Scaling up agriculture cannot focus only on land

China's basic national condition of a large population and little land determines that modern agriculture, on the issue of scaling up, cannot focus only on land; land can only be scaled up moderately, and vigorous efforts must be made in five aspects: scaling of industrial layout, scaling of industrial chains, scaling of organization, scaling of services, and scaling of crop and livestock farming suited to factory production.

First, the scaling of industrial layout. Advancing the scaling of modern agricultural industrial layout facilitates public-benefit and socialized services, facilitates production and operation management, helps develop regional specialty industries, helps form regional brands, and enhances core competitiveness. China's modern agricultural industrial layout should follow the principles of planting where planting is suitable, breeding where breeding is suitable, forestry where forestry is suitable, processing where processing is suitable, and tourism where tourism is suitable, planning and building a group of large parks with distinctive industrial features, driving farmers' income growth, and strong competitiveness, forming a pattern of differentiated layout and regional advantages. In the large parks, focus on supporting new-type professional farmers, specialized large households, family farms, cooperatives and other new-type business entities, vigorously support and help farmers and farmers develop various forms of association and cooperation, guide leading enterprises to establish reasonable interest-linking mechanisms with farmers and cooperatives, and embark on a path of modern agricultural development featuring "large parks, small proprietors."

Second, the scaling of industrial chains. Modern agriculture can be divided into pre-modern agriculture and post-modern agriculture. Pre-modern agriculture is the era of "petroleum agriculture," whose characteristic is breaking agriculture's closed internal cycle and introducing external forces, greatly raising agricultural output, but it is still mainly confined to working within the primary industry. In the post-modern agriculture era, agriculture has broken the limitations of the primary industry, introducing the secondary and tertiary industries, and using modern concepts to build a multifunctional composite industrial system integrating upstream, midstream and downstream, merging the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and promoting mutual reinforcement among production, supply, marketing and processing. It requires building a complete industrial chain encompassing the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Doing everything possible to extend the industrial chain and striving to build a complete industrial chain from the starting point of production to the end point of consumption should be the direction of China's modern agricultural development in the future. To obtain higher agricultural benefits, beyond production and planting, it is even more necessary to capture the high added value in the subsequent industrial chain links such as design, packaging, processing, warehousing, transportation, sales and research and development.

Third, the scaling of organization. Raising the degree of farmers' organization can not only reduce agriculture's transaction costs and elevate farmers' bargaining position in the market, but also enhance farmers' ability to withstand various risks from nature, society, policy, the market and so on. The characteristics of agricultural production determine that farm households must be the operating unit; only family members are the best combination for agricultural production. What needs to be grasped at present in developing farmers' specialized cooperative organizations is that a leap should be achieved from "organizing farmers" to "farmers organizing." Only when farmers rise up to organize themselves and serve themselves can such organization enable funds, information, technology, materials and other resources to circulate and flow relatively conveniently among the market, enterprises and farm households, can various risks be guarded against, and can farmers' interests be effectively protected.

Fourth, the scaling of services. Building a diversified new-type socialized service system covering the whole process, comprehensively equipped, convenient and efficient is the basic requirement for developing modern agriculture. The socialized service system includes three major aspects: public-benefit, commercial and self-help. Public-benefit ones should be the responsibility of the government, commercial ones should be operated by the market, and self-help ones should be undertaken by farmers' cooperative organizations. With the rapid advancement of China's industrialization and urbanization, almost all young and middle-aged farmers have gone to cities to do business or work, and more and more farm work urgently needs services provided by society. In recent years, a successful example nationwide of the effective combination of public-benefit and commercial services is cross-regional operation of agricultural machinery. We must make great efforts to tap this potential, open up this market, and do everything possible to guide large enterprises and large companies to go to the countryside to develop various types of service industries for agriculture.

Fifth, the scaling of crop and livestock farming suited to factory production. Replacing the traditional smallholder production mode with an industrialized production mode can effectively use modern industrial technology and facilities to equip agriculture, free agricultural production from the constraints of the natural environment and conditions, engage in agricultural production using modern industrialized management and production methods, raise labor productivity and land output, enable resources to be used rationally and efficiently, and greatly raise the market share of agricultural products. Vigorously developing facility-based high-efficiency agriculture, increasing the application of agricultural Internet of Things technology, and focusing on supporting the development of facility technology and industrial construction for factory-based vegetables, melons and fruits, flowers, livestock products, aquatic products and so on should be an important focus of China's modern agriculture. However, for livestock products, aquatic products and other breeding industries, the environmental carrying capacity should be fully considered, and moderately scaled factory operations should be developed; blind expansion beyond the local environment's purification capacity must not be undertaken.