World Grain - August 2015 - 34

REGIONAL REVIEW: NEW CHINESE AGRICULTURAL POLICY

hold farms to a level at which modern
agricultural practices can be adopted
will therefore be key.
"Thanks to the government's framework for the regulation of land use rights
transfer, large areas of land can now be
planted collectively, greatly facilitating
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and productivity," Rabobank said. "New

types of farming organizations, such as
cooperatives, family farms and specialized large farms, have emerged since
land use rights transfer has become possible. The coexistence of these new types
of farms has quickly become a new, important source of agricultural production.
A Rabobank report published in March
2014 suggested that the issue of food se-

curity in China is driving the development
of a hybrid model and will change the way
the region feeds itself in the long term.
"China's food security will ultimately
rely on the professionalization of its agricultural system through the infrastructure of research, education, and farm extension services, supplemented with the
import of lower value feed grains from
the U.S. and Brazil as China continues
to buy and build a global supply chain,"
Rabobank said.
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LQ &KLQD KDYH EHHQ VLJQL¿FDQWO\ KLQdered in previous years, said Rabobank
analyst Dirk Jan Kennes.
"China's farming industry is characterized by an unsustainably high level of nitrogen fertilizer (N-fertilizer) usage and
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nutrients (N-uptake). Its low agricultural
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average arable land area per farm (restricting machinery usage) and relatively
low-level farmer knowledge."
"China's agricultural production is set
to see a number of effective improvements under government land reform
policies," Rabobank said. "Farmers will
have the opportunity to transfer collective land to large-scale, professional
farms. In turn, this 'professionalization' will encourage more operational
economies of scale. One of example of
this would be the development of family
farms focusing on agricultural activities
with greater economic value, like intensive food-grain production in rotation
with high added-value crops like potatoes, onions and livestock farming."
In conjunction with this, governments,
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have been actively exploring ways to use
fertilizer effectively, and some best practice standards have already been formulated. However, China's fertilizer application
rate is still accelerating and the current
low levels of N-uptake means it is absorbed into the environment, causing soil
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surface and groundwater resources, and
rising greenhouse gas emissions. Imports
of low-value grain from markets with bet-

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World Grain - August 2015

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