What are the connotations and characteristics of modern efficient agriculture?

    At present, China's economic development has entered a new normal. Whether based on real needs or with an eye to future development needs, new requirements have been set for agricultural development, and agricultural development has entered a period of deep adjustment in which the acceleration of transformation and upgrading is being promoted. The 2015 No. 1 Central Document, “Several Opinions on Increasing the Intensity of Reform and Innovation to Accelerate Agricultural Modernization,” pointed out: “To strengthen agriculture, it is necessary to shift as soon as possible from extensive management that mainly pursues output and relies on resource consumption to intensive development that gives equal weight to quantity, quality and efficiency, focuses on improving competitiveness, focuses on agricultural scientific and technological innovation, and focuses on sustainability, and to take the path of modern agricultural development featuring efficient output, safe products, resource conservation and environmental friendliness.” Hebei is a major agricultural province. To transform the agricultural development model and accelerate agricultural modernization, it is necessary to vigorously develop modern efficient agriculture.

    Modern efficient agriculture is an advanced agricultural development model and meets the requirements of modern agriculture as its transformational development enters a new stage. It takes ensuring the supply of agricultural products, promoting the sustained increase of farmers' incomes and the sustainable development of agriculture as its goals, and takes new agricultural technologies and new equipment, as well as new thinking and new concepts for agricultural development, as its support. With improving the level of agricultural industrialization, mechanization and informatization, raising the output rate of agricultural products, labor productivity and resource utilization rate, and enhancing agricultural efficiency and competitiveness at its core, it is a multifunctional industrial system and diversified industrial form in which planting, breeding, processing and marketing are linked, the primary, secondary and tertiary industries are integrated, and the entire industrial chain is developed.

    From the perspective of the evolutionary trends of agricultural development, modern efficient agriculture has distinct contemporary connotations.

    First, modern efficient agriculture is a fundamental transformation of the extensive growth model of conventional agriculture characterized by “high material consumption, high energy consumption, high pollution and low efficiency.” It is an agricultural transformation and upgrading achieved in accordance with the goals of modern large-scale production and the orientation of industrial competition. It not only has the general characteristics of modern agriculture, but also has individualized and diversified characteristics suited to the requirements of future social development, and in particular it adapts to the reality of a large population and limited land with relatively scarce resources.

    Second, compared with traditional agriculture, the development of modern efficient agriculture relies more on scientific and technological progress and the improvement of laborers' quality, more on the introduction of modern production factors, more on the fundamental role of market mechanisms, and more on the continuous development of the multiple functions of agriculture. The development process of modern efficient agriculture is the process of making modern agriculture more scientific, intensive, industrialized and market-oriented, and the process by which modern agriculture achieves high yield, high quality, high efficiency and sustainable development.

    Third, modern efficient agriculture emphasizes the unity of economic benefits, social benefits and ecological benefits. Economic benefit is the core. Modern efficient agriculture requires using the same amount of labor and material expenditure to produce as many useful results as possible and generate relatively high economic value. Social benefit is the foundation. High-quality and high-quantity agricultural output can meet the needs of population growth and people's constantly improving material living standards; diversified production methods can provide more jobs and guide traditional farmers in becoming professional farmers; the development of efficient agriculture can simultaneously drive the building of a new socialist countryside. Ecological benefit is the guarantee. The production of efficient agriculture takes the sustainable use of resources and ecological environmental protection as its premise, and, according to principles such as the coordination and adaptation between organisms and the environment, the optimized combination of species, the efficient operation of energy and matter, and the balance of input and output, applies systems engineering methods, relies on modern science and technology to organize production, and, through the networking of food chains and the resource utilization of agricultural waste, gives full play to the potential of resources and the advantages of species diversity to establish a virtuous material circulation system.

    Compared with traditional agriculture, modern efficient agriculture has the following characteristics:

    First, modern efficient agriculture is highly efficient agriculture with a high commodity rate. Through the optimized combination and resource utilization of various agricultural production factors, modern efficient agriculture achieves high efficiency in agricultural production. Modern efficient agriculture is an internal unity of high yield and high quality. Based on a developed market system, it meets current and future market demand through a sound market system (including a modern circulation system for agricultural products) and achieves a high commodity rate of agricultural products. Without a developed market system, there can be no truly modern efficient agriculture. Important indicators for measuring the development level of modern efficient agriculture are a relatively high commodity rate of agricultural products, value-added rate of product processing, land output rate and labor productivity.

    Second, modern efficient agriculture is high-tech agriculture. The development process of modern efficient agriculture is the process in which production tools and production methods based on modern science and technology are adopted on a large scale in agricultural production, continuously raising the degree of scientificization of agricultural production and product operation. For example, biological breeding technology makes the production of agricultural products more diversified; agricultural automation and information technology can enhance industrial competitiveness; animal and plant quarantine and epidemic prevention technology and systems can safeguard agricultural security and the rights and interests of the people; deep processing technology for agricultural products can increase product added value; and new-generation information technologies such as the mobile Internet, big data, cloud computing and the Internet of Things can be deeply integrated across borders with all links of agricultural production, boosting the overall development of agriculture.

    Third, modern efficient agriculture is agriculture with diversified functions. Compared with traditional agriculture, while providing high-quality, fresh and safe agricultural products and industrial raw materials to meet urban consumption and industrial development needs, modern efficient agriculture also extends toward leisure, ornamental and other directions, giving full play to agriculture's functions in life and leisure, tourism and vacationing, ecological protection, civilization inheritance, popular science education and other aspects.

    Fourth, modern efficient agriculture is agriculture with a modernized organizational and management approach. Modern efficient agriculture widely adopts advanced operating methods, management techniques and means, and has a highly efficient organizational system and management system, so that the pre-production, mid-production and post-production stages of agricultural production form a relatively complete and closely connected relationship and an organically linked industrial chain.

    Fifth, modern efficient agriculture is a sustainable development industry. In its development process, modern efficient agriculture emphasizes resource conservation and zero environmental damage and is a green industry of sustainable development. Through achieving the sustainable use of agricultural resources such as freshwater and land, it attains a virtuous cycle of regional ecology, making agriculture itself a well-functioning recyclable ecosystem and providing support and assurance for maintaining and improving the natural environment.

    Sixth, modern efficient agriculture adheres to the “trinity” of agriculture, farmers and rural areas. The central government emphasizes that it is necessary to always persist in treating the resolution of the “three rural issues” as the top priority in the work of the whole Party, add momentum through reform, use the rule of law as a guarantee, and accelerate the modernization of agriculture with Chinese characteristics. Modern efficient agriculture and the building of a new socialist countryside and the cultivation of professional farmers complement one another. Accelerating the development of modern efficient agriculture can both promote agricultural modernization and raise farmers' incomes, provide strong support for the building of a new countryside, and is an effective way to resolve the “three rural issues.”