An Analysis of the Important Position and Role of Leisure Agriculture and Rural Tourism

Since entering the new century, leisure agriculture and rural tourism have flourished in our country, consistently maintaining double-digit growth, and in some key areas it can even be described as explosive development. However, for such a rapidly emerging new industry, some places still regard it as a matter of eating, drinking and having fun, something optional. The result of insufficient understanding is inadequate attention, and management and support will correspondingly be absent, which is not conducive to the sustained and healthy growth of the industry. Viewed from a strategic and overall perspective, leisure agriculture and rural tourism are playing important roles in the following six aspects.

First, it is becoming a powerful driving force for modern agriculture. International practice shows that modern agriculture is an industrial system with multiple functions and deep integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas; building modern agriculture requires substantial investment, but it can neither rely on the government nor force farmers, and must give full play to the decisive role of the market. Developing leisure agriculture and rural tourism can not only expand agriculture from a single production function to multiple functions such as leisure sightseeing, farming experience, ecological protection and cultural inheritance, meeting the needs of urban and rural residents to enter nature, understand agriculture, experience farming fun and enjoy leisure and entertainment, but also, by virtue of its relatively high economic benefits, fully mobilize the enthusiasm of various business entities to increase investment in improving agricultural infrastructure, transforming business methods, applying new technologies and protecting the production environment. Xin'an Town and Sanhe Town in Jiangyou City, Sichuan Province, built in 10 villages in a contiguous area the "Guoyu Huaxi" agricultural park, which integrates modern agriculture, pastoral scenery, eco-tourism and farming experience. From 2012 to 2014, the region integrated various funds of 280 million yuan to improve production conditions, with investment far exceeding the total infrastructure construction investment of the previous 30 years, and introduced new varieties such as kiwifruit and grapes on a large scale, promoted techniques such as three-dimensional cultivation and biological pest control, and equipped water-saving facilities such as sprinkler and drip irrigation, greatly raising the level of agricultural development. Such examples are too numerous to mention throughout the country. According to surveys, wherever leisure agriculture and rural tourism are highly developed, the level of agricultural modernization is high.

⟦NL> Second, it is becoming an important growth pole for farmers' income. The core of the "three rural issues" is the issue of farmers' income. Developing leisure agriculture and rural tourism can enable agricultural production to achieve dual value-added of material products and spiritual products, effectively increasing agricultural operating income; can extend the agricultural industry chain, expand employment capacity, and effectively increase farmers' wage income; can turn farm courtyards into "farmers' paradises" for urban residents' leisure and lodgings that can be lived in or rented, effectively increasing farmers' property income; can turn agricultural production areas into scenic spots for residents to get close to nature and enjoy pastoral scenery, ensuring farmers' income "continues through all four seasons." According to a typical survey of 135,000 leisure agriculture business entities, farmers account for 92.4% of leisure agriculture practitioners, and the output rate per mu of land is close to 12,000 yuan; farmers operating leisure agriculture have an annual per capita operating income of more than 50,000 yuan. It can thus be seen that under the current unfavorable situation where agricultural operations are limited in returns due to the double squeeze of rising costs and the price "ceiling," the number of farmers going out to work and the growth rate of wage income are noticeably slowing, and transfer income has a small total and little increment, leisure agriculture and rural tourism have become the hope and a prominent highlight for ensuring sustained and relatively rapid growth of farmers' income.

Third, it is becoming a solid supporting point for beautiful villages. Building beautiful villages is a long-term systematic project, which requires not only government guidance and policy support, but also greater emphasis on farmers as the main body and strengthened industrial support. Without the active participation of farmers, relying only on government project-driven efforts, the building of a new countryside will lack sustained vitality; without strong industrial support, relying only on policy support, the building of beautiful villages will become hollow villages. Developing leisure agriculture and rural tourism objectively forces local governments and farmers and other business entities to work together to improve rural infrastructure and public services, treat mountains, waters, forests, fields and lakes as a community of life, beautify village appearances, green roads, purify the environment, and create a good leisure atmosphere, while also prompting them to treat farming-reading civilization as the soft power of rural development, continuously improve the cultural connotation of rural areas, and raise the overall level of rural civilization. It is precisely in the process of developing leisure agriculture and rural tourism that a large number of beautiful villages with prominent features of economic prosperity, good ecology and civilized village customs have emerged across the country. According to incomplete statistics, the number of leisure agriculture and rural tourism cluster villages nationwide has now reached more than 90,000, and these villages have basically been built into beautiful villages.

