•The country's independently developed varieties occupy more than 95 percent of the total crop planting area.
•President Xi Jinping noted that food security has long been a concern of Chinese leaders, who never forget China's history of ravaging famines in the last couple of centuries.
Food security is not only a national but a global concern. Many countries around the world suffer from food inadequacy because they lack dedicated policies that ensure their citizens are not only free from hunger but are also well-nourished.
One strategy of ensuring food security is having self-sufficiency in the means of agricultural production, particularly the inputs that go onto growing of both food and cash crops. While some countries have figured out the need for internal capacity in the agricultural sector, others are still dependent on external support which compromises the independence and sustainability of their initiatives.
Food security requires countries to exercise domestic control over their food supply, while minimising dependency on volatile international supplies. Many countries are currently faced with hunger as a result of the serious disruptions of supply chains caused by the Covid-19 pandemic. Seeds have been one of the crucial inputs whose supply has been affected. The ongoing war between Russia and Ukraine has affected the supply of wheat globally. Together, these two countries account for almost 25 per cent of total global exports.
Seeds have been rightly called the "chips" of agriculture. On April 10, Chinese President Xi Jinping stressed the need for working toward food self-sufficiency and advancing the country's seed sector. The President of the second-largest economy in the world noted that food security has long been a concern of Chinese leaders, who never forget China's history of ravaging famines in the last couple of centuries.
At the Two Sessions held early March, Xi stated that while China has made great progress in recent decades, food security remains a matter of high national priority. He stressed the crucial role of "Chinese seeds" in ensuring the country's food security, calling for sustained efforts in developing the country's seed industry in order to achieve food self-reliance. The country has now achieved seed self-sufficiency in two of its staple grains - rice and wheat.
“China's food security can only be safeguarded when seed resources are firmly held in our own hands,” Xi observed during his recent trip to a seed laboratory in the city of Sanya, the southernmost city on Hainan Island, adding that "to ensure that China's seed resources are self-supporting and under better control, self-reliance must be achieved in seed technology."
But such an initiative takes time, which underscores the need for countries to start early. Highlighting the strategic significance of the work involved, Xi underscored the need of applying the spirit of scientists and researchers of the older generations, including Yuan Longping (1930-2021), who was renowned for developing the first hybrid rice varieties in the 1970s and staving off hunger for millions.
In the recently launched "No. 1 Central Document," the first policy statement released by China's central authorities this year, the country has outlined seed industry development as one of its policy priorities, with specific moves such as implementing an action plan on seed industry, promoting germplasm collection and enhancing intellectual property protection in the sector.
China has made the development of the seed industry a major task of the country's agricultural and rural modernisation. Many companies in the seed industry seek ways to develop new kinds of seeds to meet customers' increasing demands.
In October last year, Dai Yunzhi, chairman of Hebei Linglan Agricultural Technology Co. Ltd was quoted by Xinhua news agency saying that his company creates more than one thousand hybrid varieties every year before dozens are selected and possibly released to the market to meet different environmental and climate conditions. Critically, the company invests 20 per cent of its annual sales revenue in seed research and development.
China has made great progress in the vegetable seed industry in recent years, and has become a world leader in genome research of vegetables. According to data from China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the coverage rate of improved crop varieties has exceeded 96 per cent. The country's independently developed varieties occupy more than 95 per cent of the total crop planting area.
The president of the China National Seed Association, Zhang Yanqiu, said that as the world's second-largest seed market in 2020, the country had more than 6,900 licensed seed companies, with a seed market size of about 120 billion yuan (USD 18.8 billion).
China will strengthen the protection and utilization of germplasm resources, promote seed industry innovation, support high-quality seed enterprises, and enhance intellectual property rights protection.
The writer is the Executive Director of South-South Dialogues, a Nairobi based research and development communication think tank.