Where are the key focus areas for the development of modern agriculture?

The “13th Five-Year Plan” period is a critical period for China's agriculture to transition from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture. The development of China's modern agriculture must, in accordance with the new domestic and international situations and environments currently facing agricultural development, clearly define the goals and key tasks for agricultural development during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period.

(I)

At present, China's agriculture is in a critical period of transition from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture. The internal and external environments and conditions for agricultural development have undergone new and profound changes, which also impose new requirements on agricultural development during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period.

In the past, high agricultural output was built on the basis of ultra-intensive use of agricultural resources and large-scale deployment of production factors. In recent years, the aging of farmers and the part-time farming trend have become increasingly severe, and the question of who will farm the land and how to farm it in the future has become increasingly prominent; the intensity of agricultural resource development and utilization is too high, the deterioration of the agricultural ecological environment is intensifying, and the carrying capacity is getting closer and closer to its limit. To resolve the sharp contradictions and problems facing agricultural development mentioned above, it is necessary to accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model and maintain the sustainability of agriculture. During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, we must, in accordance with the requirements of the central government, persist in taking the acceleration of the transformation of the agricultural development model as the main task and basic path for advancing agricultural modernization, accelerate the construction of a modern agricultural industrial system, production system, and management system, promote the comprehensive grain production capacity, agricultural product quality and safety level, agricultural resource utilization rate, and farmers' income to new levels, and drive agricultural development from being mainly based on quantity growth to placing equal emphasis on quantity, quality, and efficiency, from mainly relying on input of material factors to relying on scientific and technological innovation and improving the quality of laborers, and from mainly relying on depleting resources and consumption to sustainable development, taking the path of agricultural modernization featuring high output efficiency, safe products, resource conservation, and environmental friendliness.

At present and for some time to come, the long-term stable growth of China's agriculture and the improvement of comprehensive agricultural production capacity have caused the supply and demand of agricultural products to shift from a tight balance to relative looseness; people's pursuit of food safety and the ecological environment; and the long-term downward trend of international agricultural product prices, which is conducive to using the international market to meet domestic demand, etc. All of these help to achieve the transformation of goals and are conducive to advancing the development of agricultural modernization.

(II)

During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, modern agricultural development has the following key tasks:

First, steadily increase the income of agricultural producers. During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, China's economy faces relatively great downward pressure and will shift from high-speed growth to medium-to-high-speed growth. Under the new situation, it is necessary to actively promote mass entrepreneurship and innovation, guide returning entrepreneurial personnel to integrate into specialized markets with distinctive features, and build entrepreneurial clusters and advantageous industrial clusters with regional characteristics. It is necessary to thoroughly implement the action of enriching the people through rural youth entrepreneurship, support returning entrepreneurial personnel in carrying out entrepreneurship according to local conditions around leisure agriculture, deep processing of agricultural products, rural tourism, rural service industries, etc., and steadily increase the income of agricultural producers.

Second, reconstruct the micro-operating entities of agriculture. With the transformation of traditional agriculture into modern market agriculture, new types of large-scale operating entities such as specialized large households, family farms, farmer cooperatives, and corporate farms are flourishing, showing strong vitality and becoming the main force in modern agricultural development. During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, it is necessary to continuously improve the agricultural operating system and mechanisms, reconstruct the micro-operating entities of agriculture, and form a new type of agricultural operating entity team based on household contract management, with specialized large households, family farms, farmer cooperatives, and leading agricultural enterprises as the backbone, and other organizational forms as supplements.

Third, vigorously develop agricultural productive service industries. Agricultural productive service industries refer to industries that run through the pre-production, mid-production, and post-production links of agricultural production and provide intermediate input services for agricultural production, agricultural producers, and other economic organizations. Being mainly based on intermediate inputs, involving the exchange of knowledge and capital, and providing customized services are the main characteristics of agricultural productive service industries. It is necessary to focus on building a multi-level and multi-type development model for agricultural productive service industries that relies on government public service institutions, is based on rural cooperative economic organizations, takes leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization as the backbone, and uses supply and marketing cooperatives and other social forces as supplements.

Fourth, create new forms of agricultural industry. With the development and popularization of “Internet Plus,” agriculture has also begun to enter a new Internet era. The flattening and transparency of Internet information transmission precisely correspond to the characteristics of traditional agricultural production, such as long industrial chains and asymmetric information. Problems brought by traditional agricultural marketing models, such as high costs, logistics losses, and poor information exchange, can all be solved through Internet technology. Through “Internet Plus” to innovate new forms of modern agriculture, it is necessary to focus on creating new forms of agricultural industry marked by modern agriculture such as ecological agriculture, leisure and sightseeing agriculture, export-oriented agriculture, high-tech agriculture, and smart agriculture, integrating production, living, and ecology, and combining high quality and efficiency with sustainable development.