Agricultural worries threaten to undermine China's plan to eliminate rural poverty in 2020. Chinese journalists warn that Chinese farmers need higher subsidies to prevent them from abandoning grain production, and rice and soybean supplies from abroad could be interrupted during the Covid-19 crisis. African swine fever has decimated pork supplies, spring weather conditions look bleak, fast-moving "fall army worms" threaten to gobble up crops, and desert locusts are swarming on China's back doorstep in South Asia. An already-fragile spring planting period may be worsened by disruptions of farm input distribution and displacements of labor due to covid-19 lockdowns. The CCP's "Document No. 1" -- composed last December but not released until early February -- focused on "resolutely win[ning] the war on poverty" and achieving a "comprehensive all-round well-off society" in the target year of 2020. The document contained initiatives to narrow the urban-rural income gap, build rural infrastructure, improve services for rural people, clean up the countryside, treat rural migrants more fairly, and improve governance of villages. During the peak of China's covid-19 epidemic in February, Xi Jinping wrote an "important article" in the communist party journal "Seeking Truth" that admonished officials to keep working to win the war on rural poverty while fighting the virus, an indication of its high priority. Also in December, an article warning about an emerging crisis in agriculture appeared in the communist party magazine Outlook. The article noted that China now has just 5 provinces that can supply surplus grain to the rest of the country, down from 13 in the early 2000s. The authors warned that weather problems and natural disasters were becoming more common, and agricultural insurance does little to compensate for risks. The article mentioned heavy rains in southern China that severely affected the late-season rice crop last fall. They observed that many farmers that consolidated plots of land into large operations abandoned their farms because low grain prices did not provide enough income to offset rising land rents, labor costs, and input prices. The authors reported complaints that subsidies are insufficient to give farmers incentives to produce, and claimed that governments of agricultural counties don't have money to invest in farming infrastructure and land improvements. One paragraph of the No.1 Document echoed concerns in the Outlook article demanded that officials maintain food security as a top priority. It called for giving grain production performance stronger weight in provincial officials' job evaluations. News articles appearing in March 2020 reiterated the warnings about low returns for farmers, complaining that the price of 500g of grain is less than the price of a bottle of water. Another article purportedly based on an investigation in northeastern provinces pronounced that "reduced enthusiasm of farmers is an indisputable fact" and claimed that farmers who get only 10 percent of their income from farming have slacked off on grain production. They do the bare minimum, "relying on heaven to eat," even though they don't leave many fields completely untended. The articles called for increases in farm subsidies and broader coverage of more crops and regions. On March 20, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued its second open letter to "farmer friends" urging farmers to rebound from the coronavirus epidemic, act quickly to plant spring crops, and carry out pest and plant disease prevention measures.
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