Author: Rong ping source: official account: Rong Ping (id:rongping898) has been authorized to reprint
Our country is a large agricultural country, which has a tradition of paying attention to food production since ancient times. Even in the spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period, we have raised food security to the height of national strategy. “Millet is the ability of the king” was put forward by Guan Zhong at that time.
Nowadays, China’s grain output is increasing, and the food security of the Chinese people has been fully guaranteed. The problem of hunger that has plagued us for thousands of years has finally been solved. Together with the original meaning of “food is paramount for the people” to describe the importance of food security, now it has gradually been given a new meaning of pursuing delicious food. However, we should never forget the importance of food security. The impact of the recent war between Russia and Ukraine on the world food market is a good revelation.
According to the Turkish communications agency on July 11, Turkish President Erdogan called Russian President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian President Zelensky respectively on the same day, calling on both sides to implement the United Nations’ plan for the “black sea food export safety corridor”.
The “black sea food export security corridor” plan was first proposed by United Nations Secretary General Guterres. Guterres recently called on all countries to abandon all measures endangering global food security at the ministerial meeting of the global food security action: Russia should open channels to allow Ukraine to export food safely from the sea, and Western countries should also give up restrictions on the export of food and fertilizer from Russia and Belarus.
At present, Guterres’ appeal and Erdogan’s mediation are still effective. Ukrainian media reported that eight foreign ships have arrived at Ukrainian ports through the Danube Black Sea channel and began to ship grain.
This is obviously good news for the current volatile global grain market. Another good news is that Russia and Ukraine will conduct further negotiations on grain transportation. Ukrainian Foreign Ministry spokesman nikolenko said recently that the military delegations of Turkey, Russia and Ukraine and the United Nations delegation will hold talks on food transportation issues in Istanbul on the 13th local time. Ukraine hopes to solve the food transportation problem under the auspices of the United Nations.
Turkey has always liked to engage in horizontal and vertical relations, and they have also successfully achieved a lot of benefits among major countries with this move. But this time Turkey is not trying to “scrape” any oil and water from Europe, America, Russia and Ukraine, but the war between Russia and Ukraine has really affected its vital interests – food security.
Ukraine in trouble
Ukraine is the third largest grain exporter in the world, and its unique natural conditions make this land known as the “granary of Europe”. According to the data released by the food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, Ukraine’s exports of wheat, corn and sunflower oil accounted for 12%, 15% and 50% of the global market respectively, providing food supply for 400million people in the world. More than 50% of the grain of 36 countries was imported from Ukraine. Before the outbreak of the war between Russia and Ukraine, Ukraine supplied more than 45 million tons of grain to the global market every year.
However, as soon as the war began, Ukraine’s agricultural production was greatly affected, which was reflected in the reduction of production and transportation. According to the prediction of Ukrainian Institute of agricultural economics, the wheat production in Ukraine is expected to be 20million tons in 2022, with a year-on-year decrease of 37.5%; The corn output is expected to be 30million tons, with a year-on-year decrease of 23%; 10.5 million tons of sunflowers, a year-on-year reduction of 36%. Considering such a reduction in production, the international grain market is bound to usher in a new round of growth next year.
At present, most of the grain exported by Ukraine was harvested last year, and the impact of this year’s grain production reduction will not be reflected until next year. However, grain transportation has already experienced great problems.
Zelensky issued a warning in early June that the poor transportation of Ukrainian ports has led to 20million tons of grain being unable to be exported, and the grain stuck in the port may increase to 70million to 75million tons in the autumn. At present, Zelensky’s words are not alarmist. According to the data of the Ukrainian Ministry of agricultural policy and food, Ukrainian grain exports are usually 6million tons per month, while in March 2022, grain exports were only 322000 tons, 970000 tons in April, 1.2 million tons in May, and only 1.41 million tons in June.
A Ukrainian farmer named kirkner said in an interview with the global times that the harvest this year was fairly good. If the grain buyer could arrange to transport it away, he could at least keep the principal, but the problem was that the buyer could not transport the grain, and the warehouses everywhere were full. He was even willing to offer a 30% discount to attract the buyer to buy grain.
From this, we can see the impact of the war on Ukraine’s exports. The grain export of central Ukraine is carried out around the Dnieper River, and the grain can reach the port of Kherson through the canal; Grain in the eastern region is exported through the two major ports of dniesrov (located in Mariupol) and Berdyansk (located in berjansk); The western region mainly passes through the Dniester River and is transported away through Odessa port. The four points marked in the red circle are the four ports. However, at present, except Odessa, these ports have been occupied by the Russian army, and the unoccupied Odessa port has been afraid to restore its transportation capacity because of the war.
