Original title: Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs: my country’s grain output reached 669.5 million tons last year and stabilized at more than 650 million tons in six years
Source: CCTV
CCTV News: On September 7, the State Council Information Office held a press conference on the relevant situation of the International Food Loss Reduction Conference.
At the meeting, Ma Youxiang, Deputy Minister of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, introduced that food loss and waste reduction are common concerns of the international community. Food loss and waste are widespread around the world. According to the State of Food and Agriculture in 2019 issued by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, the global food loss in the supply chain from after harvest to before retail accounts for approximately of the total output. 14%, the ratio is very high. The new crown pneumonia epidemic has made this problem even more prominent. In this context, the following three main considerations for convening the first International Food Loss Conference are:
One is the importance of saving food and reducing losses.Food security is a big deal. Achieving food security requires “addition” and “subtraction” to be done together. The “addition” is to do everything possible to increase production. my country’s grain output reached 669.5 million tons last year, and it has stabilized at more than 650 million tons in six years. “Subtraction” means doing everything possible to save and reduce losses. The world‘s annual grain output is about 2.8 billion tons. If the world’s food is reduced by one percentage point, it is equivalent to reducing the loss of 28 million tons of food. It can feed about 70 million more people. If my country’s grain loss is reduced by one percentage point, it would be equivalent to reducing the loss of 6.5 million tons. Based on 400 kilograms of grain per person per year, it can feed about 16 million people. In this sense, a reduction is an increase in production. Grain production requires inputs of production factors such as water, soil, fertilizer, medicine, and seeds. Calculated on the basis of 3 acres of arable land required to produce one ton of grain, 2 acres of arable land in my country produces about one ton, and the world average yield is low. One percentage point loss of world food is equivalent to saving more than 80 million mu of arable land. Therefore, saving food and reducing losses means saving precious water and soil resources, reducing the consumption of inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, and promoting sustainable agricultural development. This is the importance of food savings.
The second is the urgency of saving food and reducing losses.Since last year, the new crown pneumonia epidemic has spread globally, the international food supply chain has been hit, prices have risen, and supplies have tightened. The world food security situation has been deteriorating. Nearly 20 countries have adopted food export restrictions. In the spring and summer of last year, some countries had sudden deserts. The locust plagues have superimposed the impact of the global epidemic, and conventional disaster prevention and control are difficult to implement, which has exacerbated food security panic, and individual countries have even entered a state of emergency. According to a United Nations report, at least 155 million people worldwide faced severe food insecurity last year, a record high in the past five years. At the same time, the problems of food loss in developing countries and food waste in developed countries have long existed. Developing countries have poor facilities and poor technology, so there are more losses. Developed countries are not short of money or food, and there is more waste. These problems have not been effectively resolved, so reducing food loss and waste is more significant for ensuring world food security.
The third is the complexity of saving food and reducing losses.Food saving and loss reduction involves not only production, harvesting, transportation, but also storage, processing, and sales; it involves both supply and consumption; it involves facilities and equipment technology as well as ideological traditions; it involves both domestic industrial chains, supply chains, and International trade involves a very wide range. Therefore, food saving and loss reduction is a systematic project and an international project.
Ma Youxiang said that in the current context, my country’s main consideration for holding the International Conference on Food Loss and Loss is summarized as: food reduction and loss are important because they need attention, because they are urgent, they need to be resolved, and because they are complicated, they need cooperation.
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