Agricultural Reform on the Eve of the 13th Five-Year Plan: Food Production Puts "Stability" First
Recently, the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee was held in Beijing. For nearly 20 years, the fifth plenary session of each Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has focused on the next five-year plan, and this year's “13th Five-Year Plan” has attracted much attention because of its special historical background. This is the first five-year plan since China's economic development entered the “new normal,” and its final year is precisely the year China completes the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects.
October 26 to 29, 2015, is destined to be an extraordinary period, as a grand blueprint concerning China's development over the next five years is being prepared and waiting to emerge. So, as the “13th Five-Year Plan” approaches, what feasible practices and opportunities will it bring to the development of China's agriculture and rural areas? In the next five years, what new adjustments and arrangements will there be in the overall development goals of China's agriculture? Reporters from China National Radio's Countryside Voice interviewed five authoritative experts to offer a forward look at the “13th Five-Year Plan.”
Food Production Puts “Stability” First
As a major country with a population of more than 1.3 billion, China has always regarded solving the problem of feeding its people as a top priority in governance. Since the “12th Five-Year Plan,” China's grain production has achieved a historic “eleven consecutive increases,” strengthening our confidence in keeping the rice bowl firmly in our own hands.
However, in recent years, the situation in which the total volume and prices of grain imports and exports at home and abroad are inverted has forced China to once again inscribe the red line of food security in the primary position of “13th Five-Year Plan” development. Xu Xiaoqing, a researcher at the Rural Development Research Center of the State Council, emphasized that stabilizing grain production is the top priority:
“The first point is ‘stability,’ especially the need to stabilize grain production capacity. With the increase in import volumes, the prices of China's agricultural products have become inverted, and their competitiveness is insufficient. These problems need attention, but we must also stabilize our country's grain production capacity.”
New Types of Agricultural Business Entities Will Usher in Major Development
Traditional small-scale farmer operations have played a very large historical role in solving the problem of feeding the Chinese people. However, with the development of urbanization, industrialization, informatization and agricultural modernization, the existing traditional methods of organizing agricultural production and the production methods of small-scale farmers can no longer adapt to the needs of the times.
Du Zhixiong, deputy director of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the question of who will farm the land and how to farm it is another major issue that urgently needs to be solved during the 13th Five-Year Plan period: “I think that during the ‘13th Five-Year Plan’ period, new types of agricultural business entities may emerge in large numbers, including what are now called family farms, some specialized farmers, and industrial and commercial enterprises now entering the agricultural field and its links. These entities may see very great development during the ‘13th Five-Year Plan’ period.”
Rural Land Property Rights Relations Will Be Further Clarified
In line with new types of agricultural business entities, developing appropriately scaled operations appears only natural, and in the next step, how should rural land be concentrated and used flexibly? Promoting multiple forms of land transfer, developing various forms of appropriately scaled operations, and at the same time granting farmers property rights with clearly defined property rights have become especially urgent.
Since the Ministry of Agriculture launched pilot work in 2009 to confirm, register and certify land contractual management rights, the rights confirmation work has gone through several stages, including whole-village and whole-county pilots and whole-province pilots. As of now, a total of 12 provinces and 160 counties across the country have carried out pilot projects advanced across entire provinces and entire counties. Zhang Xiaoshan, a member of the Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, the pilot work of confirming, registering and certifying land contractual management rights will certainly continue to advance steadily, and rural land property rights relations will be further clarified.
“In the future, with regard to rural land, farmers' property rights should also be further implemented according to different types and uses, and this may be where future changes in the rural land system lie. From the Third Plenary Session of the 17th Central Committee to the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, it was stated that the contractual relationship between rural areas and land should remain unchanged for a long time, but in the future its policy connotations and scope of application must be determined——just how long is long? What is the relationship between long-term unchanged and the current second round of land contracting? Where is the starting point of long-term unchanged, and what is the term? With regard to homestead land, how to implement the policy is key. In the next five years, the reform of rural collective commercial construction land should gradually improve in terms of conceptual framework, legal policy and practice.”
Conditions for Transforming the Agricultural Development Model Are Already Mature
Land can be allocated reasonably, but given the limited total amount of land resources, how China can use land sustainably and effectively is another new issue before us.
Today, under China's traditional agricultural production methods, the carrying capacity of resources and the environment is strained and the quality of land resources is declining, leading to reduced agricultural efficiency. The state has repeatedly advocated that the transformation of agricultural production methods should shift from the past resource-wasting model to a sustainable development model of ecological agriculture and green agriculture.
Du Zhixiong, deputy director of the Rural Development Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, the conditions for transforming the model have gradually matured: “Because of the stable growth and stable supply of China's agricultural products in recent years, the past tight balance has become a relatively loose balance. On the one hand, past production methods are not sustainable; on the other hand, a loose supply-demand pattern is also conducive to the transformation of agricultural production methods. One particularly prominent point is that ecological agricultural production methods will gradually replace past traditional agricultural methods. Especially since the beginning of this year, our country has issued plans on sustainable agriculture, so that the transformation of agricultural production methods has been made a requirement through them.”
Accelerating the transformation of the agricultural development model has already been written many times into the blueprint for the future development and reform of China's agriculture. Zhang Xiaoshan, a member of the Academic Divisions of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, believes that the concept of sustainability is the inevitable path for the transformation and upgrading of agriculture in a major country.