Recently, China's top leader Xi Jinping gave an important instruction on stopping food and beverage waste. He stressed the importance of resolutely stopping food and beverage waste and effectively cultivating the habit of saving, noting that "the phenomenon of food and beverage waste is shocking and heartbreaking!"

High-level central focus on food security

Ensuring food securityWaste at the table must be stopped, and food losses caused by an underdeveloped grain drying industry cannot be ignored

Due to the serious lack of drying and processing capacity of existing grain drying equipment, around 80% of stored grain in China is still unable to meet quality standards. After harvesting, mould and sprouting in storage, transport and processing can lead to unnecessary food waste due to wet weather, late drying or failure to reach safe storage moisture. According to statistics, mould and sprouting deterioration due to the above reasons, as well as the loss of spillage in the drying process, amounted to 5% of China's total grain production, about 35 billion kg or more, with economic losses of 30 to 60 billion yuan, with more serious losses in years of abnormal weather.

Low level of grain drying mechanization in China

Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs agricultural machinery department in charge of statistics, China's grain drying mechanization is less than 10%, while Europe and the United States and other developed countries have been more than 90% of the level of grain drying mechanization many years ago. Therefore, grain drying mechanization is China's agricultural mechanization of the whole "short board". At present, the mechanisation level of tillage and harvesting in some crop production in some areas has reached 85% and 95% or more. However, the level of drying mechanisation is only 1.2%.

To improve the level of grain drying mechanization and popularize new drying technology is a powerful measure to ensure the stability of China's grain production capacity, abundant stocks, abundant supply and stable market.

Promising market for heat pump drying

Firstly, from the level of national food security, grain drying machinery is in urgent need of popularisation.This has been explained above and will not be repeated here.

Secondly, there is huge room for the development of the grain dryer market.Single northeast and northwest drying market, northeast to grain, melon and fruit drying, etc., the estimated holding capacity of 100 billion yuan, the total capacity of the northwest fruit and vegetable drying market of 100 billion yuan. And from China's main agricultural machinery product holdings, product processing reached 156 million units, large and medium-sized towing, animal husbandry machinery, harvesting machines and other holdings are also in the millions of units ranging, while the dryer holdings of only 90,000 units. This determines the grain dryer market development space is huge.

Guiping is located in the southeastern part of the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, where the Qian, Yu and Xun rivers meet and the Tropic of Cancer crosses the central part of the city, and has a southern subtropical monsoon climate with a mild climate and abundant rainfall. It is very suitable for the planting of double-season rice, with an area of 67,800 hm2 of arable land, of which 49,800 hm2 are paddy fields and 18,100 hm2 are dry land, with an annual rice planting area of about 80,000 hm2 (double-season rice), producing about 550,000 tons of rice, and transferring more than 150,000 tons of high-quality commercial grain out of the city every year. However, in the whole process of mechanization of rice production, grain drying has been developed in recent years, because the grain drying equipment in Guiping City is far from meeting the needs of modern agricultural development, which has become a bottleneck hindering the development of the whole process of rice mechanization. Data and statistics show that at present, Guiping City has 84 towers of drying machinery, with a daily drying capacity of 1914 tons and an annual grain drying capacity of about 111,200 tons. With a rice cultivation area of 83,300 hm2 in Guiping City and an annual output of 550,000 tons of rice, the mechanical drying of grain in 2018 only accounted for about 20.23% of the total grain output, and the annual drying of 550,000 tons of rice requires additional drying equipment of about 200 towers (15 tons/tower), which shows that the current ownership of drying equipment in the city is unable to meet the demand, and there is still a large gap in mechanical drying capacity.

Thirdly, the country is vigorously developing grain drying machinery.The Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs' 2018 Action Plan for Promoting Key Technologies for the Full Development of Agricultural Mechanization mentions carrying out research on drying technologies for agricultural products and putting forward policy recommendations to support the primary processing of agricultural products at origin. Promote low-cost drying and storage technologies and equipment for cereals and oils in the alpine regions of the north and the high temperature and humidity regions of the south to reduce production costs and product losses. Carry out demonstration and promotion activities of drying technology and equipment for commercial processing of fruits, vegetables and Chinese herbal medicines at origin, and improve the mechanization level of primary processing of characteristic agricultural products at origin. In the List of the Maximum Subsidy Amount of the Central Financial Funds for Agricultural Machinery of the National General Category from 2018 to 2020, the State allocated 18.6 billion yuan in agricultural machinery subsidies, of which subsidies for drying equipment accounted for 30% (approximately 5.58 billion yuan).

In November 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the announcement of the "Recommended Catalogue of National Industrial Energy-saving Technology and Equipment (2018)", in which the case of "High-temperature Air Source Heat Pump Drying System Energy-saving Technology" was successfully selected in the "Recommended Catalogue of National Industrial Energy-saving Technology and Equipment (2018)" and the "National Industrial Energy-saving Technology Application Guide and

Reference.

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