Agriculture shines across the board, powerfully boosting the overall development situation
Since the beginning of this year, under the strong leadership of the Party Central Committee and the State Council, the agricultural sector has closely focused on the main line of work of “stabilizing grain production, increasing incomes, adjusting the structure, improving quality and efficiency, and transforming the development model,” steadily advancing all tasks, and the agricultural and rural economic situation is shining across the board. Under downward economic pressure, the excellent situation in agriculture, rural areas and farmers is particularly rare and truly gratifying, greatly boosting confidence in economic transformation and development and in steadily entering the new normal, and laying a solid foundation for “stabilizing growth, adjusting the structure, promoting reform and improving people's livelihoods.”
General Secretary Xi Jinping has stressed on multiple occasions that when agriculture, rural areas and farmers improve, the overall situation gains the initiative. At present, China's economy on the whole is “stabilizing amid a slowdown and improving amid stability” and “fluctuating in form while still sound in trend.” With some economic indicators declining, one important weight that gives us the confidence to make such a judgment is the good situation in agriculture and rural areas. When agriculture is stable, the whole country is secure. Under downward economic pressure, agriculture, this basic industry vital to the national economy and people's livelihood, is shining across the board with ceaseless highlights, truly playing the role of the anchoring needle and ballast stone, powerfully supporting the macroeconomy, and winning strategic initiative and space for the Party and the government to coordinate the overall situation and steer the general trend.
⟦NL> A full rice bag and a rich vegetable basket give the people the most basic guarantee of happiness and well-being
During the just-passed Mid-Autumn and National Day holidays, all kinds of agricultural and sideline products once again welcomed a boom of flourishing both in purchasing and sales, with crowds swarming in vegetable markets and supermarkets, and melons, fruits, vegetables, fish, meat, eggs and milk in dazzling abundance.
On the day of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Ms. Chen, a resident buying vegetables at a farmers' market in Fengtai District, Beijing, told reporters, it's a holiday, so of course I have to buy more vegetables and make a good meal for my family. As for the price, she felt there was no need to think about it too much, because the prices of agricultural products have always been relatively stable and would not cause any trouble for her life.
Price stability first stems from ample supply. According to the Ministry of Agriculture, grain production has continued to maintain good momentum this year, summer grain and oil have seen a twelfth consecutive bumper harvest, autumn grain is generally growing well, and the production of meat, eggs, milk, fruit, vegetables and tea and other agricultural products has also risen in both quantity and quality, making it another year of all-around harvest.
To be honest, consecutive years of bumper harvests may have made many people take them for granted or even pay no attention, but in fact, they are one of the greatest highlights in our economic development. They are linked to the tea and meals of millions of households and are woven into the people's stable and peaceful days. They may be silent and unnoticed, but their significance is profoundly far-reaching. Otherwise, once the supply of major agricultural products fluctuates, it will immediately transmit to all levels of society and affect the people's basic livelihood. Only when the granaries are full can the country be peaceful and the people secure.
Eating enough also means eating safely. On the basis of ensuring ample supply, China's supervision of the quality and safety of agricultural products has also been continuously strengthened. In the first half of the year, the overall pass rate for the quality and safety of agricultural products reached 96.2%, continuing to maintain a relatively high level. The masses' “safety on the tip of the tongue” is increasingly guaranteed.
Transforming the model and adjusting the structure, agriculture has embarked on a path that gives equal weight to quantity, quality and efficiency, and farmers' incomes continue to maintain the “two highers”
While achieving harvest after harvest, what is even more commendable is that we are gradually bidding farewell to the production model of heavy use of pesticides, water and fertilizer, moving toward green yield increases, and embarking on a path of more sustainable development. In what looks like the same harvest, a different model is presented. This summer, 300,000 mu of wheat in Qihe, Shandong achieved reduced fertilizer use without reducing output. Zhao Jincheng, a large-scale grower who has farmed grain for half his life, said that manure from livestock farms used to be unwanted, but now people compete to buy it. This year he used 30% less chemical fertilizer, yet 360 mu of wheat admirably produced an average of 1,360 jin per mu.
Along with the transformation of the production model, the structure of the agricultural industry is also being adjusted. While ensuring grain production capacity, all localities have based themselves on resource endowments, adhered to market orientation, made good use of the “classic of mountains and seas,” performed well the “play of forests and grasslands,” and played well the “card of fruits and vegetables,” fully expanding the diverse functions of agriculture, allowing agriculture to bloom with more and more beautiful colors and bringing farmers tangible returns.
During the autumn harvest season, silage corn planted by farmers in Malong County, Yunnan Province, welcomed a bumper harvest, and on the roads from the fields to local beef cattle breeding companies, vehicles transporting corn came in an endless stream. Gao De'an, director of the Malong County Agriculture Bureau, told reporters that in recent years, with the development of the county's beef cattle industry, farmers have enthusiastically planted silage corn as feed, with a net income of more than 2,000 yuan per mu, double that of planting grain corn.
Farmers' income is a hard indicator of the level of development during the period of shifting economic growth speeds. According to statistics, in the first half of this year, the per capita disposable income of farmers was 5,554 yuan, an increase of 8.3%, and the growth rate continued to be higher than both the per capita disposable income of urban residents and GDP, maintaining a relatively fast increase on the good trend of “eleven consecutive years of rapid growth.”
Agricultural and rural reform once again runs ahead, with sources of momentum continuously bursting forth
Reform creates growth dividends. Historically, the starting point of China's economic system reform was in the countryside. Today, as the economy undergoes deep transformation and development, agricultural and rural reform has once again taken the lead.
Last year and this year, the central government issued two No. 1 documents in succession, requiring comprehensive deepening of rural reform and advancement of agricultural modernization. All localities and departments respected the practical creativity of the farmer masses and boldly explored and innovated on the premise of clear bottom lines. Work such as land circulation, confirmation and registration, and cultivation of new-type entities has advanced steadily, and reforms such as the agricultural subsidy system, rural finance and insurance, the distribution of rights and interests in seed industry scientific research achievements, and the pilot target price for cotton and soybeans have made initial progress, with the sources of momentum for agricultural and rural development bursting forth together.
As a national modern agriculture demonstration zone advanced as a whole city, Chengdu City, Sichuan Province, has in recent years deeply advanced rural property rights system reform focused on actual land measurement, confirmation of rights, and registration and issuance of certificates, and on this basis actively explored various land circulation models such as joint-stock cooperative co-operation, specialized cooperative joint operation, whole-process trusteeship operation, and enterprise leasing operation, powerfully promoting appropriately scaled land operation. As of now, more than half of the city's land has been formed into scale, various new-type operating entities have emerged one after another, and advanced production factors have been continuously injected. The formerly small “courtyard economy” of planting melons and vegetables around the house has thus become one thriving large industry after another.
Along with the deepening of rural reform, the stage for agriculture, rural areas and farmers has become larger and larger, agriculture is increasingly becoming a sunrise industry that all parties vie to enter, and rural areas are increasingly becoming a blue ocean for investment. With this as support, we have reason to expect that agriculture and rural areas and even the overall economy will burst forth with new vitality and welcome a new round of growth.