Modern Agriculture Demonstration Zones Lead Agriculture's Leapfrog Development
It is understood that since 2010, the Ministry of Agriculture has recognized 283 national modern agriculture demonstration zones nationwide in three batches. Over the past five years and more, each demonstration zone has carried out explorations at multiple levels, innovating at individual points and demonstrating across broader areas, achieving step-by-step progress in key tasks, with breakthroughs in a different field at each key juncture every year, and the construction of demonstration zones has entered the fast lane of leading modern agricultural development.
The level of material and technological equipment leads the nation. According to statistics, in 2014, the area of high-standard farmland in the demonstration zones - farmland that can be irrigated in drought, drained in floods, laid out in square plots, 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 and harvesting reached 75.1%, 13.4 percentage points higher than the national average. The Ministry of Agriculture's 2014 monitoring and evaluation results showed that 20 demonstration zones including Taicang City, Jiangsu Province, scored over 75 points, taking the lead in entering the "stage of basically realizing agricultural modernization" and becoming the "bellwethers" leading agricultural modernization.
⟦NL> 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 competitive basis to carry out pilot projects for agricultural reform and construction, creating "experimental fields" for agricultural reform. In 2015, the scope of the policy of substituting awards for subsidies was further expanded, increasing the total amount of awards and subsidies to 100 demonstration zones. Since the implementation of the reform pilots, each demonstration zone, focusing on breaking through the bottlenecks restricting agricultural development, has been brave 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, guaranteed dividends"; and western regions such as Tiandong County in Guangxi and Helan County in Ningxia, taking specialty agriculture as a breakthrough, vigorously developed leisure agriculture and rural tourism, which has now spread like a prairie fire.
Models of 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 specialty 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 suited to highly mechanized operations to efficient ecological boutique agriculture relying on small areas, from water-saving agriculture focused on ecological protection to specialty agriculture based on mountainous conditions, as well as agricultural industrialization clusters, urban modern agriculture, and grass-livestock balanced agriculture and other agricultural forms, providing replicable and promotable "templates" for regions in the same area and at similar development stages to develop modern agriculture.
The demonstration platform effect coalesces development synergy. The platform effect of the demonstration zones continues to emerge, with resources and forces from all sides continuously 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 substituting awards for subsidies 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 amount of 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 carrying out the construction of high-standard farmland with guaranteed yields despite drought or flooding; 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; and 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 agricultural 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 modernization of agriculture 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.