Liu Tingqian, a farmer from a small village in central
China's?Hunan
Province, goes to his town's grain station almost everyday to
ask about the grain prices, just like a future trade market
agent.
"If the grain prices maintain the current level, I will grow
more paddies next year," Liu said while unloading a large bag of
rice in front of the grain station of Donghutang Town of Ningxiang
County.
"The prices have far exceeded my expectation," Liu said, wiping
off sweat rolling down his cheeks.
For millions of peasants like Liu in China, there has certainly
been good reason for eased nerves during the past months as prices
of grain and other staple agricultural products have been on a
steady rise for the first time in six years in this world's most
populous country.
In Liu's town, rice can be sold for at least 1,080 yuan (US$130)
per ton while the prices for some high-quality varieties have
topped 1,400 yuan (about US$169) per ton, 10 percent to 20 percent
increase over the past years.
Though most of the province's 65 million-plus people are
farmers, the number of peasants like Liu who live only by growing
crops has fallen since 1997 when a relatively saturated market and
dropping grain prices cooled down peasants' farming enthusiasm.
Many farmers, especially the younger generations, prefer to
undertake manual jobs like washing cars, waiting on tables and
cleaning houses in the booming cities rather than work the fields
back in their hometowns, thus deserting a great number of
lands.
To stabilize the situation in the countryside, China's central
government ordered its major grain producers like Hunan to set
higher "protective prices" than those on the market to buy farmers'
surplus grain.
The special treatment was not enough, however, to cheer up
farmers a year ago when grain prices witnessed a reduction for the
sixth year in a row.
"It was hard to earn a cent as the grain prices dropped while
the production costs increased a year ago," recalled 73-year-old
farmer Zhong Zhenju, Liu's neighbor. "Few people still had an
interest in growing rice then."
"I was sad to see those deserted fields choked with weeds,"
Zhong said.
The mood began to change for farmers like Zhong when experts
estimated the global grain stockpiles might continue to dive in
2003.
The Chinese Ministry of Agriculture estimated that China's?
grain production in 2003 will fall below 450 million tons, a
10-year record low.
Output reduction was also reported in the world's major grain
producers of the United States, Canada, Australia and Europe in
2002. And the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United
Nations lowered the world grain reserves recently, declaring a
historical low.
As a result, prices of wheat and corn rose 17.6 percent and 11.5
percent respectively on international markets.
The shrinkage of grain reserves and production was good news,
not only for million of farmers like Liu and Zhong who had racked
their brains seeking to sell their grain for years, but for the
Chinese government which has long been plagued by how to increase
income for its some 900 million farmers.
In northeast China's Heilongjiang
Province, also one of China's major wheat and rice producers,
the purchasing price for wheat has reached 1,100 yuan (about
US$133) per ton this month, an increase of 32 percent year on
year.
In Jilin
Province, the corn price has risen by 15 to 20 yuan (US$1.8 to
2.4) per ton, while in the provinces of Shandong and Hebei, the
corn price has soared by 50 to 70 yuan (US$6 to 8.3) per ton this
month.
Amid the rising grain prices, millions of Chinese peasants have
regained their enthusiasm to grow crops, similar to the zeal once
seen in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the household
contracted responsibility system had enabled farmers to grow
whatever they liked as the country moved from the old planned
economy era towards a market economy.
Zhang Xiasheng, a farmer in Wenmingpu Town of Qiyang County,
Hunan, lost no time to buy 65 kilograms of high-quality rice seeds
immediately after he harvested his late paddy this fall. He
prepared to increase the acreage of his rice fields by 50 percent
next year.
Rice grain prices also fueled the once quiet rural grain market
in this central province as grain procurement enterprises began to
move out of their awkward predicament during the past years.
"Our rice factory has to gear up the production since orders
from Changsha and Xiangtan cities keep pouring in," said Su
Fanping, head of the grain station of Huaminglou Town, Ningxiang
County.
To buy more unprocessed grain from farmers, procurement teams
have been sent out by Su's station to the farmers and bargained
from house to house to buy as much grain as possible. In the past,
the station only had to wait for the anxious farmers to come and
sell their grain.
"Now it is completely a seller's market," said Luo Jimin, whose
Tianlong Rice Company in Qiyang County processes and sells an
average 80,000 tons of rice every year, and he is considering
expanding his rice growing base to 33,333 hectares in 2004 from the
current 13,333 hectares.
China's agriculture observers, including famous agronomist Yuan
Longping, initiator of the cultivation of Chinese hybrid rice, were
jubilant about the rising grain prices.
Yuan said the central government's plan to restructure
agriculture was misunderstood by some local governments as meaning
to reduce the grain planting acreage.
"This is the major cause of China's falling grain output for six
straight years," said Yuan, who is also academician of the Chinese
Academy of Engineering.
"To peasants, it is absolutely bullish news for grain prices to
pick up," he said. "I hope the central government will grasp this
opportunity to better protect peasants' enthusiasm in farming."
Market analysts contend the rising grain prices should come much
earlier.
"The grain prices had been long underestimated in China for
years," said He Jianwen, deputy director of Ningxiang County Grain
Bureau, Hunan Province.
(Xinhua News Agency November 12, 2003)