How should China's agricultural product market system be built under scientific guidance? Yi Shaohua explains

Recently, the Ministry of Commerce and 10 other departments jointly issued the National Agricultural Product Market System Development Plan (hereinafter referred to as the Plan). This is the first national long-term development plan in the field of agricultural product circulation in China, and it is of great significance for guiding and standardizing agricultural product circulation and the construction of the agricultural product market system. From the perspective of top-level design, the Plan proposes 6 key tasks and 6 safeguard measures for improving the construction of the agricultural product system, provides a highly operational planning scheme for improving the efficiency of agricultural product circulation, giving play to the public welfare functions of agricultural product markets, and ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products, and points out the direction for initially building an agricultural product market system with Chinese characteristics by 2020.

Specifically, the Plan has the following prominent features:

1. It establishes a scientific layout for national agricultural product wholesale markets. For a long time, due to the lack of a unified national development plan, the problem of duplicate construction of agricultural product wholesale markets in China has been relatively serious. Phenomena such as “having a market but no trade” and vicious competition among similar markets have occurred frequently. At the same time, the pursuit of super-large-scale market construction in some places has also become an upsurge, causing some agricultural product wholesale markets to become objects of “land enclosure” and resulting in waste of land resources. Based on factors such as population and the distribution of existing markets, the Plan clearly proposes eight major backbone market clusters nationwide and about 100 national backbone agricultural product wholesale markets. This provides a decision-making basis and guidance for strengthening the coordinated regulation of agricultural product wholesale markets in different regions and of different sizes, scientifically laying out the scale and number of agricultural product wholesale markets according to the respective locational advantages of the eastern, central, and western regions, and is conducive to strengthening effective connections between the eastern and western regions and between agricultural product production areas and major consumption areas, to balancing the effective distribution of wholesale markets nationwide, and to narrowing the wealth gap among different regions.

2. It clarifies the positioning of public welfare agricultural product markets. Because most agricultural product wholesale markets in China operate in a corporate manner and are mostly privately invested or owned by village collectives, and even wholesale markets controlled by state capital have profit indicators as assessment standards, wholesale markets all pursue profit, which to a certain extent pushes up the final selling price of agricultural products. In recent years, relevant national departments and some local governments have increased support for wholesale markets, but they have not been able to improve and adjust at the institutional level, leaving them lacking motivation for improvement and unable to effectively promote wholesale markets to perform public welfare functions. On the basis of pilot implementation of public welfare agricultural product wholesale markets, and according to factors such as resource endowment, population distribution, and consumption capacity, combined with the national agricultural product market system planning layout, the Plan establishes a three-level national, regional, and field-side agricultural product market network nationwide, further clarifies the basic nature of agricultural product circulation as having a public welfare attribute, and expands the scope of public welfare markets from wholesale markets to a broader range of agricultural product circulation fields such as affordable vegetable stores and field-side markets. This effectively promotes the return of agricultural product markets to their public welfare attribute, provides safeguard measures for public welfare markets through implementation mechanisms, and provides an institutional guarantee for giving play to public welfare functions and improving people's livelihood and welfare.

3. It highlights the importance of infrastructure construction for agricultural product circulation. Overall, at present most agricultural product markets in China are open-air or simple plastic-tunnel markets, with crude facilities and poor trading environments. The guarantee capacity of public infrastructure such as water, electricity, and roads is relatively weak, firefighting facility construction is inadequate, and there are hidden safety hazards. In addition, the construction of service support facilities in a considerable number of markets lags behind. Support service facilities such as information services, food quality testing, unified electronic settlement, market safety monitoring, environmental protection, food and beverage, and accommodation are not well developed. Facilities for primary processing, packaging, cold storage, cold-chain logistics, and distribution of agricultural products are also relatively lacking, which to a large extent restricts the improvement of agricultural product circulation efficiency in China and also causes a relatively high loss rate of agricultural products. Therefore, the Plan places strengthening infrastructure construction for agricultural product circulation first among the six important tasks. It proposes that while focusing on building national and regional wholesale markets at production areas, distribution centers, and sales areas, it is necessary to strengthen the construction of supporting facilities in wholesale markets, improve market service functions, and promote the upgrading of the agricultural product market system from traditional to modern and information-based. This will greatly promote the construction and development of China's agricultural product market system.

4. It increases efforts in agricultural product quality and safety management. In recent years, the quality and safety of agricultural products has become a hot issue of public concern. As the main channel for agricultural product circulation, agricultural product markets have direct supervisory responsibility for the quality and safety of agricultural products. Because agricultural product production in China is characterized by decentralization, which is very different from branded industrial products, it is difficult to implement large-scale quality certification. At the same time, factors such as imperfect market mechanisms for agricultural products, lack of large-scale, standardized, and unified sampling inspection procedures, lack of a unified market access system in the agricultural product supply chain, agricultural products having no “identity card,” and an imperfect cold-chain logistics system have caused agricultural product quality and safety problems to occur from time to time. The Plan takes maintaining the safety of agricultural product markets as an important task. From aspects such as establishing an inspection and testing system combining government departments and third-party testing, advancing the quality and safety traceability system, and establishing credit records for agricultural product operators, it comprehensively advances the construction of testing and safeguard mechanisms for agricultural product quality and safety, strengthens the government's management responsibility in agricultural product quality and safety, and improves the safety factor of agricultural product quality and safety.

(The author is a researcher at the National Academy of Economic Strategy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)