Research On Support Policies For Grain Marketing In China

Grain marketing is the bridge and tie between gain production and consumption, it plays an irreplaceable and crucial role in balancing grain demand and supply in terms of amount, regions, varieties and time, ensuring grain supply, stabilizing grain market price, guiding rational consumption, and guaranteeing food security of the country.On the other hand, it has important reaction forces on increasing farmer's income, raising their enthusiasm for growing grain, developing gain production and accelerating the adjustment of crop planting structure. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a systematic and in-depth research into the grain marketing support policies.This paper discusses the theory of public finance, theory of the position of grain as the foundation of economy and theory of welfare economics while taking them as the theoretical basis of grain marketing support policies. In the meantime, it states the particularity of grain marketing support policies adopted in China and summarizes concerned experiences of some foreign countries and revelations therefrom. On such basis, it divides grain marketing into 6 links (purchase, storage, wholesale, transport, processing and retail) and 4 fields (infrastructural construction, quality, technology and information), makes respectively in-depth and systematic analysis of their current support situations, finds out the existing problems and analyzes their causes, and proposes reasonable policies and recommendations for improvement. In particular, it proposes to straighten out the relation between the central and local grain reserves and decide reasonably the scale of central grain reserves, to establish county-level grain and processed grain reserve system, and increase the reserves of vegetable oils; to support actively arrangements of digestive and operating accounts of state-owned grain enterprises; to support processors enter the market and purchase grains from fanners directly; to issue processed grain and oil subsidies to disadvantaged groups and cancel the non-discrimination policy of issuance of grain and oil subsidies to students of high-learning institutions; to work out the plan for the construction of nationally unified grain marketing infrastructures and increase the support to the construction of grain marketing infrastructures like " transporting grain of the north to the south"; to establish shelly grain quality intervention system and strengthen the quality examination capability of emergent grain supply; to guarantee the input of funds for grain marketing technologies and research time; to integrate the current food information system and establish open information system proper for grain producers, operators and consumers. The sequence of supports afterwards is determined based on general analysis of the above-mentioned 10 aspects and current situations.Grain purchase price not only plays an important guiding role in increasing farmers'income and developing grain production, but also is an important part of the beginning of grain marketing or the purchase procedure. This paper attaches importance to the analysis of grain purchase price support policies, explains the basis and rationality of grain price supports adopted from the "spider-net effect" of grain demand and supply changes and the angle of the country's needs in this regard, conducts economic analysis of the grain price support policies using demand-supply model, and analyzes the changes of welfare for grain producers, consumers and government. Based on that, it summarizes the active effects from the current minimum grain purchase price policy of China and finds out the existing problems, namely unscientific minimum purchase price, irrational price difference between varieties and regions, not timely pre-proposal announcement, and unsmooth relation between the enforcement bodies and specific entrusted purchase and storage places. In the end, it puts forward recommendations on the improvement of the minimum purchase price policy:to decide reasonable minimum purchase price level on the basis of the planting cost and an overall consideration of the other 10 factors and the calculation formula is listed; to recommends the policies of early release of minimum price and cancellation of purchase quantity limit from the angel of economics after an analysis of the changes of grain demand and supply when the government launches the minimum purchase price and its impacts on farmers'incomes using the economics model of minimum purchase price; and to introduce competition mechanism into the execution of minimum purchase price policy and smooth out the supervision relations and ensure concerned policies put into practices.Heilongjiang province is an important commodity grain production base of China and plays a crucial part in grain marketing of the country. With on-site investigations as the foundation, the author conducted case studies of the grain marketing support policies of Helongjiang and put forward recommendations on the improvement for major problems of the province like weak grain (bean for example) production foundation, inadequate subsidy for grain marketing, backward infrastructures, insufficient grain transport capacity, lagged development of processing industry, limited role of state-owned grain enterprises as major channels and large gap of grain risk funds; in particular, the author proposes to include soybean into the minimum purchase price and improve the level of protected price to protect the soybean industry, change the subsidizing method and increase support to grain processing and transformation, and establish 4 specific models that balance the interests of the grain production and circulation areas.Backed by the above analysis and researches, this paper further breaks down the 10 aspects of grain circulation links and fields into 23 major support contents, list out the sequence of supports and specific methods of financial, credit and tax support for each content based on practical situations and thereby establish grain marketing support policy system; and it puts forward the 11 guarantee measures for implementation of grain marketing support policies:to improve the general grain production capacity, strengthen the construction of grain marketing management institution, smooth out the authorities of the central and local government over grain, increase financial investment, improve the credit fund support method, give full scope to the role of state-owned grain enterprises as major channels, promote vigorously the connection between grain production and sales, develop sport and futures trading, accelerate the building of legal system of grain marketing, and strengthen the supervision and examination.