What countries are self-sufficient in food in the world?

The world grain reserve is only enough for 57 days. The shadow of the food crisis hangs over the world. Our correspondent in the United States and India Xiao Ning Ma Chen Ji Hui Our correspondent in Canada and Germany Tao Fangjian Aoki The British media recently reported that "the world grain reserve has dropped to the lowest level in 57 days". The news made many people feel that their homes suddenly became empty. Mankind has been unable to get rid of the trouble of "high oil price" and now faces the challenge of "high food price". For human beings, if oil is expensive, they can drive less or not, but always starving is fatal. The world food problem is not only important and complex, but also has many uncertainties and imbalances. Just as there are so many fat people in Europe and America, there are still people starving in Africa. There are countries in the world that have sufficient food production and are busy exporting, and there are also countries that rely on international aid. Developed countries have also put forward the concept of using bioenergy, but the price is: according to the current technical level of the United States, only 875 gallons of fuel ethanol can be extracted from the corn produced in 1 mu of farmland, and a most common household jeep in North America can only drive to and from work for a few days with a full tank, but it needs to consume 200 kilograms of corn, which is equivalent to a year's rations for an adult man in Burkina Faso, a poor African country. As the saying goes, "Food is the most important thing for the people". Hearing this contrast, people are very worried: what is the global food security situation? How should humans respond? There have been five food shortages since the Cold War. The Guardian recently reported that the world grain reserve is only 57 days, which is 30% lower than the historical highest level 1962, that is, 8 1 day. Accordingly, food prices and soaring food prices are a disaster for poor countries. In Burkina Faso, the price of a round bread rose from 25 CFA francs in April 2005 to 65,438+020 CFA francs (US$ 65,438+0 is about 505 CFA francs); In C? te d 'Ivoire, the price of one kilogram of beef climbed from 65,438+0,300 CFA francs to 65,438+0,800 CFA francs in just a few days. When it comes to the root cause of the food crisis, many people first feel that natural disasters such as droughts and floods caused by global warming have increased, and land desertification has seriously led to the reduction of cultivated land. An article entitled "Global Panic: The Earth Faced with Hunger Threat" in the Russian Morning Post in September this year reminded the world that abnormal weather is frequently affecting agricultural production, and the harvests of grain-producing countries such as Canada, Australia and Ukraine have all decreased this year. In fact, the world food problem is not so simple to say clearly. Some experts believe that the collision between low reserves and high consumption is the bane of food shortage and frequent high food prices. During the whole cold war, the global large-scale food crisis happened only once, but it has happened five times since the cold war, which is the most powerful proof. Since the end of World War II, the growth rate of global grain output is much higher than the population growth rate, but food shortage still threatens world food security from time to time. The key lies in the crazy growth of per capita grain consumption: according to statistics, in the past 45 years, the world grain consumption has increased from 2.3 million tons per day to 5.6 million tons per day, with a growth rate of 149%. During the Cold War, countries in hostile camps hoarded large amounts of grain reserves to ensure food security. At the end of 1960s, the grain reserves of major countries in Europe and America could supply their nationals for 80.9 days, while those in the United States were as high as 103 days. After the Cold War, countries generally believed that it was uneconomical and unnecessary to maintain large-scale grain reserves, which led to a sharp decline in grain reserves and finally a "grain reserve crisis" called by The Guardian. In fact, this "global food security problem" is largely man-made. The global grain output is unbalanced, and the poor countries represented by sub-Saharan African countries are the real threat to food security. For a long time, about 200 million poor people in Africa depend on foreign food supplies for their livelihood. In terms of grain output, the United States, Australia, Brazil and other countries occupy a monopoly position. The United States alone accounts for about 35% of the world's annual grain exports, and wheat is as high as 60%. The news that the world's grain stocks have fallen sharply has not attracted the attention of ordinary Americans. In a large warehouse wholesale supermarket in Washington, the Global Times reporter asked a female customer who bought eggs. She thinks the price has gone up a little, but she can't tell how much. When the reporter told her that USDA estimated that the retail price of chicken would increase by 65,438+00%, eggs by 265,438+0% and milk by 65,438+04% compared with last year, she was obviously surprised. After all, the food safety crisis is far from Americans. The response of American professionals to the massive reduction of world grain reserves is that "the crisis has begun". Lester, director of the American Earth Policy Institute? 6? 1 Dr. Brown has been a senior adviser to the United States Department of Agriculture for a long time and is now an honorary professor at the China Academy of Social Sciences. In an interview with reporters, he believed that the world today is facing an approaching food crisis, and it is an unprecedented crisis. The chief culprit of all previous food crises in history is all kinds of natural disasters caused by abnormal climate, and the causes of this crisis are multiple, including insufficient irrigation water, the use of food crops for fuel production, population growth and rising demand. These factors add up to make the crisis more complicated, because even the "invisible hand" of the market is unable to change the current situation of water resources and population and realize automatic adjustment. He predicted that the trend of world food prices, like the development of oil prices from low to high, is at the beginning of the rising period. "Turning grain crops into fuel is a crime against mankind", which exceeds the call of "developing bioenergy" and establishing "Organization of Ethanol Petroleum Exporting Countries" advocated by the United States. The United States itself is the largest energy consumer in the world. Some analysts have worried that the popularity of bioenergy will make Americans forget to save again, and energy consumables