Rural industrial integration is being advanced through a variety of models

In view of the special environment and a series of challenges facing the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural China, consideration may be given to adopting a variety of models to advance modern rural industrial integration in China:

1. Extend the agricultural industrial chain or develop an agricultural circular economy. This approach may occur within agricultural industry organizations such as enterprises, cooperatives, farming households and family farms, or between different industrial organizations such as enterprises, cooperatives, farming households and family farms, and is achieved by forming agricultural industry alliances or deepening the division of labor and cooperation.

2. Relevant industrial organizations in the primary, secondary and tertiary industries form a clustered and networked development pattern through agglomeration in rural space. This includes developing one village, one product, and one township, one industry, and so on. Here, rural areas include county towns and small towns.

3. Although the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas are separated in space, they achieve network links by means of informatization and other forces, such as some company + base + farming household arrangements, company + cooperative + base + farming household arrangements, and the development of agriculture that organically combines online and offline channels.

4. By developing, expanding and enhancing the multiple functions of agriculture, endowing agriculture with scientific and technological, cultural and environmental value, and enhancing the functions of agriculture or rural areas in ecological leisure, tourism and sightseeing, cultural inheritance, and science and technology education, develop leisure and sightseeing agriculture or creative agriculture, or build distinctive landscape tourism villages and towns rich in historical, regional and ethnic characteristics.

5. Develop short food chains, using sustainable agricultural production methods to produce localized, sustainable and alternative foods. Unlike the conventional agricultural industrialization method of extending the agricultural industrial chain, the method of developing short food chains should pay attention to reducing intermediate links as much as possible, ensuring that consumers understand as much as possible all information about the food production and circulation process, safeguarding food safety and improving the consumption experience. The “short” here includes not only “short” spatial distance, but also the transparency and visibility of various types of information surrounding the product. Local specialty restaurants in many places, whose food ingredients come from localized traditional cultivation and breeding or self-cultivation and self-breeding, are typical short food chain methods, attaching importance both to the combination of local food enterprises with local leisure and sightseeing agriculture or rural tourism, and to the connection between local food production enterprises and catering enterprises.