How to Achieve New Breakthroughs in Transforming the Agricultural Development Model

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee proposed to vigorously advance agricultural modernization, accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model, and take a path of agricultural modernization featuring efficient output, safe products, resource conservation, and environmental friendliness. This outlines for us the vision for agricultural development by 2020, and also points out the direction for agricultural development during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period. Transforming the agricultural development model is the overarching requirement and main theme of modern agricultural development. At present and for some time to come, seeking new breakthroughs in advancing the transformation of the agricultural development model has become an inevitable choice for achieving agricultural modernization.

In recent years, China's modern agriculture has been advancing rapidly, and enormous achievements have been made in agricultural development. Grain production has enjoyed bumper harvests for many consecutive years, and other important agricultural products have also seen abundant harvests, ample supply, and stable prices, playing a role in providing a floor for stabilizing prices, a safety net for stabilizing employment, and a guarantee for stabilizing society. However, various risks, challenges, and structural contradictions have also been accumulating and gathering. The two “tightening bands” of the ecological environment and resource conditions are growing tighter and tighter; the double squeeze of the “floor” of agricultural production costs and the “ceiling” of agricultural product prices is growing heavier and heavier; the people's demands for diversified agricultural products and for quality and safety are growing higher and higher; and the pressure on agriculture to ensure supply, ensure income, and ensure ecology is growing greater and greater. These phased development problems are forcing agriculture to accelerate the transformation of its development model.

⟦NL> Accelerating the transformation of the agricultural development model means truly shifting agricultural development from mainly pursuing quantitative growth to placing equal emphasis on quantity, quality, and efficiency; from mainly relying on the consumption of material resources to relying on scientific and technological progress and the improvement of workers' quality; from mainly competing on ecology and the environment to focusing on green, circular, and sustainable development; and from extensive management to intensive management. It can be said that transforming the agricultural development model concerns not only producers but also consumers; it benefits not only the present generation but also future generations. It not only grasps the lifeline of the agricultural industry's development but also conforms to the expectations of the broad public for modern agriculture.

Greater emphasis should be placed on optimizing and adjusting the structure to ensure efficient output. As an industry, agriculture faces both domestic and international markets. To ensure high efficiency and competitiveness, it must give play to comparative advantages. It is necessary to further optimize the regional layout of agriculture, form leading products and pillar industries with regional characteristics, build advantageous industrial belts for bulk agricultural products, and cultivate a group of specialized villages and towns with obvious characteristics, diverse types, and strong competitiveness. In grain production, emphasis should be placed on increasing production capacity and tapping potential, achieving the storage of grain in the land and in technology, so that production can be guaranteed when grain is needed. In non-grain production, it is necessary to be market-oriented, open up channels for the coordinated development of crop farming and livestock farming, and form a new agricultural structure that gives consideration to both grain and feed and combines agriculture and animal husbandry. In terms of business models, it is necessary to develop the multiple functions of agriculture, enhance agriculture's ecological value, leisure value, and cultural value, and let new technologies, new industries, and new business forms drive the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, thereby raising the added value of the entire agricultural industry chain.

Greater emphasis should be placed on the quality and safety of agricultural products to ensure “safety on the tip of the tongue.” With the improvement of people's living standards, the public has gradually adopted “zero tolerance” toward issues of agricultural product quality and safety. Individual food safety incidents in recent years have already proven that product safety concerns the rise and fall, even the survival, of an enterprise or even an industry. It is necessary to persist in grasping both “producing it well” and “managing it well” with both hands and with equal firmness. In production, vigorously advance standardized production in animal husbandry, fisheries, fruits, and vegetables, and focus on building a number of standardized agricultural production bases and well-known agricultural product brands. In management, continuously strengthen supervision, promptly improve the quality and safety standards system and monitoring and evaluation system for agricultural products, improve regulatory institutions and mechanisms, firmly grasp law enforcement supervision and centralized rectification, and comprehensively raise the level of agricultural product quality and safety.

Agricultural resources should be used more rationally to ensure resource conservation. To ease the overly tight pressure on resources, excessive inputs must be reduced. At present, we produce 1/5 of the world's grain using 1/3 of the world's chemical fertilizers, and inputs such as pesticides and water resources are also far higher than the world average. Following the principles of controlling quantity to improve efficiency and reducing quantity through substitution, it is necessary to strictly control the total amount of agricultural water use and gradually reduce the total amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides applied. It is necessary to accelerate the promotion of clean production technologies and equipment such as scientific fertilization, safe pesticide use, green prevention and control, and farmland water conservation, improve planting and breeding technology models, and achieve economical resource utilization, clean production processes, and resource recovery from waste.

Greater emphasis should be placed on protecting the agricultural ecological environment to ensure environmental friendliness. As a process in which economic reproduction and natural reproduction are interwoven, agriculture's products are green life, and its process is also a process of creating carbon sinks, so it is inherently environmentally friendly. It is necessary to reduce the pollution “by-products” brought about by resource abuse and excessive development. On the one hand, it is necessary to persist in placing equal emphasis on protection and governance, ensuring that no new debts are incurred in resources and the environment, and then gradually repaying historical debts, so that overdrawn agricultural resources and the environment can recuperate. On the other hand, it is necessary to vigorously develop environmentally friendly agricultural forms such as circular agriculture, ecological agriculture, and intensive agriculture, accelerate the pace of resource utilization of livestock and poultry manure, crop straw, agricultural film, and so on, turn pollution sources into good resources, and promote the sustainable development of agriculture.