Developing Green Agriculture Creates a Different Kind of Bumper Harvest

Compared with previous years, this year's summer grain production shows striking new trends and new highlights, namely that the “green” concept, actions and methods run through the entire process of summer grain production. Viewed along the timeline of past bumper harvests, this “green bumper harvest” carries especially profound significance, for it proves with facts that “a different way” can also achieve a bumper harvest.

After years of consecutive grain increases, the constraints of resources and the environment have grown increasingly tight, and extensive management that relies solely on consuming resources, straining the environment and piling on inputs can no longer be sustained; changing the growth model is imperative. At the same time, grain production must never be relaxed, and grain output must be guaranteed. This requires continuous innovation in ideas, technology and methods to ensure both high yield and high efficiency, and to give equal weight to production and ecology, accounting for both the ecological ledger and the benefit ledger. It is precisely by innovating while persevering and by changing the growth model while safeguarding supply that this year's summer grain production achieved a “different kind of bumper harvest.”

This different kind of bumper harvest is thanks to the Central Committee's high attention and firm resolve. At present, “greening” and “changing the growth model” have become the strong notes in the Central Committee's guidance of agricultural development under the new normal of economic development. From General Secretary Xi Jinping's inspection tour in Fujian in November 2014, when he put forward the “five new” requirements, to the Central Rural Work Conference at the end of that year, which stressed “accelerating the transformation of the agricultural development model, continuously raising land output, resource utilization and labor productivity, and achieving intensive and sustainable development,” to this year's Central Document No. 1, which pointed out the need to “guarantee the effective supply of agricultural products and quality safety under hard resource and environmental constraints, and enhance the capacity for sustainable agricultural development” - a series of dense, clearly targeted statements all send a strong signal and reflect the Central Committee's firm resolve: the agricultural development model, including the model of grain production, must be unswervingly transformed. Since the beginning of spring this year, Premier Li Keqiang and Vice Premier Wang Yang have repeatedly stressed at meetings on agricultural production that it is necessary both to ensure grain production and to adjust the structure and change the growth model. The Central Committee's high attention powerfully established the “green” concept of summer grain production.

This different kind of bumper harvest is thanks to strong, coordinated efforts from top to bottom. Since the beginning of this year, agricultural departments at all levels across the country have worked in concert, advancing green growth with a high degree of self-awareness, with ideas, measures and actions. At the end of last year, the National Agricultural Work Conference set the main line of work as “stabilizing grain, increasing incomes, adjusting the structure, improving quality, raising efficiency and changing the growth model”; starting this year, the Ministry of Agriculture has carried out large-scale high-yield creation and research on green grain increase models, action to protect and improve arable land quality, and innovation and integrated demonstration of conservation tillage technology; it launched the action to achieve zero growth in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and so on, adding force to the word “adjust” to further optimize variety structure, and adding force to the word “transform” to integrate and promote high-yield, high-efficiency, resource-saving and environment-friendly technical models. Localities also acted quickly, refining implementation plans, supporting techniques for reducing inputs and controlling harm, attaching importance to sustainable development, and vigorously advancing scientific fertilization and unified pest and disease control, achieving reduced fertilizer and pesticide use with higher efficiency. It can be said that this year is an important juncture for transforming the grain production model; in the past, “transforming” and “adjusting” were spontaneous, partial and scattered, whereas from this year on they are a conscious pursuit carried out across whole organizational systems, throughout the entire process and in all directions.

This different kind of bumper harvest is thanks to innovation in the way production is organized. The transformation and innovation of production methods are reflected in every link - cultivation, field management, harvesting and transport, drying and storage. In cultivation, key techniques such as deep loosening and land preparation by agricultural machinery and post-sowing compaction are used to improve the soil, build up soil fertility, balance nutrients and restore arable land, achieving “storing grain in the land”; in field management, water, fertilizer and pesticides are controlled to achieve cost savings and higher efficiency and to be environment-friendly; in mechanical harvesting, modern information technology is used to improve operational efficiency and quality, harvesting efficiently and reducing losses, ensuring that every grain is stored; agricultural machinery and agronomy are deeply integrated, with straw crushed and returned to the field, promoting resource-based, clean and comprehensive utilization; drying has become an important link in the full mechanization of grain production, achieving “grain that never touches the ground,” going directly into drying and then into the granary. On the report card of this bumper harvest, innovation in the way production is organized likewise deserves great credit; the rapid development of new types of business entities and socialized service organizations has made large-scale, mechanized and standardized operations effectively possible. Driven by innovation in agricultural science and technology, the transformation of methods has made this year's summer grain production greener, more environmentally friendly, more intensive and more efficient.

The combined effect of multiple factors has got summer grain production off to a good start in transforming its model and adjusting its structure. However, transforming the grain development model is a long-term and arduous task: it is necessary both to solve the problem of feeding 1.3 billion people and to ensure ecological security and resource security; it is necessary both not to incur new debts and to repay old ones. This is no easy matter, and it requires the joint efforts of agricultural departments at all levels, the major grain-producing provinces and regions, and scientific research experts, so as to ultimately achieve sustainable grain and agricultural development and leave fertile land and rich soil to future generations!