Northeast China's Jilin province is an important national grain production base, but frequent natural disasters have posed a great threat to the safety of grain production there, according to local officials.

In response, deputies to the 13th National People's Congress (NPC) from Jilin province -- including Gu Fengjie, Wang Yanfeng, Ding Zhaomin and Gao Guiying -- made a joint suggestion to the NPC, calling for natioanl support for the development of catastrophe insurance for agricultural crops.

They said that in 2018 Jilin launched a pilot catastrophe insurance program for corn and rice, giving guarantees to farmers with moderate-sized farms of more than 20 hectares.

Officials said the program's insurance premiums were subsidized by central, provincial, municipal and county governments, which was an innovation of the agricultural disaster relief mechanism. This increased the ability of the agriculture sector to resist major disasters and boosted the enthusiasm of farmers to plant more grain, they said.

In its pilot stage, the catastrophe insurance program encountered problems such as limited coverage, a low level of protection and inadequate catastrophe risk dispersion mechanism, deputies added.

To this end, they suggested the nation increase its policy support to expand catastrophe insurance coverage on the basis of existing pilots.

They also suggested more financial support from the government, especially for the main grain production areas, so as to ensure food security. The deputies said that the country could set up agricultural catastrophe risk funds, to improve the general capacity of the nation to reduce the risk of future catastrophes.