China's farmers are already feeling the pressure of increased competition following the country's entry to the WTO, with the effect likely to intensify in coming months, officials said yesterday.
The warning has been sounded despite the fact that exports of Chinese agricultural products grew in the first half of the year while imports fell, leaving a farm trade surplus of US$3 billion, the state-run China Daily reported.
Agricultural exports reached more than US$ billion, up 6.6 percent against the same period of 2001, Ministry of Agriculture figures showed.
Over the same period imports dropped 8.5 percent year-on-year to just over US$5 billion.
Nonetheless, the situation was likely to worsen for Chinese farmers as the year progressed and tariff reductions introduced under the terms of WTO membership took effect, an official think tank told the newspaper.
"When looking at tariff rate quotas and the number of orders placed in the first half of this year to be delivered in the second half ... China's imports are going to rise and so will pressure on the domestic market and farmers," said Cheng Guoqiang of the Development Research Center.
WTO membership had "profoundly re-shaped" the country's agriculture sector said Cheng, whose group is run by the State Council, China's cabinet.
edible oils
Evidence of the problem included Chinese imports of 300,000 tonnes of edible oils in June alone, a "heavy blow" to domestic producers, according to Cheng.
Other factors have hit the country's agriculture sector in recent months, such as the EU's suspension of imports of some Chinese food products over fears they could be contaminated with the banned antibiotic chloramphenicol.
However WTO membership was the main factor increasing the pressure on Chinese farmers, Cheng said.
Cheaper foreign imports will hit farmers, making it "harder for them to increase their incomes," he said in the report. "This is a problem of paramount concern."
A series of analysts and experts have warned that China's mainly inefficient and small-scale agriculture sector could be devastated as tariffs fall following WTO entry.
Low incomes among China's vast rural population are already causing great concern to China's leaders.
Earlier this year, Premier Zhu Rongji admitted the "one single issue that causes me the worst headache" was how to increase farming incomes.
However, economic figures released last month showed disparities between urban and rural incomes continued to swell in the first six months of the year.
Urban wage earners saw a year-on-year wage boost of 17.5 percent to the end of June, against just 5.9 percent for country dwellers.
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