Significant improvement in agricultural and allied products output notwithstanding, China remains the world’s biggest importer in the segment. As for India, it is the world’s largest buyer of edible oils and pulses. What naturally follows is whenever the market senses big orders are forthcoming from either China or India, prices of targeted commodities will see northward movement. An identical market activity and price movements inevitably happen when India, the world’s second largest importer of fertilisers after Brazil comes to the global market for chemical nutrient procurement.

President Xi Jinping strongly believes that food security of his country is to be ensured by it holding the “rice bowl” in its own hands filled primarily with “grains we produce ourselves.” In the process of exhorting the communist party and the government that “food security is an important foundation for national security,” he will not miss an occasion to remind his colleagues that reaching that goal is a “political responsibility” of the major food growing regions such as Heilongjiang, Jilin and Liaoning provinces in the northeast and Inner Mongolia. Xi’s approach to managing basic cropland food economy is holistic, embracing the task of gradually developing all permanent basic cropland into high quality farmland, reinforcing facilities to make high quality seeds for all crops, supporting development of agricultural science and technology and introducing large-scale application of farm equipment.

Beijing has made improvement in farmers’ income a key component of the “rural revitalisation and farm sector modernisation agenda.” Better job opportunities in agro-based and food processing industries have helped in holding back young Chinese in rural areas from seeking fortune in cities. Beijing also upholds a policy of promoting high value agricultural industries and quality employment generation in rural areas to progressively close the income gap between people living in rural and urban areas.

That China has made considerable progress in food production during the 14th five-year plan (2021-25) is unquestionable, thanks principally to technological intervention and transfer of R&D breakthroughs to farms through effective visit and extension programmes. At the same time, Chinese farm achievements would have been significantly more but for fragmented plots with approximately 90% of rural households engaged in farming on roughly 1.2 acres of land. Beijing has found solution to fragmented land ownership by encouraging villagers to merge their small plots into fairly large “family farms.” This will facilitate farm mechanisation and eliminate loss of crop resulting from multiple small plots. Members of such groups will have the benefit of significant productivity improvement and income. There is, however, no federal definition of family farm size and the number of participating members. Beijing has left the decision to provincial authorities to decide the size of such farms. Chinese officials are at pains to say “family farms” should not be seen as collectivisation. Plots are being joined not by dictates but through persuasion and financial incentives.

Data made available by China’s National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration (NFSRA) will confirm that the country continues to make impressive progress in foodgrains production, particularly cereals such as rice, wheat and corn. For example, coinciding with the recently ended 14th five-year plan (2021-25), China harvested over 650m tonnes of grain every year. In fact, in 2024, the grain output exceeded 700m tonne for the first time. This in turn lifted per capita grain possession to 500 kilograms for the Chinese population, surpassing the globally recognised food security benchmark of 400 kilograms per capita.

The country continues to make progress in grain output, as 2025 saw a record high production at 714.88m tonnes, an increase of 8.38m tonnes over the previous year, according to USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. While application of continuously improving farm technology is driving the growth in production and supply of improved varieties of agricultural products, equally importantly availability of quality seeds, undisclosed state subsidies, minimum support price (MSP) purchases of select crops and a state commitment to make farmers’ efforts meaningful in terms of remunerative crop prices are responsible for the breakthroughs.

Production success in 2024 and then again in the following year has led NFSRA chief to claim China has achieved basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security in staple grains. For many years because of the volumes involved, Chinese imports of agricultural items, particularly grains and oilseeds had had a significant impact on prices and global trade flows. But following China having a resounding success in stepping up the production of staple food rice, wheat and corn, imports of that country is now undergoing structural changes.

Take wheat whose production in the past two decades was up 60% to over 140m tonnes at a productivity rate of 5,939 kg a hectare, maintaining the country’s world leadership in the crop. Even while China has conceded the top slot to India in global ranking, it continues to improve rice production, which at the last count was 209m tonnes at a productivity rate of 7,205kg a hectare. In corn production, China scored an astounding success. Since the start of this century, the country’s corn output has almost tripled to 301m tonnes in 2025.

Following marked improvement in production of major crops, the inevitable has happened – that is, imports were finally reined in. Pull of imports in 2025 was subdued due to improvement in domestic supplies of agri commodities keeping their local prices down. This incidentally happened after imports peaked during 2020-24. An insightful report by Argus says, in the wake of brisk crop disposal by farmers triggered by a bumper harvest, corn prices settled below Yuan2,100 ($302 a tonne) after hitting a low of Yuan2,000 a tonne. Wheat, which like corn has the benefit of MSP, has been more stable pricewise, “but overall price levels have remained low by recent standards.” A country with the population size of China or India will be in import rush for grains if domestic supplies are forecast to fall short of local demand.

Conversely, as is seen with animal feed grains, their imports by China have remained subdued due to demand side factors. The Argus report says: “Grain imports are closely tied to animal feed consumption, which in turn depends on livestock profitability and herd sizes. China’s pig sector has faced shrinking margins since early 2023, after recovering from African swine fever losses earlier in the decade. Breeders have reduced inventories, while the authorities have introduced measures to control breeding capacity and slaughter weights to stabilise pork prices. These developments point to softer feed demand in the near term, limiting the need for imported grains.” Whatever it is, China with annual per capita consumption of anything up to 40 kg is the world’s largest consumer of pork, which accounts for close to half of all meat consumption. (IPA Service)