Remarks by H.E. Li Keqiang
Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China
At the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations

Rome, 15 October 2014

Director-General José Graziano da Silva,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Dear Friends,

It gives me great pleasure to be here at the headquarters of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in this golden autumn season to attend the event for the 34th World Food Day. Upon arriving at the FAO building minutes ago, I saw the multi-lingual inscription – Food for All – in the hall of the first floor. Food for all represents the noble mission of the FAO as well as the common goal of all countries. Over the years, the FAO, the World Food Program (WFP) and the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), with a strong commitment to this goal, have helped the member states to develop agriculture in multiple forms, thus making outstanding contribution to feeding the billions of people in our world. Hereby, I wish to extend, on behalf of the Chinese government and people, great appreciation to the FAO and other institutions, and to all of you present and your colleagues for your unremitting efforts, and sincere respect for the remarkable achievements you have made.

The theme of this year's World Food Day is Family Farming: "Feeding the world, caring for the earth". I think this theme is based on realities and focuses on the future as well, and it charts a bright future of global agricultural development. Ensuring adequate food supply for the people through family farming also suits China's realities. Over 2,000 years ago, China's philosophers said, food is the first necessity of the people, and this is also what the Chinese have always believed in. As is known to all, China has a huge population but low per-capita arable land availability. To feed the over one billion Chinese people is our top priority and was once the biggest challenge we had to face. When I was young, I lived in China's rural areas for some years, and personally experienced the hard time of not having enough food. A big meal that I had might be easily forgotten, but the feeling of hunger left me a lifelong impression. In fact, China's reform and opening-up that began over 30 years ago was launched from rural areas. Since then, we have been able to achieve great agricultural development through reform and China's grain output has increased from over 300 million tons to over 600 million tons, successfully resolving the subsistence issue of the people. And a piece of most fundamental experience we got was to develop family farming.

In rural reforms that started in the early 1980s, the most important part was to promote the household contract system. Through this reform, rural households became the mainstay of farming and farmers were given long-term and guaranteed land use right and operational independence, thus rapidly unleashing the enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of farmers for production and giving scope to the capabilities of individual farmers. As a result, agricultural production made huge headway in just a few years. Building on that, hundreds of millions of people have been lifted out of poverty and the UN Millennium Development Goals have been reached ahead of schedule. In the recent decade, China has enjoyed continuous increase in grain output, with yet another bumper harvest to be expected this year. Without family farming, these achievements would not have been possible.

We also owe the constant new vigor in China's family farming over the past 30-plus years to innovation in science, technology and relevant policies. We have established a whole system for disseminating agricultural science and technology and extensively promoted quality varieties, agricultural machinery as well as controlled-environment agriculture. Hybrid rice alone has increased annual output by tens of millions of tons in China. We greatly encourage farmers' cooperatives, specialized farming households, businesses and government service organizations to provide farmers with services in terms of agricultural machinery and the processing and distribution of agricultural produce. Every year, hundreds of thousands of agricultural machines are taken to different parts of China to serve agricultural seasons, like birds that migrate back and forth with the seasons. When wheat ripens, an army of combined harvesters would advance from the south to the north of China, helping farmers with wheat harvesting. This not only provides much-needed agricultural machinery to rural households, but also helps raise efficiency in the use of farming machines. The Chinese government is still increasing input in agriculture to support agricultural infrastructure and improve production conditions. For instance, the effective irrigation rate of farmland in China has been raised to over 50% and China's agriculture is now more resilient to disasters.

At the same time, however, we must be fully aware that the further development of China's family farming is still constrained by its small scale, as each household only has an arable land of about half a hectare. Farmers work on their contracted patches intensively so that they can feed themselves, but to further improve the output and quality of agricultural products, small-scale farming is inadequate. To take China's agricultural production to a new level, we must appropriately expand operational scale, enhance labor productivity and land output and follow the path of agricultural modernization. China is at the stage of accelerated urbanization. The forecast is that by 2020, about 200 million people will migrate from rural to urban areas in China's eastern, central and western regions, and this will create conditions for farmers to expand the scale of farming and will in turn bring them more real benefits and greater development space for agricultural modernization.

