It is always the top priority for the government to ensure people have access to enough food, especially in a populous country like China, Tuesday's central rural work conference emphasized. The tone echoes the annual central economic work conference in mid-December, which listed guaranteeing national food security as the primary major task for 2014.

Both conferences elaborated a national food security strategy based on domestic supply and moderate imports, aimed at ensuring production capacity and speeding up the development of agricultural science and technology.

Ensuring that China is self-sufficient in grain supply is extremely important for national security. China's focus on food security shows the central leadership has strong crisis awareness and attaches importance to people's lives and security.With a huge population, the importance of food security cannot be overemphasized. Catastrophic famines in the past tell how devastating they can be.