Mon, Mar 30, 2009
AudienceMaybe not questions, I think I want to make comments to Miss Huang. When you look at the water policy, the first to know, understood food policy in China and in the next decades, Chinese government will maintain cereal[?] self-sufficiency, at the least ninety-five, for maize. So for maize I think is ninety-eight. For winter wheat is ninety-three. For rice, it's a hundred percent. So these, I mean that the national strategies, so it's difficult to say that will carry these wheat production because it uses a lot of water. Second, when you look at the price of water, you must can see there about cereal pricing system. Because I measure this morning, the cereal price still remains at very low levels. And third comments, I think that Michael already mentioned during lunch sessions about the water quality, agriculture. That could be big as the challenge, in next decade. Thank you.
Qiuqiong HuangFor the self-sufficiency of this ninety-five percent, we're not saying that China's government is going to take action to reduce wheat production. We're saying that there is a regional crisis in China, and water availability for our country is declining, and there's not, so far there have not been water policies that's been very successfully resolving this water scarcity problem. So in the face of increasing water scarcity and rising water prices, farmers are going to respond by reducing wheat production, and switching to high-value crops. So that's, we're mostly talking about the reaction to the water resource situation. So maybe the government is going to come up with more policies to try to stick to the ninety-five percent. But as far as I can see, water resources is going to be one of the limiting factors. And we already see that, since 2003, China already increased the imports of wheat. So that's just a natural trend, for me.