China is placing greater emphasis on food security and self-reliance to feed its 1.4 billion people, according to its annual blueprint for rural policies amid the pandemic, with an emphasis on utilizing new agricultural technologies, reported the South China Morning Post.
The new plan puts a comprehensive revitalization of the countryside at the heart of the national agricultural strategy in the next five years.
The Central Committee of the Communist Party and the State Council, the nation’s cabinet, published their first joint policy statement of the year on Sunday, and it requires all provincial authorities across the country to maintain stable grain-planting acreage and to increase yields to improve the supply of wheat, corn, rice, cotton, edible oils, sugar and meat during the 14th five-year plan period that runs from 2021-25, reported the SCMP.
“The uncertainty and instability of the external situation have increased significantly; we must not take the food-security issue lightly for even a moment,” said Tang Renjian, China’s minister of agricultural and rural affairs, at a press conference on Monday. “We must raise the safety factor as high as possible, and produce and store more grains as much as possible.”
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