How to Break the Dilemma of the "Three Simultaneous Increases" in Grain
The strange phenomenon of the simultaneous increase in China's grain production, imports, and stockpiles - the "three simultaneous increases" - has not only caused serious unsold surpluses of domestically produced grain, but also, under the impact of cheap imported grain, has kept national grain stockpiles persistently high. In the short term, this obstructs domestic grain circulation and increases pressure on fiscal spending; in the long run, it will inevitably make grain purchasing difficult, stockpiling difficult, and the fiscal burden difficult to bear, ultimately shrinking grain production, harming farmers' interests, and casting a shadow over future agricultural production, affecting socioeconomic development and stability. Breaking the "three simultaneous increases" dilemma is an extremely major and urgent issue facing us.
By transforming the agricultural production model, take the path of modernized production
The mode of agricultural production directly determines a country's level of agricultural modernization.
A mode of agricultural production below the subsistence level mainly pursues quantity of production. After decades of development since the founding of the People's Republic of China, China's agricultural production has entered a new stage of development. Having risen above the subsistence level, China today has abundant supplies of major agricultural products, including grain. As people's income levels continue to rise, demand for agricultural products has shifted from the pursuit of quantity to a greater pursuit of quality.
Major changes in social conditions mean that the mode of agricultural production should also change accordingly. Proceeding from China's national conditions, China's agricultural development model must shift from a quantity-oriented model to one that gives equal weight to quantity, quality, and efficiency. The supply of agricultural products must shift from focusing on quantity growth to placing equal emphasis on overall balance, structural optimization, and quality and safety.
One of the prominent problems in China's agriculture today is relatively low efficiency and relatively low returns. Since 2004, China's grain production has increased and harvested bumper crops for eleven consecutive years, and this year's summer grain achieved a twelfth consecutive bumper harvest.
Although China's grain production has reached record levels, a careful analysis shows that the quality of China's agricultural products, including grain, is not high. Domestic high-quality wheat is in short supply and must be purchased from the international market every year; the proportion of high-quality rice is very small, and excessive ordinary rice is not only priced far above the international market but also unpopular with consumers; for oils and oilseeds such as soybeans and rapeseed, in recent years, due to problems such as low oil extraction rates and high market prices, not only has the planted area fallen sharply, but imports have also continued to rise. China has now become the world's largest soybean importer; once a corn exporter, China is now one of the few major net corn importers.
Although China implements a minimum purchase price policy for important agricultural products such as wheat and rice, farmers' efficiency in growing grain is low and returns are also very low. On average, the income from growing one mu of grain over two seasons a year is only about 1,000 yuan. That is less than half of the national average monthly wage of 2,864 yuan for migrant workers in 2014.
To improve the competitiveness of China's agricultural products in both domestic and international markets and increase farmers' income from cultivation, while paying attention to overall balance and quality and safety, special attention must be paid to structural optimization.
At present, China's major agricultural products, such as the important grain varieties wheat and rice, will still be subject to minimum purchase prices for some time to come. To optimize the grain planting structure, the minimum purchase price policy for grain must be adjusted. The current practice of applying the same purchase price to the same grain variety regardless of quality must be changed. In accordance with market demand, truly implement higher prices for higher quality and lower prices for lower quality. Guide farmers to adjust their planting structure and produce grain varieties that sell well. This will both meet market demand and increase grain farmers' income, while also reducing the fiscal burden on the state and cutting resource waste.
A large population with little arable land is China's basic national condition. As a developing country, with the rapid advance of industrialization and urbanization, China's arable land area will still tend to decrease, and holding the red line of 1.8 billion mu of arable land is extremely difficult. Under these circumstances, China's approach to resource consumption in agricultural production must change as quickly as possible. Agricultural development must shift from relying mainly on resource consumption to being resource-conserving and environment-friendly.
In the past, China's agricultural production mainly relied on draining resources and consuming inputs. To boost agricultural output, China used more and more chemical fertilizer. As the world's largest producer and user of chemical fertilizer, in 2013 China produced 70.37 million tons of chemical fertilizer (converted to pure nutrients, the same below), and agricultural chemical fertilizer application reached 59.12 million tons. The main problems in China's current chemical fertilizer application are: the average application rate per mu is 21.9 kg, far above the world average (8 kg per mu), 2.6 times that of the United States, and 2.5 times that of the European Union; unbalanced fertilization is a prominent phenomenon. Fertilizer application is on the high side in the economically developed eastern regions, the lower Yangtze River region, and suburban areas, and excessive fertilization is relatively common for higher-value economic and horticultural crops such as vegetables and fruit trees; the utilization rate of organic fertilizer resources is low. At present, the total nutrients in China's organic fertilizer resources amount to more than 70 million tons, but actual utilization is less than 40%. Traditional manual fertilization methods still dominate, broadcasting and surface application of chemical fertilizer are relatively common, and mechanical fertilization accounts for only about 30% of the planted area of major crops. Excessive and blind fertilization not only increases agricultural production costs and wastes resources, but also causes arable land compaction and soil acidification.