such as cars will worsen the global food crisis. Dr. Brown also believes that the increasing proportion of corn and other crops used in ethanol fuel production in the United States is an important reason for the distortion of world food prices. The United States is the largest food producer, exporter and ethanol fuel producer in the world today, but Brown said that in the face of the global food crisis, "even the United States is not immune, because the American economy is highly integrated with the world and we live in a globalized world". In addition, the food crisis may also trigger political turmoil in many poor developing countries. Finally, Brown said that if the world food situation is compared to a car, the United States, which plays an important role in world food production, is sitting in the "driver's position", and the United States has the responsibility to maintain the stability of the world food car, instead of solving a problem-dependence on oil, which has led to a more serious problem-global food panic. India is faltering in food production. Many experts also mentioned that developed agricultural countries still have great development potential. For example, the existing cultivated land area in the United States is1.900 million hectares. Due to high production efficiency and surplus agricultural products, some land has been fallow for a long time and can be cultivated quickly once needed. At present, most land is harvested only once a year, and its climatic conditions can be harvested twice a year. It can be seen that the international "food shortage" and rising food prices are still under control. The control handle is in the hands of countries such as the United States and Australia, especially the United States. Once they decide to increase the grain planting area or increase the strategic grain reserve, the crisis will be alleviated. However, it is impossible for mankind to pin all its hopes for solving the food crisis on a few countries, such as the United States. For most developing countries, India is currently a negative textbook for the decline from an "exporter" to an "importer" of grain. India's detour in grain production is worth learning from many countries. India has been self-sufficient in food for a long time because of its superior climate and geographical conditions and the "green revolution" that began in the 1960s. However, since 2005, the problem of food security in India has gradually emerged, and the grain output has begun to fail to meet the daily needs of the domestic population. In desperation, the Indian government changed from a "wheat exporter" to a "wheat importer" for the first time in July 2006, importing more than 3 million tons of wheat to alleviate the domestic food crisis. In 2007, India imported wheat from the international market for the second consecutive year. An official of the Indian Agriculture Committee told reporters that the Singh government has realized that the low grain output "has seriously threatened the healthy development of India's entire national economy" and "food security is even more important than energy security such as oil and natural gas for the lives of ordinary people in India". The main reason for India's food crisis is that the government has been indifferent to food security since the new century. In the past few years, India's economy has maintained an annual growth rate of more than 8%, but agriculture, as the primary industry, has only maintained an annual growth rate of about 3%, and it is not uncommon for farmers to commit suicide because of poverty. Although there is no shortage of food in the Indian market, it is an indisputable fact that the prices of products such as flour and edible oil have risen in turn. Last year, a small barrel of salad oil was 72 rupees, but now it has risen to 85 rupees (1 US$ 39 rupees). According to the reporter's observation, the price of flour has also increased by 20%. Solving the food crisis depends on the joint efforts of all countries. Some Indian scholars also mentioned that in fact, as far as India is concerned, the United States spares no effort to promote its agricultural products to India every year, while India strives to achieve food self-sufficiency and refuses to import a large number of American agricultural products in order to protect the interests of its agriculture and farmers. In this regard, Professor Singh of the Indian Institute of Economic Growth believes that solving the food security problem of the whole international community requires the joint efforts of developed and developing countries. Western developed countries have advanced technology and experience in agricultural production, seed planting, fertilizer and other fields. Cooperation between the two sides can help more countries get rid of the food crisis, which is also the same task facing all mankind. Wieseman, an expert from the German International Food Policy Research Institute, said in an interview with the Global Times that developed countries should be responsible for global food security, and their pursuit of short-term interests has aggravated the world's "food shortage", such as producing biofuels for European cars, which has led to a large number of tropical rainforests being cut down. Recently, an article in the German newspaper frankfurter allgemeine zeitung called on the United Nations to formulate a "basic food law" to deal with global food security. 1979, FAO decided to designate 65438+ 10/0/6 (the anniversary of the founding of FAO) as "World Food Day" from 198 1. The article said that this year's "World Food Day", people have reason to hold a grand celebration, because the good news is that the earth on which human beings depend has sufficient resources and people have mastered enough knowledge to meet the healthy eating needs of more than 6 billion people on the earth; But the bad news is that people don't. The theme of this year's World Food Day is "Everyone has the right to get enough food". Jacques, director-general of the organization? 6? 1 Diouf said on World Food Day: "Our planet has enough food to provide enough food for everyone, but there are still 854 million men, women and children going to bed hungry tonight." In this case, it is even more important to solve the global food security problem. China is a responsible developing country in dealing with the food crisis. It not only tries to constantly improve its food security level, but also takes helping other countries develop agriculture as the focus of "foreign aid". From this year's World Food Day in China, it is known that the Ministry of Agriculture of China has so far sent nearly 900 foreign agricultural experts and technicians to Asian and African countries under the framework of FAO's Special Plan for Food Security, and plans to send 3,000 foreign agricultural workers in the next five years.