Syngenta Group China VP: Accelerate building of system to safeguard agriculture

The building of a national strategic system on agricultural input emergency guarantees should be accelerated and improved, so as to guarantee agricultural production and food security, said a senior executive of an agrochemical giant and seed producer.

Drawing on the experiences of building national reserve mechanisms for crude oil, cotton and grain, and learning from the international practices on agricultural emergency security systems, it should be a normal, intensive, systematic and digitalized "national agricultural security" system, said Feng Mingwei, vice-president of Syngenta Group China.

Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, China's national reserve base and strengths have been growing continuously, and have played an important role in preventing and resolving major risks and effectively responding to the COVID-19 pandemic, Feng said.

However, sudden outbreaks of epidemics, natural disasters and industry changes can still have a negative impact on the placement of agricultural inputs such as seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural machinery and diesel, as well as on agricultural production, which directly or indirectly threatens China's agricultural production and food security.

A meeting of the Central Committee for Deepening Overall Reform held on Aug 30 emphasized the national reserve is an important material basis for national governance.

Multiple product mixes should be put in the reserve at the same time and place, and those enterprises with business facilities covering the whole country should be chosen, making it very convenient to facilitate a unified coordinated arrangement, Feng said.

Key agricultural producing provinces should be selected to set up a reserve of agricultural inputs including seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, specific agricultural machinery, and diesel, Feng said, adding that its operating mechanism should be a combination of market-oriented operations and emergency response deployment.

In establishing and selecting the warehouse capacity, the existing national storage and logistics facilities should be fully utilized, which could minimize storage and transportation costs, Feng added.

Meanwhile, the digitalization of the emergency security strategy system for agricultural inputs should be improved.

Recommendations call for an online platform for data, transaction and logistics that covers the whole industrial chain of agricultural inputs (including production, circulation and logistics enterprises) and serves as the supporting platform for "national agricultural security".

Syngenta Group China is a large State-owned central enterprise engaged in agriculture, and it is one of the four business units of Syngenta Group, which belongs to Sinochem Holdings Corp Ltd.

Its "Fertex" platform, which was launched on July 1, 2019, has information, logistics and transaction functions, and has been selected by the Price Monitoring Center of the National Development and Reform Commission as the core data provider and partner for price index compilation.