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According to FAO's estimation in 2019, approximately 14% of the world's annual food production is lost from production to retail. Reducing this loss by just 1 percentage point equates to an increase in production of over 27 million tons of food, enough to feed 70 million people for a year. In October 2021, China's State Council issued the "Action Plan for Grain Conservation", implementing targeted measures at every link in the industrial chain to promote grain conservation and reduce loss. The following is an excerpt from this document:
Strengthening the conservation and reduction of waste in agricultural production
- Promoting the conservation of seeds in agriculture. Improve the approval standards for major grain crop varieties, highlighting those with high yield and efficiency, broad resistance, and low-loss harvesting characteristics, and accelerating the selection of varieties suitable for seed conservation and mechanised planting. Compile a catalogue to guide the research and development of machinery for promoting seed conservation and loss reduction, and increase efforts to develop and promote advanced precision sowing machines. Integrate and promote key technologies such as factory-based centralized seedling cultivation for rice, precision sowing for individual maize kernels, semi-precision sowing for wheat, and simultaneous sowing and fertilising.
- Reducing harvest loss in the field. Promote precise grain harvesting, strengthen the integrated support of agricultural machinery, agronomy, and varieties, and increase the implementation rate and coverage of key technologies. Develop and revise technical guidelines for reducing machine harvesting losses in rice, maize, wheat, and soybeans, and guide farmers to harvest timely and choose the right machinery. Encourage local areas to improve their emergency sowing and harvesting equipment and emergency service supply capabilities. Accelerate the promotion and application of intelligent, sustainable, and efficient harvesting machinery. Incorporate operator training into the project for fostering high-quality farmers to improve operators' ability to operate in accordance with regulations.
Strengthening the reduction of grain loss during storage
- Improving post-harvest grain drying conditions. Include grain drying facilities and equipment in the pilot range of subsidies for new agricultural machinery products to improve drying capacity. Encourage major grain-producing counties to promote the application of environment-friendly drying facilities and increase the promotion of green heat source drying equipment. Encourage new types of agricultural operators, grain companies, and post-harvest service centres to provide grain drying services for farmers, and uniformly manage the land and electricity used for drying according to agricultural standards.
- Supporting and guiding farmers to store grain scientifically. Strengthen the training and services for scientific grain storage by farmers. Carry out the selection and demonstration of grain storage containers of different scales for farmers. In the northeast region, promote the use of efficient grain storage tools that are easy to use and conserve grain for farmers, and gradually solve the problem of "grain laying on the ground".
- Advancing the conservation and reduction of loss in warehouse facilities. Encourage the implementation of actions to upgrade green warehouses and pilot standardized grain storage. Upgrade and renovate old warehouses and promote the digitization of grain storage. Promote the classification and standard management of grain warehouse facilities to improve the quality and efficiency of warehouse usage.
Strengthening the reduction and protection of grain loss during transportation
- Improving transportation infrastructure and equipment. Build dedicated railway lines, dedicated wharves, bulk grain transfer and supporting facilities to reduce grain loss during transportation.
- Improving the rural grain logistics service network. Improve the rural transportation network and improve the level of grain transportation services.
- Conducting demonstrations of standardized logistics. Develop standardized, ICT supported bulk grain transportation service systems, explore the application of efficient grain loss reduction logistics models, and promote seamless connection of bulk grain transportation equipment. Conduct demonstrations of efficient logistics connection technology in multi-modal transportation at key routes and nodes in the "transporting grain from the north to the south".
Accelerating the reduction of grain loss during food processing
- Improving the conversion rate of grain and oil processing. Develop and revise processing standards for staple foods such as wheat flour and edible oils, improve moderate processing standards, reasonably determine processing precision and other indicators, guide consumers to gradually move out of the dietary misconception of excessively pursuing "fine rice and white flour", and improve the yield of grain and oil. Enhance the level of digital management in the grain processing industry. Promote the intelligent transformation of flour processing equipment, promote low-temperature rice milling equipment, encourage the application of flexible rice processing equipment, guide the moderate processing of oilseeds and fats. Develop the whole grain industry and launch the "National Whole Grain Action Plan". Innovate food processing and distribution models, support catering units to fully utilize central kitchens, and accelerate the construction of staple food distribution centres and cold chain support systems.
- Strengthening the reduction and substitution of grain for feed. Promote the reduction and substitution of corn and soybean meal in pig and chicken feed, fully explore and utilize alternative resources such as coarse grains, miscellaneous cakes, and by-products of grain processing. Improve oil extraction technology to improve the quality of miscellaneous cakes. Improve the national feed ingredient nutritional value database, guide feed companies to establish diversified feed formula structures, and promote precision feed formulation technology and precision mixing processes. Accelerate the promotion of low-protein daily ration technology, improve the efficiency of protein feed utilization, and reduce the proportion of soybean meal added. Increase the supply of high-quality forage to reduce the amount of concentrated feed used in cattle and sheep farming.
Strengthening the comprehensive use of grain resources. Effectively utilize by-products of grain and oil processing such as rice bran, wheat bran, germ, oil cake, potato residue and potato juice to produce edible products, functional substances, and industrial products. Control the development of biomass energy processing industry using grain as raw material.
Promoting technological innovation in grain conservation and loss reduction
- Strengthening technical support for grain production. Promoting the development of key generic technologies for sowing and harvesting, such as pneumatic sowing, low-loss feeding, efficient cleaning, and operation monitoring. Breaking through terrain matching technology, developing advanced and applicable technical equipment that matches the agricultural production mode of hilly and mountainous areas, focusing on precision manufacturing of key components, and reducing grain machinery harvesting loss in hilly and mountainous areas. The development of machinery for the harvest of crops affected by disasters such as lodging is being strengthened. Enterprises are guided to tackle the key problem of high-efficiency and low-loss grain harvesting machinery, optimizing cutting platform, threshing, separation, and cleaning capabilities.
- Promoting quality upgrading of key technologies for storage and transportation loss reduction. Developing safe, low-temperature, high-efficiency and energy-saving intelligent grain storage technology. The level of pest and mildew prevention and control in warehousing is being improved, and new drugs are being developed. The promotion of new types of safe grain storage warehouses and the application of horizontal ventilation grain storage technology is being advanced. Mobile drying equipment is being developed and testing and validation is being accelerated. Research on the standardization technology of transportation tools and the development of loose grain multi-modal transport connection and handling technical equipment, grain anti-grading and anti-crushing storage devices and equipment are being pursued.
- Improving R&D of grain processing technology and equipment. The development of whole grain raw material quality stable control, food quality improvement, activity retention and other technologies, and the development of nutrition preservation type whole grain foods are being pursued. Research on key technologies for raw grain value-added processing and development of key technologies for coarse grain food production quality control, nutritional balance configuration, biological processing, etc. are being conducted. Layouts are being made for national agricultural high-tech industry demonstration zones dominated by grain processing, promoting the industry towards high-end, intelligent, and green transformation, and improving the technical level of by-product utilization.
Original text link:
"Food Conservation Action Plan"
