of farmland to forests. The city's grain reserve now reached 2.1 billion kg, so farmers have no need to worry about food shortages, according to Zhang Aoxiang, chief of the planning division with the Chongqing Grain Bureau.
In fact, Professor Zhu said, China's main grain producers are located in central and eastern China.
Excessive farming on slope land has not only posed threat to the environment, but also affected production in some major grain- producing areas, said Prof. Zhu.
But Qinghai, Guizhou, Yunnan provinces and the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, which have less farmland, have to import grain after a great deal of farmland has been turned into forest and grassland.
A grain information website launched by China's largest grain wholesale market, the Zhengzhou Grain Wholesale Market in central China's Henan Province, showed that more than half of the market's grain purchase was signed by provinces and autonomous regions with Hubei, Henan, Hebei and other grain-producing provinces.
China has begun adjusting crop growing structure and increasing fine crop strains in grain-producing areas to maintain the country 's food "security line" which stands at 490 million tons.
The Ministry of Agriculture has selected 100 counties nationwide to implement a "fertile land project" to improve farmland quality by applying organic fertilizer to upgrade grain output.
China has also made great efforts to develop fine crop strains, including wheat, corn, and rice. Wang Guohua, chief of the grain and edible oil division of the agricultural bureau of Chongqing Municipality, said that Chongqing has applied high quality rice strains to over 67,000 hectares this year, 10 times more than the same period last year.
However, an official with the Ministry of Agriculture said that China will still import a certain amount of grain in order to improve competition among Chinese farmers.
Another purpose of the grain-for-green project is to adjust China's agricultural product mix in western region and help farmers become rich.
Minister of Agriculture Chen Guangyao said that only when the farmers who have returned their farmland to forests and grassland become relatively well-off, can the returned forests and grassland be guaranteed not to be returned to farmland again. Grain produced by grain-producing areas can also sell well, he added.
The annul average per farmer's income at Qian Feng Village in the Three Gorges Dam project area has increased five times since farmers returned farmland to grassland and devoted their energies to developing animal husbandry three years ago.
The Ministry is building seven agricultural production bases in western China and developing an ecological agriculture in the area.
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