To mark World Food Day on Tuesday, the State Administration of Grain proposed that all employees in the grain sector voluntarily avoid eating for 24 hours in order to experience how important food is.

Although another bumper harvest is expected this year after eight fruitful years in a row, the per capita amount of grain Chinese people consume has soared over the last 30 years and the country is now a big importer of grain. In 2010, it imported one-sixth of the grain traded in the world market.

Meanwhile, the boom in realty over the past three decades has resulted in local governments selling as much land as they can to boost their revenues. With the rapid dwindling of arable land posing a potential threat to the country's food security, the central government has reiterated the importance of keeping the total area of arable land no less than 120 million hectares.

The overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is another problem that poses a potential threat to the country's food security in the near future and surveys point to a stubbornly expanded use of them in the past decade. Relying on chemical fertilizers for agricultural production depletes the fertility of the soil and is by no means sustainable.

The central government shows the importance it places on agriculture by making it the subject of its No 1 document released at the beginning of every year.

Still, long-term policy needs to be made to prevent the total area of arable land from being further reduced and encourage the development of agricultural technology.

More initiatives along the lines of the State Administration of Grain's 24-hour hunger experience could also help raise people's awareness of the importance of food security.

(China Daily 10/16/2012 page8)