The plenary session of the Hulian People’s Assembly voted on 4 October to adopt the Regulation on Grain Security, effective from 1 January 2027. The regulation runs to six chapters and forty-eight articles covering production, reserves, circulation, emergency safeguards and supervision.
Main provisions
The regulation establishes a two-tier reserve system at central and provincial level. The central reserve is composed mainly of staples such as wheat and paddy and is sized at more than six months of urban household consumption; provincial reserves are sized at more than three months of local consumption and adjusted as population and supply conditions change.
Farmland and sown area
For the first time the regulation sets a statutory floor for staple-crop sown area, providing that it may not fall below seven million hectares. Provincial governments must allocate the area down to individual plots, and no entity or individual may leave farmland idle or allow it to go to waste.
Monitoring and early warning
The Ministry of Agriculture and Food, together with the National Development Commission, is required to build a grain security monitoring and early-warning system that continuously tracks sown area, output, stocks, prices and trade, and to trigger an emergency response promptly when abnormal movements appear.