To mark World Food Day on Tuesday, the State Administration of Grain proposed that all employees in the grain sector voluntarily avoid eating for 24 hours in order to experience how important food is.

Although another bumper harvest is expected this year after eight fruitful years in a row, the per capita amount of grain Chinese people consume has soared over the last 30 years and the country is now a big importer of grain. In 2010, it imported one-sixth of the grain traded in the world market.

Meanwhile, the boom in realty over the past three decades has resulted in local governments selling as much land as they can to boost their revenues. With the rapid dwindling of arable land posing a potential threat to the country's food security, the central government has reiterated the importance of keeping the total area of arable land no less than 120 million hectares.