Sea transportation is the cheapest way of transportation. In the past, nearly 90% of the grain exported by Ukraine was transported by sea. Although it can also be transported by land, Ukraine’s railway transportation inherits the Soviet Union, and its train track is wider than that in Europe, which was originally designed by the Soviet Union to prepare for the Third World War, but now it affects Ukraine’s grain transportation: the gap in track width makes Ukrainian trains unable to drive directly to other countries, so Ukrainian trains must be reloaded at the transfer station and replaced, which greatly affects the efficiency of railway transportation.
Russia is also a major grain exporter, but although Russia’s transportation has not been affected, on the one hand, western countries have imposed the most severe sanctions on Russia in history and cut off most economic and trade exchanges with Russia, so it is naturally impossible for them to import Russian grain; On the other hand, Ukraine’s grain export gap is so huge that it is unrealistic to expect Russia to fill it. What can we do to fill the gap of more than 40 million tons? Even if agriculture increases production, its range will not be very large, not to mention that crops always need time to grow, which is not transferred by human will.
Russia and Ukraine, the two major grain exporting countries, have been affected. Coupled with the global inflation, which has increased the price of bulk commodities, the global grain market cannot help but see a huge rise in prices.
Political game
However, although the war did affect transportation, it is unreasonable to attribute the backlog of grain entirely to the war, including some political games.
Putin has repeatedly told foreign dignitaries and media that no one has stopped Ukraine from transporting food. “The people who planted mines in the port were not us, but Ukrainians. I asked them to clear the mines many times and let the ships carrying grain pass. We made sure that there was no problem for the ships to pass.”.
This statement is naturally not a lie. First of all, the Ukrainian army’s maritime power has basically been destroyed at the beginning of the war. There is no reason for the Russian army to mine in Ukrainian ports. Do they want to bomb themselves? These ports will be used by the Russian army in the future. In fact, the mines in the port were laid by the Ukrainian army itself to guard against the Russian army.
Secondly, Russia has no reason to stop Ukraine’s grain exports. Prevent Ukraine from exporting grain and make a profit while grain prices rise? Russia doesn’t like this kind of petty profit. In the future, Ukrainian farmers on these lands are likely to become Russians, and even these lands may be separated from Ukraine. Russia is not so short-sighted as to incite contradictions between these people and itself. Russia must maintain good local order, at least not cut off the wealth of the people.
And according to the nature of Western media, if the Russian army really intended to prevent Ukrainian farmers from selling food, they would have already begun to cover the sky. Isn’t this kind of news more attractive?
Combined with the above, it is not difficult to find that although the Ukrainian government is facing the transportation difficulties caused by the war, they obviously did not give full play to their subjective initiative to actively transport grain abroad. Odessa port is still in its own hands, and the Russian army can never fire on grain ships or grain trains; On the land, the ports of Belarus can be transported by railway. The railway track width of Ukraine and Belarus is the same, and there is already a railway line connection, which is no problem.
In fact, Ukraine always has a way to transport grain abroad, but they have not played their full initiative. To some extent, this is actually ZELINSKY’s trump card: Western countries can help me solve the security problem if they want food, otherwise we can’t work hard on food transportation. Apart from the consideration of containing Russia, food is probably the most “useful” place for Ukraine to western countries.
However, agriculture is the pillar industry of Ukraine. If it is interrupted for a long time, it will certainly be unacceptable to the domestic people, especially as the summer grain harvest season is coming to an end, and the granaries everywhere are full, Ukraine cannot continue to drag on like this. Therefore, Ukraine has recently relaxed its mouth on the problem of grain transportation. And those countries waiting for Ukrainian food also can’t afford to delay. Even if these countries are not prepared to help Ukraine militarily, they have to sell the face of the food in the warehouse. How many countries in Europe don’t buy food from Ukraine? Turkey imports a higher proportion of grain. No wonder Erdogan is so active. He even proposed that if Russia does not trust grain ships, Turkey can check these ships as a third party to prevent them from carrying weapons. This one-stop service is also rare.
It is believed that in this game that many parties cannot resist, countries will soon compromise on the issue of grain transportation.
food safety
The battle over grain transportation between Russia and Ukraine has now affected the global grain market. Many grain exporting countries are worried about the problem of grain shortage and have stopped grain exports.
For example, Vietnam, the world’s third largest rice exporter, has ordered to ban the export of rice in any form, and India, the world’s second largest wheat exporter, announced a ban on wheat exports, and then stepped up efforts to restrict the export of flour. Countries that are still exporting grain also took advantage of this opportunity to raise prices.
