Research On The Gap Between Output And Consumption Of Grain Of China——from The Aspect Of Food Security

Grain is of great importance in people’s life. Food security, which means to supply people with enough and multiple kinds of nutritive food at anyplace and for anytime, cannot be founded with the lack of grain. Some people, including Lester Brown in his famous report ’Who will feed China", hold the view that China will not have the ability to serve the Chinese people with so many grains. Is this true? This article will show some new viewpoints on this issue by discussing the output of grain, the consumption of grain, and the gap between the output and consumption of grain in China.In2012, China produces589.58million tons of grain. Will this output continue to grow or it will drop in the future? To answer these questions, a linear model is made in Chapter Ⅱ to study the factors that will affect the output of grain in China. This study shows that the grain output of china will continue to increase in the future. One reason is that the increase of agricultural production efficiency will enhance the per unit area yield of grain; the other reason is that the sown area of grain crops will not drop significantly.It is found that the sown area of grain crops, the total employed persons of the primary industry, the consumption of chemical fertilizer, areas affected, and the policy are the five main factors that have significant impact on the output of grain in China. However, the total agricultural machinery power and irrigated area do not have a significant impact on China’s grain output.Evidence shows that the per unit area yield of grain will have a large chance to increase in the future.The consumption of chemical fertilizer contributes most to China’s great increase in output of grain since1978according to our study. Several problems, such as inferior quality and unscientific use, now exist in fertilizer application. The imbalance of ratio is the most serious one:too much nitrogen fertilizer is used compared with phosphate fertilizer and potash fertilizer.The factor of the total employed persons of the primary industry is found to have a rather small impact on the yield of grain. This can be explained by the excessive supply of labors in rural areas and the low work efficiency in the primary industry. With the decrease of agricultural population and the improvement in education of farmers, the labor factor will play a more and more important role.The total agricultural machinery power and irrigated area do not have a significant impact on grain yield. This is resulted in the insufficiency in irrigation facilities, low irrigation efficiency and the quite small scale of agricultural operation unit.If these problems can be thoroughly solved, the per unit area yield of grain in China will increase a lot.Besides this, it also shows that the sown area of grain crops has no chance to decrease significantly in the future.In2.4, a further study into the decisive factor of the sown area of grain crops is made. By referring to the study of Futian Qu in relationship between the change of the area of arable land and the increase in industrialization and urbanization, the relationship between the sown area of grain crops and the increase in industrialization and urbanization in China from1985to2012is studied. The result shows that the situation is relatively optimistic in the middle and the west parts of China though the sown area of grain crops in the east part of China is decreasing relatively fast.Then it comes to the study of the consumption of grain in China. What will happen about it in the future? Which factor contributes most to to its increasement? In Chapter Ⅲ, factors that affect the consumption of grain are studied. The research uncovers that the increasing consumption of meat, eggs, milk of rural Chinese is the key force that drives the consumption of grain of China to increase.Rations, livestock and poultry feed, industrial uses, seed grain uses and loss are the main consumption ways of grain. Former studies have found that the need of rations of the Chinese people has been decreasing since1978, but the consumptions of meat, eggs, milk, sugar and wine is becoming more and more.The industrial use of grain is now under strict control because of the Chinese government’s firm concern of food safety. As a result the industrial use of grain will not grow significantly in the future.The amount of seed grain uses has a high relevance with the sown area of grain crops and accounts for less than3%of the total consumption. This number will be even smaller in the future with the improvement of technology. Similar situation takes place in the consumption way of loss.As a result, the most focused topic in Chapter Ⅲ is the way of consumption of the livestock and poultry feed. At present, the livestock and poultry feed mainly contains corn and soybeans. In this Chapter the theory of "the income level of satiety" founded by Japanese scholar Ange Takuro is used to study the relationship between the consumption of various kinds of food and the Chinese people’s average income. The study result reveals the rural population will consume more and more meat, eggs, fish and milk in the future. And this will give rise to the increase of consumption of grain in the way of the livestock and poultry feed.The foregoing study shows that the output of grain will increase in the future, however the increasing consumption of grain of livestock and poultry feed will lead the total consumption of grain to increase. Is it possible to control the gap between the output and consumption of grain in a reasonable scope? Will this gap threaten China’s food security?Chapter IV gives some opinion about this. It is found price is a useful instrument in adjusting this gap.By using "the partial adjustment expected adaptive model", it is found that the gap between consumption and output of grain is related to its lagged value and the price of grain. The gap will decrease while the price increases, and it will increase while the price decreases. This found gives an effective way of method to adjust the gap in a short time.In conclusion, China has the ability to ensure the supply of grain for the Chinese people to live a relatively high standard of life. However, it will be very difficult for China alone to supply all the grain needed for livestock and poultry feed when the Chinese people increase their consumption of meat, eggs and milk in the future. When the gap between the consumption and output of grain appears, adjusting the price of grain is a good way of reducing the gap besides importing grain.