BEIJING (Reuters) — China will upgrade its grain silos countrywide in a bid to ensure safety and security of grain supplies in the world’s most populous country, the government said on Monday.
A policy to achieve self-sufficiency in grains has resulted in years of bumper harvests and record high stockpiles, but a lack of storage space threatens grain quality.
“Safety of the country’s grain supply faces severe challenges,” according to a granaries construction plan for 2015-2020 published by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and Finance Ministry.
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A serious lack of grain silos and drying facilities at some existing granaries are causing huge wastage of grains every year, said government bodies in the document.
China will upgrade all of its outdated silos and eliminate those open-air storages by 2020, according to the document. It did not give the capacity of these granaries.
The country will build new storage facilities which are able to store 50 million tonnes of grains by the end of 2015, according to the document published on the central government web site (www.gov.cn).
China does not publish its grain stocks, which hit record high levels, and analysts in China expect the country’s corn stocks would stay at more than 100 million tonnes before a projected bumper harvest late in the year.
Shortage of grain storage has prompted the country’s top grain producer to offer more subsidies to processing industry to help digest the grain.
