Modern Agriculture Demonstration Zones Lead Agriculture Forward with Great Strides
Since 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture has recognized 283 national modern agriculture demonstration zones across the country in three batches. Over the past five years and more, each demonstration zone has carried out exploration at multiple levels, innovating at individual points and demonstrating across broader areas, achieving progress in key tasks link by link and breakthroughs in one field after another at key junctures each year, as the construction of demonstration zones entered the fast track of leading the development of modern agriculture.
The level of physical and technological equipment leads the nation. According to statistics, in 2014 the area of high-standard farmland in the demonstration zones, which can be irrigated in drought, drained in floods, laid out in square fields and connected by canals, reached 267 million mu, accounting for more than 50%, higher than the national average; the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation, planting and harvesting reached 75.1%, 13.4 percentage points higher than the national average. The 2014 monitoring and evaluation results of the Ministry of Agriculture showed that 20 demonstration zones including Taicang City, Jiangsu Province, scored more than 75 points, taking the lead in entering the “stage of basically realizing agricultural modernization” and becoming the “bellwethers” leading the construction of agricultural modernization.
Reform and innovation activate the vitality of agricultural development. In 2013, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Ministry of Finance and 5 other departments and units, selected 21 demonstration zones on a merit basis to carry out pilot projects for agricultural reform and construction, creating “experimental plots” for agricultural reform. In 2015, the scope of the policy of replacing subsidies with awards was further expanded, increasing the total award and subsidy amount to 100 demonstration zones. Since the implementation of the reform pilot projects, each demonstration zone, centering on breaking through the bottlenecks constraining agricultural development, has been courageous in practice and bold in exploration, accumulating much fresh experience. For example, Zhaodong in Heilongjiang created various forms of appropriate-scale operation such as “land management rights trusts” and “joining cooperatives with land and receiving guaranteed dividends”; western regions such as Tiandong County in Guangxi and Helan County in Ningxia took characteristic agriculture as a breakthrough point and vigorously developed leisure agriculture and rural tourism, which has now spread like a prairie fire.
⟦NL> Models for modern agriculture construction are gradually taking shape. Based on local realities, various regions have explored and formed a number of modern agriculture construction models with regional characteristics, in line with development requirements and full of internal vitality, such as the modern large-scale agriculture construction model of the Heilongjiang Reclamation Area, the water-saving ecological agriculture construction model of Yan'an City, Shaanxi Province, the mountainous characteristic agriculture construction model of Meitan County, Guizhou Province, and the “two zones” agriculture construction model of Cixi City, Zhejiang Province, among others. These models cover everything from large-scale agriculture suitable for highly mechanized operations to efficient ecological boutique agriculture relying on small areas, from water-saving agriculture focused on ecological protection to characteristic agriculture based on mountainous conditions, as well as various agricultural forms such as agricultural industrialization clusters, urban modern agriculture and grass-livestock balance agriculture, providing replicable and promotable “templates” for regions in the same area and at similar stages of development to develop modern agriculture.
The demonstration platform effect coalesces development synergy. The platform effect of the demonstration zones continues to emerge, as resources and forces from all sides keep gathering on this platform, forming a powerful synergy for advancing the construction of demonstration zones. The Ministry of Finance expanded the scope of the policy of replacing subsidies with awards for demonstration zones, arranging a total of 1.46 billion yuan in award and subsidy funds to support the reform and construction of demonstration zones, with the total award and subsidy funds reaching 1 billion yuan in 2015; the National Development and Reform Commission arranged a cumulative 1.7 billion yuan in central budgetary investment to support demonstration zones in building high-standard farmland with guaranteed yields in drought and flood; financial institutions such as the China Development Bank, the Agricultural Development Bank of China and the Postal Savings Bank of China actively used demonstration zones to explore new channels for financial support to agriculture, with total credit support reaching more than 90 billion yuan; various regions also invested real money in the construction of demonstration zones.
Next, the Ministry of Agriculture will, in accordance with the requirements of modern agriculture development featuring high output, safe products, resource conservation and environmental friendliness, strengthen reform and innovation, science and technology-driven development, resource integration and policy support, build regional modern agriculture development poles, demonstrate and lead the construction of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics, and strive to have more than half of the demonstration zones take the lead in entering the stage of basically realizing agricultural modernization by 2020.