Ministry of Agriculture to Launch National Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Enhancement Project Next Year
On December 8, the Rural Social Undertaking Development Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Social Service Department of the Revolutionary Committee of the Chinese Kuomintang jointly held the 2015 National Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism Series Activities and the China (Zhuhai) Happy Village Promotion Event in Zhuhai, Guangdong, to jointly advance the construction and development of China's new countryside. With the theme “Happy Villages, Beautiful Zhuhai,” the event discussed the current situation and tasks facing leisure agriculture and rural tourism, as well as countermeasures for enhancing development.
According to Pan Libing, deputy director of the Agricultural Product Processing Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, starting in 2016, the Ministry of Agriculture will launch a national leisure agriculture and rural tourism enhancement project. Through brand enhancement, quality enhancement, cultural enhancement, service enhancement, infrastructure enhancement and system enhancement, it will promote the sustainable development of leisure agriculture and rural tourism, and strive to further expand the industry scale by 2020, with visitor numbers and operating revenue continuously increasing; a layout featuring optimized distribution, rich types, complete functions and distinctive characteristics will basically take shape; social benefits will increase markedly, and the income of farmers engaged in leisure agriculture will grow rapidly; development quality will improve noticeably, service levels will rise considerably, and sustainable development capacity will be further strengthened, providing urban and rural residents with a high-quality leisure tourism experience where they can see mountains, view waters and remember their nostalgia.
It is understood that, with strong attention from leadership, vigorous policy support, robust market demand and powerful capital investment, leisure agriculture and rural tourism have seen an expanding industry scale, continuously enriching development connotations, gradually diversifying types and models, progressively transforming development methods and simultaneously improving comprehensive benefits. This has turned large numbers of agricultural areas into scenic areas, fields into parks, rural houses into guest rooms, labor into exercise, green mountains into mountains of gold, and products into commodities, allowing idle land to circulate, leisure time to be enriched, and surplus labor to become active. It increasingly demonstrates the economic function of stimulating consumption and promoting income growth, the social function of driving employment, the cultural function of protecting, utilizing and passing on agricultural civilization, and the ecological function of beautifying rural environments. It has become a strategic emerging industry that serves residents, develops agriculture, prospers rural areas, enriches farmers, protects the ecology and inherits culture. It is estimated that in 2015, various types of leisure agriculture operators nationwide will exceed 1.8 million, with operating revenue expected to reach 350 billion yuan, an increase of more than 10%.
During the event, the national leisure agriculture and rural tourism e-commerce platform “Qunongzhuang” was officially launched; it also released the national leisure agriculture and rural tourism star-rated enterprises, the top ten premium routes, the top ten leisure farms and the research results on Zhuhai's happy villages, and promoted the construction model of Zhuhai's happy villages.