Fourth, it is becoming an effective connector for coordinating urban and rural areas. Promoting the mutual integration of urban and rural factors such as population, technology, capital and resources is the key to building a new pattern of integrated urban and rural economic and social development. Leisure agriculture has an important function of connecting urban and rural areas and linking industry and agriculture. A large amount of practice shows that in places where leisure agriculture is well developed, there has been a climax of returning migrant workers, rural popularity and resource factors have begun to flow back from cities, and problems such as the rural "three left-behind groups" and "hollow villages" have been alleviated; a large amount of urban industrial and commercial capital has been invested in agriculture and rural transformation, with an obvious capital aggregation effect, and advanced production technology and management technology have been widely applied; rural roads, electricity, water, gas and other public facilities have been greatly improved, urban infrastructure and public services are rapidly extending to rural areas, and consumer spending is flowing from cities to rural areas; domestic consumption, which had long been difficult to start, is being fully stimulated, and the pattern in which modern factors such as capital and talent mainly flowed one-way from rural areas to cities is rapidly and quietly changing. It can be foreseen that these changes will surely have a far-reaching impact on breaking the urban-rural dual structure, coordinating integrated urban-rural development, and driving steady economic growth. General Secretary Xi Jinping, when presiding over the 22nd collective study session of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee, emphasized that accelerating the integration of urban and rural development is a strategic task proposed by the 18th National Congress of the Party, and also an inevitable requirement for implementing the "Four Comprehensives" strategic layout, and that work must be carried out promptly, investment increased, and major breakthroughs made in coordinating urban-rural relations. Thoroughly implementing the spirit of this important speech, attaching great importance to and promoting the development of leisure agriculture and rural tourism is an effective measure.

Fifth, it is becoming a unique carrier of industrial integration. Promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas is a major deployment made at this year's Central Rural Work Conference, another major innovation in the Party's concept and thinking on "three rural issues" work, a fundamental choice for the transformation and development of agriculture and rural areas under the new normal, and an inevitable requirement for conforming to new trends in domestic and international industrial development. However, the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas is rich in connotation and wide in scope, and cannot be discussed in general terms; a carrier of integration needs to be found. From the very first day of its birth, leisure agriculture and rural tourism has highly embodied the concept of integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Each business owner not only needs to produce high-quality original ecological agricultural products, but usually also needs to process them into commodities that tourists can taste, view and carry. They are both new agricultural production and operation entities and small and medium-sized agricultural product processing enterprises, and even more so rural leisure tourism service business owners, naturally closely combining agricultural production, agricultural product processing and leisure sightseeing services, realizing a high degree of integration and mutual promotion and interaction of the three rural industries, greatly expanding the development space of rural industries and improving quality and efficiency.

Sixth, it is becoming the main power source for tourism development. International experience shows that in the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, there is often also rapid growth in people's leisure needs. At present, our country is in the middle stage of industrialization. With the improvement of residents' income levels and changes in consumption patterns, tourism and leisure will continue to be in a stage of rapid development for a relatively long period in the future. Statistics show that at present the added value of our country's tourism industry accounts for more than 4% of GDP. In 2014, domestic tourism reached 3.6 billion person-times, an increase of 10%; total annual tourism revenue was 3.25 trillion yuan, an increase of 11%; completed direct investment was 680 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 32%, noticeably higher than other service industries. While seeing the good development trend of the tourism industry, it is even more important to see that the support and potential of current and future tourism development lie in agriculture and rural areas. On the one hand, the carrying capacity and expansion space of traditional famous mountains and great rivers, temples and ancient monasteries and other scenic spots and historic sites are limited, far less than the vast countryside, and it is very difficult for their development indicators to achieve large growth within a certain period; on the other hand, due to the influence of many factors such as the urban living environment and the pressure of life and work, urban residents' desire to stay away from the noise of the city and go to the countryside to see blue sky and white clouds, view clear blue waters, breathe fresh air and taste specialty foods is growing ever stronger, and the countryside has increasingly become the first choice destination for urban residents' leisure tourism. Leisure agriculture is the industrial support of rural tourism, and rural tourism is an important reliance for the development of leisure agriculture; the two are inseparable. Therefore, to promote the development of the tourism industry, we must at the same time attach great importance to and support the development of leisure agriculture and rural tourism.