Measures and advice

To curb rising food prices, the State Council, China's Cabinet, Sunday announced a group of measures, which included orders for local governments to boost agricultural products and stabilize the supply of agricultural products.

The government also forbade road-toll stations to collect fees from vehicles transporting fresh agricultural products which included vegetables, starting from Dec 1.

The measures were implemented after food prices, which account for one-third of weighting in China's consumer price index (CPI), jumped 10.1 percent in October, pushing the index to a 25-month high of 4.4 percent after rising 3.6 percent in September.

Experts also suggested China should map out a plan for the development of the vegetable industry. The plan should include measures to check the reduction in vegetable farmland by supporting policies such as minimum purchase prices and seed subsidies and stricter market supervision, said Chen Minjun.

"The first thing to do is to find out exactly how much vegetable growing land we have in China and then we can stop the land from shrinking," said Chen.

(China Daily November 26, 2010)