China will work hard to ensure food security for the people, comprehensively promote rural revitalization and consolidate poverty alleviation results in 2023, a senior official has said.

In an interview with China Central Television (CCTV), Tang Renjian, minister of agriculture and rural affairs, said that in the new year, increasing grain production will remain to be the top priority in the work related to agriculture, rural areas and farmers.

Tang noted that China's grain output totaled about 686.5 billion kg in 2022, an increase of 3.7 billion kg compared to that in 2021. The soybean self-sufficiency rate also rose by 3 percentage points, providing solid support for economic development and social stability.

In the new year, the ministry will strive for increasing grain output by 50 billion kg to ensure food security for the people, the minister said. "We should mobilize all resources and spare no effort to increase grain output by 50 billion kg in 2023. It is the target that we must achieve. We will ensure that the total grain growing area and grain output remain above 118 million hectares and 650 billion kg, respectively, and try our best to increase them," said Tang.

Tang note that the agricultural sector plays an important role in expanding domestic demand and creating the new economic development pattern of "dual circulations", which involves tapping into China's huge domestic market (domestic circulation) while remaining open to international trade and investment (external circulation).

With the continual increase in farmers' income and the upgrading of rural consumption, Chinese consumer spending is expected to gain by 2 trillion yuan (292.4 billion U.S. dollars) every year, and in the next five to 10 years, investment in the building of high-standard farmland and the controlled-environment agriculture will total nearly 15 trillion yuan (2.19 trillion U.S. dollars), according to the minister.

"We will make continuous efforts to comprehensively promote rural revitalization, accelerate building China into an agricultural powerhouse, smooth the circulation of rural and urban economies, and vigorously push domestic circulation. To achieve these targets, we will optimize the supply chain and expand consumption, launch more projects and attract investment, and develop industries to expand the channels for farmers to increase their income," said Tang.

December's tone-setting Central Economic Work Conference stressed the need to resolutely prevent a large-scale poverty return.

Tang said that this year, the ministry will focus on fostering new industries and upgrading traditional ones, stabilizing employment, supporting entrepreneurship and innovation so as to strengthen the internal impetus for rural development.

"We will increase the share of the rural revitalization fund in industrial development to above 60 percent, and plan and launch a batch of overall and regional industrial projects. We will improve employment services and strengthen job trainings and provide no less than 30 million job opportunities to people lifted out of poverty," said the minister.