China's agricultural product processing industry output value will exceed 20 trillion yuan

Zong Jinyao, Director of the Agricultural Product Processing Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, said on the 2nd in Jinan, Shandong that China's agricultural product processing industry is increasingly becoming a foundational, strategic and pillar industry of the national economy, and it is expected that this year the main business revenue of China's agricultural product processing industry will exceed 20 trillion yuan, accounting for about 18% of the country's total industrial output value.

Zong Jinyao made the above remarks while attending the National Agricultural Product Processing Science and Technology Innovation Promotion Event and the Agricultural Product Processing Technology Achievement Trade Fair. That day, nearly 3,000 people from more than 1,100 agricultural product processing research institutes, universities and leading enterprises across the country attended the event.

Zong Jinyao said that since the "12th Five-Year Plan", China's agricultural product processing industry has achieved considerable development. As of 2014, the number of agricultural product processing enterprises nationwide reached 455,000, among which 76,000 were above designated size, achieving main business revenue of 18.48 trillion yuan, total profit of 1.22 trillion yuan, and the ratio of agricultural product processing industry to agricultural output value reached 2.1:1.

What does 2.1:1 mean? Dai Xiaofeng, Director of the Institute of Agricultural Product Processing of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said in an interview with reporters that one of the international standards for statistically classifying a country as having entered modern agriculture is that the ratio of agricultural product processing industry to agricultural output value should be above 1:5, and developed countries even reach 1:8 and 1:9. Compared with developed countries, although China still has a gap, it is already far ahead of some developing countries. "Overall, China's agricultural product processing industry is in a stage of connecting the past and ushering in the future, and the next 30 years will be a period of strategic opportunity for the development of this industry."

In this regard, Zong Jinyao believes that efforts should continue to strengthen the innovation and promotion of agricultural product processing science and technology, strengthen the innovation capacity for major common key technologies in agricultural product processing, build platforms for collaborative innovation between science and enterprises, vigorously promote the transformation and application of agricultural product processing scientific and technological achievements, and promote the sustained and healthy development of China's agricultural product processing industry.