On February 9, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao presided over an executive meeting of the State Council to study and plan for policy measures to fur- ther promote the grain productions. One thing worth to mention is that the State Council not only shed light on some diffi culties and problems in the national grain productions, but also pointed out the “propensity to slack off grain production work” in some areas. T e meeting held that after seven years of yield increases, some people become over optimistic and slacking in efforts, underestimating the difficulties and challenges in ensuring grain productions. It shows that the State Council has rung the alarm about the grain production safety.
Since the fi rst month of 2011, the Chinese central government has repeatedly sounded warnings about the grain production. For example, in his New Year greeting message, President Hu for the first time mentioned “grain safety”; the Central Committee’s Document No.1 for 2011 dubbed the poor water conservancy construction as “the biggest obstacle to the stable development

of agriculture and national grain safety”. Premier Wen spent this Spring Festival Holiday with villagers in Jia Xiang County and Qufu City, Shangdong Province, where he reiterated the importance of grain safety. The media reported that immediately before leaving the village, Premier Wen said that “the fi rst day of lunar month we celebrate the festival, while the next day the spring will begin.”
Why the State Council rang the alarm of grain production? It is known that since October last year, the prescription has kept decreasing in the north winter wheat area. Some places, like Shandong and Hebei Provinces, did not witness effective rainfalls for more than 3 consecutive months. As of Feb 4th, the drought-hit winter wheat fi elds in eight provinces have amounted to 96.11 million mu, which contribute to more than 80% of the nation’s total winter wheat planting area and production. At the first meeting after the Spring Festival, the State Council worked out“10 measures” to support grain production, which signals a warning to those who are relaxing in their eff orts in grain production work. As Premier Wen delivered in his New Year messages, the cold weather might easily cover up the seriousness of drought, which plus the good soil moisture might lead to the lack of vigilance in grain productions. Another thing worth to mention is that after years of rising crop yields, some people who are engrossed in holiday amusements might pay no heed to combating drought or protecting wheat seedlings, which will lead to unnecessary losses to grain production because of missing the good irrigation opportunities. What’s more important, some offi cials have no pictures of international food shortages in mind and thereby no awareness of ensuring food safety.
The United Nation’s FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) headquartered in Rome recently pointed out that the world food price index has kept rising for seven months in a row and reached its historical peak this January. Since the beginning of 2011, this rising momentum has not faded. Especially during recent period of time, Australia was seriously hit by flood disasters and many countries in Latin America suff ered incredibly hot weather, which will greatly aff ect the 2011 grain productions of the world big food producers, including Australia, Brazil and Argentina, and increase the upward pressures of food prices. According to data from the World Bank, during the “food crisis”in 2008, 0.8 billion people stayed hungry across the world; while in 2009, this number surpassed 1 billion. In Sep. 2010, FAO and WFP (World Food Program) stated that the world people suff ering from hunger will amount to 0.925 billion in 2010, decreasing by 98 million from 2009. But FAO also warned that if the food prices keep rising, the eff orts to decrease world hungry people might receive setbacks. T e World Bank president Robert Zoellick recently appealed to all countries to further co operations to curb food price increases and prevent another food crisis of 2008. T e serious situation of the world food should keep Chinese offi cials at all levels on alert.
Given the world integration, the international food shortage might exert impacts on the domestic food supply and demand. Also in recent years many local governments gave high priority to “money bag”rather than grain production, which leads to poor protections on the planting areas and even idle fi elds in some regions. Also, a bunch of golf courses were newly built in some places and it is known that the water consumption of golf course exceeds that of the agricultural fi eld by a large margin. What’s more, the farm chemicals bring damages to the water sources. All these show that dangers have been lurking in the food production of some places. Therefore, giving early warnings to local governments is to make offi -cials realize the seriousness of the food situation and the defi ciencies in food production work, and take early measures to cope with the lurking problems and keep the food supply safe and stable.
How to protect the “food safety”? From the national perspective, it requires correct strategic decisions, good implementations of a food production responsibilities resumed by the provincial governors, and operations of policies formulated by the central committee of CPC, including the Central Committee’s Document No.1 for 2011 and the ten measures developed by the State Council. From the local perspective, it requires a comprehensive work of combating drought and protecting seedling since the spring begins, and an implementation of droughtresisting measures in every ditch, every well and each piece of fi eld. T e State Council’s ten measures warn local offi cials to adopt an earnest and down-to-earth attitude in dealing with food safety and price stabilization work. Now the State Council meeting has emphasized the support to food production and solid protection of “food safety”, which merits full attentions from the public.