Preventing Disease and Controlling Pests to Secure a Bumper Autumn Grain Harvest: The Ministry of Agriculture Organizes a Special Action

This website news  To secure a bumper grain harvest for the whole year, the bulk lies in the autumn grain, the key lies in disaster prevention and mitigation, and the focus is on preventing disease and controlling pests. Affected by the El Nino event, major pests and diseases such as the rice planthopper, rice leaf roller, rice blast, corn borer, and potato late blight are showing a severe outbreak trend, posing a relatively large threat to the safe growth of autumn grain crops. In order to strengthen prevention and control measures, achieve “snatching grain from the mouth of pests”, and minimize damage losses, the Ministry of Agriculture recently organized and carried out the action to prevent disease and control pests to secure a bumper autumn grain harvest.

The Ministry of Agriculture proposed that the action to prevent disease and control pests to secure a bumper autumn grain harvest revolve around reducing pesticide use and controlling harm and zero growth in usage, focus on controlling the occurrence and harm of major migratory, epidemic, and explosive crop pests and diseases, adhere to the principles of classified guidance and scientific prevention and control, highlight major crops, major pests and diseases, key regions, and key links, strengthen monitoring and early warning, advance unified prevention and control, green prevention and control, and scientific pesticide use, carry out emergency prevention and control in a timely manner, and strive to control the damage losses from major pests and diseases within 5%, with the coverage rate of specialized unified prevention and control and the coverage rate of green prevention and control reaching 32% and 22%, respectively, an increase of 2 percentage points year on year.

The Ministry of Agriculture required that the action to prevent disease and control pests to secure a bumper autumn grain harvest focus on “one strengthening and three advancements”. First, strengthen monitoring and early warning. On the basis of comprehensively strengthening field surveys, systematically monitor, closely track, and fully grasp the dynamics of major pests and diseases, conduct timely consultations, accurately release forecast and early warning information, clarify key targets, key regions, and optimal periods for prevention and control, and scientifically guide prevention and control actions. Second, advance scientific prevention and control. For the rice planthopper, adopt “suppress the early and control the late” measures to strictly prevent sudden outbreaks and disasters in the later period; for the rice leaf roller, strictly implement control measures when thresholds are reached, with emphasis on protecting the top three leaves; for rice blast and potato late blight, vigorously grasp prevention at the breaking and heading stages and at the flowering stage; for the corn borer, on the basis of light trapping, sex pheromone trapping, and releasing bees to control the borer, focus on chemical control at the large trumpet stage. Third, advance the integration of unified prevention and control with green prevention and control. With specialized unified prevention and control as the main form and whole-process green prevention and control as the key content, strengthen cooperation between agriculture and enterprises, carry out technology integration, direct product supply, and guidance services, create a number of demonstration bases, integrate a number of technical models, cultivate a number of implementing entities, continuously expand the number and scale of demonstration bases for integrated advancement, and radiate and drive large-area comprehensive management and pesticide reduction and harm control. Fourth, advance scientific pesticide use. Promote new pesticide varieties with small dosage and good control effects to replace old pesticide varieties with large dosage and poor control effects, and promote efficient and economical plant protection machinery to replace old plant protection machinery with leakage. Guide producers to select pesticide formulas, use pesticides according to the symptoms, and apply pesticides according to dosage and at the appropriate time, avoiding blindly increasing the application dosage and increasing the number of applications. With new agricultural business entities and socialized service organizations as the focus, increase the training and popularization of knowledge and skills for scientific and safe pesticide use, and radiate and drive farmers to correctly purchase pesticides and use pesticides scientifically.

The Ministry of Agriculture emphasized that the action to prevent disease and control pests to secure a bumper autumn grain harvest has tight time and heavy tasks, and all localities should implement territorial prevention and control responsibilities, increase financial support, scientifically formulate plans, refine work measures, arrange and deploy early, do a good job in guidance services, strengthen supervision and guidance, and ensure that prevention and control measures are implemented in place, so as to win the initiative for securing a bumper autumn grain harvest.