output, but this year's series of natural disasters have had little impact on the summer harvest. Qiu said he expects the autumn grain harvest would increase significantly this year.

Stabilizing food prices

Qiu said the country's five consecutive years of bumper harvests have enabled it to deal more easily with the international food crisis that started last year when a worldwide food shortage swept across many countries and regions. Figures from the United Nations World Food Programme show that international food prices surged 42 percent in 2007. Soaring food prices have caused famines that have affected 100 million people worldwide and triggered food crises in more than 30 countries. The organization has forecast that the world's grain inventory would fall to its lowest level in 25 years by the end of 2008.

But amid this round of the global food crunch, China has remained less affected, thanks to its high grain inventory and stable levels of supply and demand for food. In 2007, the Chinese consumed more than 450 million tons of grains, while the country's total output exceeded 500 million tons, Qiu said. He estimated that grain demand this year would remain at last year's level. Yet, the grain output is increasing, which will further stabilize the food market.

At the High-Level Conference on World Food Security in Rome on June 3, China's Minister of Agriculture, Sun Zhengcai, said the country was fully capable of safeguarding food security based on its domestic production levels. He noted that China raised 22 percent of the global population on 9 percent of the world's total area of cultivated land. As a developing country, China not only had solved the food shortage problem for its 1.3 billion citizens, but also had made big contributions to world food security, he said.

Grain prices as well as food prices account for about one third of the country's consumer price index (CPI) calculation, Qiu said. In the last two years, increases in food prices mainly triggered a rise in the CPI. Under such circumstances, the summer harvest could be extremely good news, and could help stabilize consumer prices and prevent inflation, he said.

More importantly, grain output in China is based on family farm production, so that a considerable portion of grain inventory-about 60 percent-is stored in agricultural households. State inventory makes up 30 percent, and the remaining 10 percent is used in food processing. Because they control the largest portion, farmers are unaffected by market supply and can usually sustain their own grain inventories for several years, Qiu said.

Despite its abundant harvests, the government does not encourage the use of grains to develop bioenergy. Wei Chaoan, Vice Minister of Agriculture, said recently that China strictly controls edible oils to be used for producing biofuel. Wei also stated China sticks to the principle of developing bioenergy by agricultural and village waste, such as animal waste and straw.

Ensuring food security

Participants at an executive meeting of the State Council on July 2 discussed and drafted a mid- and long-term outline of a state food