Harvesting machines work in Heilongjiang province on Aug 28, 2023. [Photo by Pan Xiuping/For chinadaily.com.cn]

The top legislature is mulling a range of measures proposed by the central government to tackle "risk points" in the country's food supply system, including growing food in once-arid places, raising farm animals in high-rises, and creating seafood farms in deep oceans.

The proposals came as the world's largest food consumer is working to insulate itself from food shortages likely caused by regional conflicts, rising protectionism and more frequent extreme weather patterns.

"Cementing food security is an eternal task that must not be relaxed at any time," Zheng Shanjie, director of the National Development and Reform Commission, told a panel of lawmakers on Monday.

He made the remarks while delivering a report during an ongoing session of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on behalf of the State Council, China's Cabinet.

Zheng said the country's food production sector is generally stable and more resilient to outside risks than a decade ago.

Grain output has stayed above 650 million metric tons for eight consecutive years, which is about 486 kilograms for each Chinese annually. That is above the 400-kg threshold used by the international community to assess food security, he said.

However, Zheng noted that the Russia-Ukraine conflict, which is in its 19th month, has exposed vulnerabilities in the global, and China's, agricultural industry. The increase in extreme weather events, crop diseases and pests in recent years has also sounded alarm in the food sector.

The problems are complicated by the fact that the rural regions, where crops are planted, are rapidly aging, and the thin profits of food cultivation have dampened farmers' desire to enlarge their operations, he said.

To secure crop yields, Zheng said, the central government is considering building large and medium-sized irrigation zones in places with adequate water and soil resources, improving pest control work with more technological input, and working out long-term solutions to ward off agricultural disasters in a nation with 1.4 billion people.

It will also implement flood and drought-control projects and promote efficient irrigation techniques, he said.

Zheng said that the country's food demand will keep rising due to progress in people's living standards, and that the food supply will face pressure for an extended period of time.

He called for efforts to crack down on activities that occupy farmland for nonagricultural purposes, and prevent farmland from being left idle.

To make up for the country's relatively limited farmland area, authorities need to broaden the source of food to include forests, lakes and oceans, and work out technologies to plant food even in arid areas, Zheng said.

Farmers will also be encouraged to produce food on nonagricultural land, raise cows and goats in high-rises and fish in deep oceans, he said.

Zheng said that China still lags behind the world's agricultural powerhouses in terms of breeding technologies and farming machinery production.

He said the central government plans to commercialize biological breeding technologies with the aim of producing a number of homegrown food species with "breakthrough importance".

To shore up farmers' incomes, the central government will help grain-producing regions foster food processing industries to enlarge profit margins. The policy of a minimum food purchasing price will be improved for the same purpose.

Other efforts include curbing food loss and waste, and promoting a healthier diet, which can ease food demand to some degree, he said.

Since early August, downpours caused by typhoons Doksuri and Khanun damaged crops in rice-producing Heilongjiang and Liaoning provinces in Northeast China. Large areas of grain fields were also inundated by floods in Zhuozhou, North China's Hebei province, as well as in Mentougou district in Beijing.

The torrential rains hit about a month before harvest season, with grassroots authorities racing to salvage crops by pumping water from fields and bringing in agricultural specialists.