Hold your rice bowl firmly, fill it with Chinese grain: China to its people

China should always be self-sufficient in rice and wheat, as well as other cereals, while maintaining an "appropriate volume" of imports, the agriculture minister said

China stressed the importance of keeping the people’s “rice bowl” filled with domestically grown grain at a time when available farmland is shrinking, the weather’s turning more extreme and imports are cheaper.

“If you have enough grain, you don’t need to panic,” Agriculture Minister Han Changfu wrote in an opinion piece in the People’s Daily on Friday. “Chinese people’s rice bowls must always be held firmly in our own hands, and should be full mainly of Chinese grain.”

The country buys hefty amounts of soybeans, corn, cotton and pork from the US, and the comments come as tensions escalate with Washington over