Under such circumstances, many people began to worry about China’s food security. The harvest “silage” incident that caused the whole network to discuss a while ago can see everyone’s concern about food. Is there enough food in China?
Don’t worry, it’s absolutely enough.
Next, we will explain the guarantee of China’s food security from the two aspects of import and self production, and the confidence in the face of global food market turbulence.
According to the latest data of the General Administration of customs, China’s grain import volume from January to may 2022 was 66.52 million tons, basically the same as that of the same period last year, but the amount of China’s grain import increased significantly from January to may, reaching 3467.65 billion yuan, an increase of 25%.
Although the total amount of imported grain in China is large, the types of imports are not rations, but soybeans and corn, accounting for 60% and 20% of the total imports respectively. Soybeans are used to process into edible oil and feed, while corn is mainly used as feed. If a very extreme situation occurs, that is, China completely stops importing grain from abroad, it will not affect China’s food security in a short time. Professor Wang Hongguang, director of the international bioeconomy center of Tsinghua University, said that China’s per capita food share in 2021 was 483 kg, exceeding the food security line of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of 400 kg per capita, “it’s OK to eat enough”. Although people who lack fat intake will need more carbon water, the staple food of two and a half kilograms per person per day is certainly enough. Moreover, in order to avoid being maliciously raised prices, China imports grain separately, and will never give all its import shares to one country.
China’s rations, that is, rice and wheat, are basically self-sufficient. Moreover, while Russia and Ukraine were negotiating on the issue of grain transportation, China’s state grain and material reserve bureau released such an exciting news that China’s main grain producing areas have purchased more than 30million tons of wheat, an increase of 2.78 million tons year-on-year, and the purchase progress has exceeded 40%. After the news, the agricultural planting sector rose, which also shows the market’s confidence in agriculture.
However, even so, China is still preparing for a rainy day and actively storing food. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that China has half of the world’s wheat reserves and 70% of the world’s corn reserves, while the United States’ wheat and corn reserves account for only 6% and 12% of the world’s total. China has the largest grain reserves in the world, and believes that China is “best prepared for this round of global difficulties”. We don’t know where the U.S. media got the data, but there must be a grain hoarding. We don’t panic when we have grain in hand.
At the end of the article, the author has something to say
As the saying goes, only when the tide fades can we know who is swimming naked. After a war between Russia and Ukraine, many countries have exposed many problems because of the lack of self-sufficiency in food, and some countries have even experienced social unrest as a result.
China is not India, so it can’t do that its own people can export food without enough food. Therefore, it began to layout food security long ago. The famous red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land was put forward in 2006, and China’s focus on the three rural issues (agriculture, rural areas, farmers) has been started since the late 1990s. From 2004 to 2022, it has issued No. 1 central document with the theme of agriculture, rural areas and farmers for 19 consecutive years, It emphasizes the status of the “top priority” of the three rural issues in the period of China’s socialist modernization. Realistically speaking, this is the people-oriented attitude.
However, some people may call it “gongzhi” more appropriate. They actively call for the cancellation of the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land, believing that China does not need to maintain such a high food self-sufficiency rate, and can completely import from abroad. This statement has been echoed by many people for a time. In the final analysis, it is still the set of ideas that “it is better to buy than to rent than to build”, which cannot withstand scrutiny. The four largest grain traders in the world are American ADM, American Bangui, American Cargill and French Louis Dreyfus, which control 80% of the world’s grain transactions. Once there is a grain shortage in China, will these enterprises be kind enough to sell grain? They will only collude to raise prices.
Moreover, China’s total annual grain demand is about 600 million tons. Such a large demand cannot be met by one or two countries, even if all grain exporting countries add up at present.
Chairman Mao once said, “if we are opposed by the enemy, it is good, and that proves that we have drawn a clear line with the enemy. If the enemy vigorously opposes us and makes us a mess and worthless, it is even better, and that proves that we have not only drawn a clear line with the enemy, but also that our work is very fruitful”.
These people desperately attacked China’s food policy. The Wall Street Journal mentioned above also accused China of hoarding food, which just shows that we have done well and poked their pain.
China began to play the grain war as early as the spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period. The famous allusion of “Guan Zhong’s three policies to revitalize Qi” is an example. Guan Zhong subdued the Lu and Liang dynasties by serving silk, bought deer to make Chu, and bought fox skin to subdue the country. With only a little economic means, these countries were willing to give up grain production, and the result was naturally conceivable.
Strong wind knows strong grass, and fire sees real gold. A Russian Ukrainian war has fully verified the importance of food security, “grain, the life of the people, and the treasure of the country”.