China is a big populous country with complex national conditions. In the process of agricultural modernization, we will stick to the fundamental role of family farming in agriculture and continue to promote multi-form innovative ways of agricultural operation. On the basis of effectively protecting farmers' land rights and interests and respecting their will, we encourage farmers, as their conditions are ready, to transfer their land management right to others; we also encourage farmers' union and cooperation. In recent years, the number of Chinese household farms has increased to 870,000, with an average scale of 13 hectares (or 200 mu), and farmers' cooperatives, exceeding 1.1 million in number, have become an important force and development direction in agricultural modernization. To promote farm operation with an appropriate scale and develop modern agriculture on the basis of family farming will help better feed China, thus contributing to world food security.

The Chinese government attaches great importance to agriculture and has always managed to ensure basic self-supply of food by relying on domestic production. At the same time, the Chinese government also gives priority to sustainable agricultural development. We have managed to feed nearly 20% of the world's population with a share of arable land and fresh water resources lower than world average. That in itself is intensive operation. But that's not enough. We still need to further promote efficient and intensive agricultural development. At the same time, we will further enhance ecological protection and improvement and effectively implement such projects as returning farmland to forests, protecting natural forests, desertification prevention and control, water and land conservation and grassland management. We will support farmers in their efforts to improve the soil, reduce pollution and develop high-standard farmland on a large scale. Such efforts will promote the sustainable use of agricultural resources, thus not only serving the need of the people in our time but also passing on fertile land, green water and blue sky to our future generations. In that sense, protecting China's ecology is also one way of caring for the earth and protecting our planet.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Food for all is, for mankind, the most fundamental right of survival, which serves as the basis for all other human rights. Great progress has been made in the global agricultural development. Yet hunger and poverty have remained a "silent crisis". They are like the "Achilles heel", deeply troubling all human beings. Over 800 million poor people in the world still face the threat of food shortages and malnutrition. To promote agricultural development and eradicate hunger and poverty remains a major challenge of the world and a common responsibility of mankind. The international community may join hands to enhance agricultural cooperation and pay greater attention to the calls of developing countries, in particular certain least developed countries (LDCs). Efforts should be made to curb trade protectionism and increase the technical and financial assistance to the agricultural sector of the LDCs so as to raise the global agricultural productivity and increase food security.

China's agricultural cooperation with other countries, in particular developing countries, has been on the fast track. In recent years, we have set up agricultural technology demonstration centers, experimental stations and promotion stations in nearly 100 countries in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific. We have sent over 30,000 agricultural experts and technicians to these countries and helped them to train a large number of technicians of their own. The Chinese of my generation had suffered from hunger, so we share the feelings with people who are still suffering from hunger. We hope to see hunger and poverty eliminated in the whole world and we are willing to share with other countries agricultural technologies, experience and development models. In fact, China's improved hybrid rice strains have already benefited many countries. Here I wish to announce that the Chinese government will donate US$50 million to the FAO in the next five years for carrying out South-South cooperation on agriculture and will increase support to the WFP and the IFAD.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

As the largest developing country, China will always be an active force for safeguarding world food security. Although China faces quite a few difficulties ahead in its agricultural development, we will continue to work tirelessly to deliver on our commitment through actions. We will ensure adequate food supply mainly on our own. We are ready to work with countries around the world to create a world of sustainable development that is free from hunger and poverty.

The Director-General just now gave me a book about his country's experience in raising grain output and reducing hunger, and I returned him with an album of beautiful natural sceneries. I believe that only when people have had enough food in their stomach, will they be in the mood to enjoy the beauty of nature and pursue a life of higher cultural attainment. Only when we could ensure the production and supply of food as the most important foundation for human development, will the people enjoy better material and cultural life and the world become a better place for us to live in. Thank you.