National comprehensive agricultural mechanization rate expected to exceed 62% this year
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Since the beginning of this year, the national agricultural mechanization system, in accordance with the overall requirements of “stabilizing grain production and increasing income, improving quality and efficiency, and driving development through innovation”, has focused on implementing and improving policies, cultivating and developing entities, adjusting and optimizing equipment structure, making breakthroughs in mechanization of weak links, and promoting advanced and applicable technologies, vigorously advancing the “full-process, comprehensive, high-quality, and high-efficiency” development of agricultural mechanization. It is expected that the national comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation and harvesting will exceed 62% this year, providing stronger equipment support for ensuring national food security and enhancing comprehensive agricultural production capacity.
New achievements have been made in the reform and innovation of the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy. The Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Finance issued the “Guiding Opinions on the Implementation of Agricultural Machinery Purchase Subsidies for 2015-2017”, making relatively major adjustments centered on improving the policy's targeting, precision, and inclusiveness. The scope of subsidized machinery was further narrowed, with subsidies focused on machinery needed for key links in the production of grain, cotton, oil, and sugar crops; open subsidies were implemented for selected machinery for key weak links; the qualifications for subsidized machinery were decoupled from the support and promotion catalog; the practices of “purchasing machinery first and applying for subsidies afterward” and “one-stop” processing services were promoted; and penalties for enterprises violating laws and regulations were strengthened. Through policy innovation and administrative simplification and delegation of power, farmers' enthusiasm for purchasing machinery was further mobilized and the vitality of the agricultural machinery market was stimulated.
The action to advance full-process mechanization was fully launched. The Ministry of Agriculture deployed and carried out the action to advance full-process mechanization in the production of major crops, focusing on mechanization of major crops, major production regions, and major production links. With the goals of contiguous demonstration and level improvement, it accelerated the popularization and application of mature full-process mechanization production technologies for major grain crops; with the goals of breaking bottlenecks and exploring models, it demonstrated and promoted full-process mechanization production technologies for economic crops such as cotton, oil, and sugar crops. A total of 84 demonstration counties for full-process mechanization of major crop production have been built nationwide to carry out exploratory integration and experimental demonstration of technologies for varieties, cultivation, machinery, and processing. It promoted the diversification of creation forms, market-oriented service methods, serialized support policies, and standardized operation and management of agricultural machinery cooperatives. There are now more than 50,000 agricultural machinery cooperatives nationwide, increasingly becoming the main force in socialized agricultural machinery services.
The application scope of yield-increasing and efficiency-enhancing agricultural mechanization technologies such as deep loosening and land preparation has been significantly expanded. Twelve key agricultural mechanization technologies for promotion in 2015 were formulated and released, a major action for agricultural mechanization education and training was implemented, and about 4 million person-times of various practical agricultural mechanization talents were trained. The organization and scheduling of agricultural machinery operations during important farming seasons and safety production supervision and management were strengthened, and the “one-stop” compound operation method was widely promoted. Operation efficiency and operation quality were significantly improved. The mechanization rate of rice planting exceeded 40%, the machine harvesting rate of wheat during “three summer” exceeded 92%, and the machine harvesting rate of corn during “three autumn” reached 63%, an increase of 5 percentage points year-on-year. The goals for deep loosening and land preparation by agricultural machinery proposed in the “Government Work Report” were earnestly implemented, active efforts were made to secure financial support, agricultural machinery purchase subsidy funds were coordinated and used well, the pilot areas for subsidies for deep loosening and land preparation operations by agricultural machinery were expanded, and in suitable areas deep loosening machines were listed as open-subsidy models.
During the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, the development of agricultural mechanization will adhere to goal orientation and problem orientation, and, centering on the development concepts of strengthening innovation, coordination, green development, openness, and sharing, promote the transformation and upgrading of agricultural machinery equipment and service organizations from quantitative growth to placing equal emphasis on quality and efficiency. Strive to have the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation and harvesting exceed 68% by 2020, with that for grain crops exceeding 80%, build more than 500 demonstration counties nationwide that achieve full-process mechanization of major crop production, and have provinces with the conditions take the lead in basically achieving agricultural mechanization.