China's water consumption is growing larger and larger, groundwater is being over-extracted, and wells are being drilled deeper and deeper. China is a country with severe drought and water shortage. China's total freshwater resources amount to 2,800 billion cubic meters, accounting for 6% of global water resources, second only to Brazil, Russia, and Canada, ranking fourth in the world. However, China's per capita water resources are only 2,300 cubic meters, just 1/4 of the world average, making it one of the countries with the poorest per capita water resources in the world. Yet China is also the world's largest water user. In 2013, total national water use was 618.34 billion cubic meters. Of this, domestic water use accounted for 12.1%; industrial water use accounted for 22.8%; agricultural water use accounted for 63.4%; and ecological environment replenishment water (including only urban environmental water supplied by human measures and replenishment water for some rivers, lakes, and wetlands) accounted for 1.7%.
Predatory farming practices are making arable land quality worse and worse. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, nationwide arable land degraded due to soil erosion, impoverishment, secondary salinization, and acidification has already exceeded 40% of the total area. Data from the Ministry of Agriculture's soil testing and formulated fertilization program show that in 14 southern provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities), the proportion of soil with a pH value below 6.5 expanded from 52% 30 years ago to 65%, the proportion with a pH value below 5.5 expanded from 20% to 40%, and the proportion with a pH value below 4.5 expanded from 1% to 4%. In the northwest region, salinized arable land covers 300 million mu, accounting for 60% of the national total. Of this, secondary salinized arable land covers 21 million mu, accounting for 70% of the national total. According to relevant agricultural experts, in European and American countries, 70%-80% of grain output depends on inherent soil fertility and 20%-30% on water and fertilizer inputs, whereas in China the contribution rate of inherent soil fertility to grain output is only 50%, 20-30 percentage points lower than in developed countries such as those in Europe and America.
Heavy metal and atmospheric pollution have made a considerable portion of agricultural products unfit to eat, and people are increasingly threatened by food safety problems. Data from environmental authorities show that at present, more than 10% of the national arable land area is affected by heavy metal pollution to varying degrees. Of this, arable land polluted by mining areas totals 30 million mu, arable land polluted by oil about 75 million mu, arable land polluted by solid waste dumping about 750,000 mu, arable land polluted by the "three industrial wastes" nearly 150 million mu, and farmland irrigated with sewage nearly 50 million mu.
A survey shows that nearly 40% of farmland and vegetable plots in the Pearl River Delta have soil contaminated by heavy metals, and 10% of that exceeds standards seriously. "White pollution" in farmland is also gradually worsening, with 500,000 tons of agricultural film left in arable land every year, forming a water-impermeable, air-impermeable, hard-to-degrade layer in the 15-20 cm soil layer, posing a huge threat to arable land quality.
To change China's current national condition of "burning through" resources in agricultural production, efforts should start from the following aspects:
Develop organic agriculture and reduce chemical fertilizer inputs. Changing excessive chemical fertilizer inputs and developing organic agriculture is an effective path. In light of China's current situation of excessive chemical fertilizer inputs, a "zero growth" action for chemical fertilizer use should be resolutely implemented. From 2015 to 2019, the annual growth rate of chemical fertilizer use should be gradually controlled within 1%; and by 2020, zero growth in chemical fertilizer use for major crops should be achieved. The "zero growth" action for chemical fertilizer use is a major measure to advance the "transformation of the development model and adjustment of the structure" of agriculture, and is also a practical necessity for promoting cost savings and efficiency gains and for energy conservation and emissions reduction, and it is of great significance for safeguarding national food security, the quality and safety of agricultural products, and agricultural ecological security. At the same time, great importance must be attached to the use of organic fertilizers. In addition to vigorously encouraging farmers to apply farmyard manure, special attention must be paid to the comprehensive utilization of crop straw, which is widely available.
Develop water-saving agriculture and reduce water waste. China's freshwater resources are extremely unevenly distributed, greatly affecting the development of agricultural production. To reduce water waste, it is necessary both to develop water-saving agricultural products and to adapt to local conditions by developing dryland farming products in water-scarce areas, and also to vigorously develop new irrigation technologies such as sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation.
Develop circular agriculture and protect arable land resources. Season after season, year after year of production will inevitably cause arable land resources to become "fatigued." To change the "predatory" mode of arable land resource use, developing circular agriculture is undoubtedly a good option.
Among current circular agriculture production techniques, "co-cultivation and co-raising" techniques are worth promoting. The "rice-shrimp co-cultivation," "rice-fish co-cultivation," and "rice-softshell turtle co-cultivation" models represented by the Jianghan Plain in Hubei not only improve soil fertility, with no application of chemical fertilizers or pesticides, but also find a new path for farmers to increase production and income.