An In-Depth Interpretation of New Trends and New Directions in World Agricultural Development

Looking at global agriculture, almost every country and region is committed to building modern agriculture. The difference is that developed countries focus more on seizing the “commanding heights” and striving to continue leading the trend of world agricultural development, while the vast number of developing countries are more likely to base themselves on their national conditions, learn from existing successful experience, strive to accelerate the pace of modern agricultural development, and try to catch up. The just-concluded Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China made a profound analysis of the current domestic and international situation and proposed that we must conform to the trend of China's economy being deeply integrated into the world economy, actively participate in global economic governance and the supply of public goods, and enhance China's institutional discourse power in global economic governance. As a new batch of international trade and geopolitical rules such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) are continuously adjusted, the external environment facing China's agriculture has undergone profound changes. It is necessary to accurately grasp the new trends and new directions of world agricultural development and to place China's agriculture in the larger environment and overall pattern of world agriculture for coordinated consideration and proper response.

First, the world agricultural science and technology revolution dominates the development of modern agriculture. In the new round of the world science and technology revolution, agricultural science and technology are a key part of the revolution. The world agricultural science and technology revolution is coming with great force, traditional agriculture is gradually withdrawing from the stage, and modern agriculture is rising rapidly. In particular, the science- and technology-led agricultural modernization of developed countries is improving in quality and accelerating, and the goals, ideas, and measures of their development are quietly changing, namely, mainly using advantages in agricultural science and technology to shift strategically from their own agricultural markets to occupying the world market, from using their own resources to using other countries' resources, and from petrochemical agriculture to green agriculture. Future agricultural development must rely on agricultural science and technology and follow the path of innovation-driven development in agricultural science and technology in order to keep pace with the development of modern agriculture in the world.

⟦NL> Second, the pace of research and application of agricultural biotechnology has clearly accelerated. Modern agricultural biotechnology with genomics at its core has become one of the main bodies and hallmarks of agricultural science and technology development in countries around the world today. Since entering the new century, cutting-edge agricultural biotechnologies such as molecular breeding, gene sequencing, transgenic technology, and biological inputs have accelerated in technological research and application. Developed countries are vigorously developing transgenic biotechnology, accelerating the research, development, promotion, and application of transgenic technology, and seizing the commanding heights of modern agricultural technology. For example, the United States has funded and carried out multiple studies in molecular marker-assisted breeding of food crops, mainly using marker-assisted selection technology to improve crop disease resistance and quality. The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of the United Kingdom has funded multiple molecular marker-assisted breeding research projects targeting food crops, including wheat, barley, rice, and pearl millet.

Third, information technologies such as the agricultural Internet, big data, and cloud computing are promoting the transformation and upgrading of modern agriculture. Modern agriculture is advancing toward the 3.0 era, in which the Internet serves as the medium, network technology is deeply integrated into all links such as agricultural production and operation decision-making, fine management of agricultural production, and transportation and sales of agricultural products, and the intelligence, precision, and customization of agriculture are realized. In particular, modern information technologies such as the Internet, big data, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and electronic agricultural condition monitoring are being applied more and more widely in the agricultural field, prompting world agriculture to accelerate its transformation and upgrading. Countries around the world have successively launched and accelerated the process of agricultural informatization, forming a number of good industrialized application models. Technologies such as satellites and electronic agricultural condition monitoring are used to conduct real-time monitoring of information such as land, climate, and crop conditions, and the results enter information fusion and decision-making systems; Internet of Things technology has become a key technology for production management, auxiliary decision-making, precise control, and intelligent implementation; Internet technology is widely used in many aspects such as agricultural product e-commerce, regulation of the transportation environment, and traceability of agricultural product quality and safety.

Fourth, agricultural organizational innovation is forming a new productivity pattern. In the final analysis, future agricultural competition is competition among agricultural business entities. In recent years, countries around the world have accelerated the cultivation of new types of agricultural organizations suited to the development of modern agriculture, further improving the level of organization, scale, alliance-building, and standardization of agricultural production and operation, and agricultural organizational innovation has increasingly become a new productive force. In agriculturally developed countries and regions such as the United States and Europe, large-scale operating entities such as agricultural enterprises and family farms are developing faster. In particular, some multinational corporations, relying on their financial strength, technological monopoly, and market control capabilities, are playing an increasingly important role in global agriculture. According to statistics, three multinational corporations, DuPont, Monsanto, and Syngenta, control more than 50% of the world seed market, six pesticide-producing companies control 76% of the market, ten major companies control 41% of the fertilizer market, and the four major grain traders ABCD monopolize the international grain market. In countries and regions such as Japan and South Korea, the influence of organizations such as agricultural cooperatives and alliances is increasing day by day, reflecting enormous organizational, coordination, and negotiating capabilities.

Fifth, world agricultural support and protection policies show new trends. Agricultural support and protection is a common international practice. In recent years, under the WTO framework, countries around the world have continuously adjusted and improved their own agricultural support and protection practices, mainly shifting agricultural subsidies from “amber box” to “green box” policies, from explicit subsidies to implicit support, and from cost subsidies to income subsidies. In 2014, the United States signed a new Farm Bill, abolishing domestic support policies such as direct payments and counter-cyclical payments, while launching an alternative agricultural insurance subsidy plan, greatly increasing the amount of agricultural insurance subsidies, expanding insurance coverage, and allowing farmers to choose to participate in insurance through income protection or price protection. According to estimates by the U.S. Congressional Budget Office, implementing the Bill from 2014 to 2023 requires 956 billion US dollars in budget. The European Union issued the Common Agricultural Policy. On the basis of each country's own subsidies, from 2014 to 2020, the EU distributes up to 50 billion euros in agricultural subsidies each year among its member states. Japan has as many as 470 types of agricultural subsidy programs, and Japanese farmers' income mainly relies on government subsidies.

From the wave of world modern agricultural development, the organizational structure, production momentum, market pattern, and trade environment of world agriculture have already undergone or are undergoing profound adjustments and changes, which will inevitably have a far-reaching impact on China's modern agricultural construction, rural reform, and agriculture “going global.” We must size up the situation, hold the bottom line, conform to the trend, and take the initiative, and in particular, based on China's national conditions, agricultural conditions, and industrial interests, accurately assess the trend-based changes in world agricultural development, actively participate in a new round of agricultural trade negotiations and rule-making, and arrange domestic response strategies and measures in advance, so as to lay a more solid and powerful support for the development of China's modern agriculture.