13th Five-Year Plan: Agriculture's Main Focus Is Modernization, No Longer Simply Pursuing Output Growth

The primary industry——agriculture, faces a population numbering in the hundreds of millions. In the five years of the “13th Five-Year Plan,” China's agriculture must achieve new advances in both “quantity” and “quality.” A very important idea here is to no longer simply pursue continuous growth in grain “output,” but instead to develop agricultural modernization, improve efficiency, and keep pace with China's modernization.

It is understood that the Ministry of Agriculture is currently working intensively to study and plan how to promote the sustained and healthy development of agriculture and rural areas during the “13th Five-Year Plan.” Overall, the development direction of the “13th Five-Year Plan” is to advance agricultural modernization, transform the agricultural development model, take the “three guarantees” (guaranteeing supply, guaranteeing income, guaranteeing ecology) as the main tasks, continue to deepen reform, consolidate the fundamental position of agriculture, and maintain the stable and sound momentum of agricultural and rural development.

A person in charge at the Ministry of Agriculture said that, based on the current supply-demand relationship, China's new approach to agriculture is to “not pursue continuous increases every year, but maintain overall stability in grain output, and in particular consolidate and enhance grain production capacity.” According to this approach, experts believe that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” China's grain self-sufficiency rate will remain above 95%, and the self-sufficiency capacity for staple foods such as rice and wheat will reach 100%.

The “13th Five-Year Plan” period is the final five-year sprint toward building a moderately prosperous society in all respects, and also a crucial five years for accelerating agricultural modernization and achieving the “synchronization of the four modernizations.” To this end, the Ministry of Agriculture has made clear that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, the pace of agricultural modernization must be accelerated, and efforts must be made to blaze a path of modern agricultural development with Chinese characteristics featuring high output, safe products, resource conservation and environmental friendliness.

However, the level of regional development is highly uneven, and China's agricultural modernization cannot advance in lockstep. To resolve this worldwide challenge, one of the measures proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture is to “establish modern agriculture demonstration zones.”

“We have established 283 national modern agriculture demonstration zones in areas with the necessary conditions, such as the eastern coastal areas, suburbs of major cities, large reclamation areas and main agricultural product producing areas, striving to take the lead in achieving agricultural modernization, and through their demonstration and guidance, advance the process of agricultural modernization across the country in a graduated manner,” said the aforementioned person in charge at the Ministry of Agriculture.

The second measure is to promote the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model, and rely on innovation-driven development to accelerate agricultural modernization.

Experts believe that the requirement of “adjustment, transformation and promotion” to accelerate the formation of a “new pattern of integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries” is an important way to advance the transformation and upgrading of agricultural industrialization.

Specifically, on the premise of adhering to “agriculture” as the core, during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, we should persist in grasping agriculture with industrial concepts and market thinking, follow the approach of deep integration of farming and animal husbandry, and of planting, breeding, processing, sales and tourism, accelerate the construction of a modern agricultural industrial system, focus on developing the agricultural and sideline products processing industry and the food industry, build new industries such as “Internet+” modern agriculture and rural tourism, extend the industrial chain, build the supply chain, and form a full industrial chain.

Previously, a reporter from Shanghai Securities News learned that, as a key task deployed at the central rural work conference, the relevant authorities will draft guiding opinions on promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas, which are expected to be issued in the second half of the year.