A single policy could redraw global food supply lines and scramble markets from the Americas to Southeast Asia.
In early February, the Communist Party of China’s Central Committee and State Council released the annual “No 1 document”, the country’s first policy statement of 2026 and its blueprint for agriculture, farmers and rural areas. As one of the world’s largest agricultural producers, importers and exporters, any shift in Beijing’s food strategy carries global repercussions.
Covering grain, vegetables, livestock and fisheries, this document calls for stable, higher-quality and more efficient output while linking domestic production to trade. It emphasises expanding high-standard farmland, strengthening disaster resilience, accelerating agricultural science and technology innovation, including biotechnology, stabilising output and addressing labour shortages.
Crucially, the plan signals a strategic shift towards food import diversification, reflecting Beijing’s concerns about over-reliance on any single country or region for imports. The policy elevates national security, technological self-reliance and agricultural resilience as central objectives.
Food security and self-sufficiency have long been treated as matters of national strategy in China. President Xi Jinping has stressed that the rice bowls of China’s 1.4 billion people must always be “firmly held in their own hands”. In practice, this translates into a dual-track strategy: maintaining self-sufficiency in staples like rice and key proteins such as pork, while relying on global markets for non-staples, notably soybeans.But it is an uphill battle. China must feed its population with limited arable land and freshwater resources, while contending with soil degradation, pollution, shifting diets and increasingly frequent climate shocks. These pressures are compounded by an ageing agricultural workforce, declining fertility rates and rapid urbanisation.
