Building a New Agricultural Governance System Requires Grasping the Theme and Main Actors of Agricultural Development
Grasping the Theme, Main Actors, Methods and Direction of Agricultural Development
As new types of agricultural operating entities continue to emerge and the transformation of agricultural development methods advances in depth, China's agricultural and rural development is showing many new changes and new characteristics. This requires all localities to further improve their capacity to promote agricultural development and build a new agricultural governance system.
Multiple Transitions: A Major Theme in Promoting Agricultural Development
At present, China's economic development has entered a new normal, reform has entered deep water, and the environment facing agricultural development has become more complex, with new contradictions and problems constantly emerging, such as a rigid trend of “grain shortage in bumper years”, inverted domestic and international prices of agricultural products, intensified farmland degradation and water pollution, and frequent extreme climate events. This year's Central Document No. 1 proposed that agricultural and rural work should actively adapt to the new normal of economic development, continue to comprehensively deepen rural reform, comprehensively advance rural rule-of-law construction, and strive to tap new potential in improving grain production capacity, open up new paths in optimizing the agricultural structure, and seek new breakthroughs in transforming agricultural development methods.
Judging from the current situation, to push China's agricultural and rural development to a new level, it is necessary to focus on four aspects: industry, institutions, society and structure, and achieve multiple transitions: first, accelerate the industrial transition from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture; second, deeply advance the institutional transition from the traditional system to a market system; third, actively guide the social transition from traditional villages to modern villages; fourth, gradually achieve the structural transition from urban-rural separate governance to urban-rural integration. Such a process of multiple transitions involves profound interest adjustments and conflicts, requiring the coordination of relations among all parties, promoting the smooth flow of production factors between urban and rural areas, and promoting the formation of a new type of worker-peasant and urban-rural relationship in which industry promotes agriculture, cities support the countryside, workers and peasants benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated. This requires advancing innovation in agricultural operating entities, leading industries, development methods, and macro management, enhancing the endogenous momentum of agricultural and rural economic development, and establishing a scientific and sound new governance system for agriculture and animal husbandry.
Micro-level Restructuring: Advocating Close Integration of Stakeholders
In recent years, industrial and commercial capital “crossing borders into farming” has brought new business models to agriculture and promoted the process of agricultural modernization. But practice shows that, apart from being adaptable in specific fields and links such as improved seed breeding, large-scale standardized breeding and development of the four types of wasteland resources, the corporate agricultural development model led by industrial and commercial capital generally suffers from being “unable to adapt to local conditions”. The main reason is that the industrial attributes of agriculture have not been fully understood and respected.
Summarizing practical experience, in developing new types of agricultural operating entities, whether industrial and commercial enterprises enter agriculture or farmer cooperatives and joint-stock cooperatives native to rural areas, a standardized corporate governance structure should be established. Within operating entities, an incentive-compatible, fair and reasonable benefit-sharing mechanism should be built, and mechanisms such as premium rebates, village-enterprise cooperation, management shareholding and competitive rewards should be encouraged and introduced in due course, to promote organizational innovation and institutional innovation among micro-level entities. At the same time, attention should be paid to follow-up services and supervision of agricultural land transfer, exploring qualification access and risk prevention mechanisms for industrial and commercial enterprises leasing agricultural land, establishing an agricultural land transfer monitoring system, and preventing non-grain and non-agricultural use of agricultural land.
Industrial Innovation: Guiding the Development of Regional Characteristic Industries
How to develop industries bears on whether a modern agricultural and animal husbandry industrial system can be formed and whether the land output rate can be raised. Increasing vertical integration before, during and after production and strengthening horizontal coordination between agriculture and animal husbandry and related industries is the direction of industrial transformation and innovation in agriculture and animal husbandry. In ecologically fragile areas, developing circular agriculture is an effective way to improve resource utilization efficiency and form a new agricultural governance system. It is necessary to rely on institutional reform and strengthen scientific and technological support to form a virtuous cycle in large-scale agriculture and among and within its internal industries. In the horizontal integration of agriculture, it is necessary to conform to the trend of functional evolution of agriculture and animal husbandry, promote the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, and improve comprehensive industrial benefits.
⟦NL> Branding is the key to agricultural industrial development. To build agricultural product brands, it is necessary to deeply explore the regional characteristics of products, form a good market reputation, and enhance product recognition and competitiveness. It should also be emphasized that in selecting leading industries in agriculture and animal husbandry and developing high value-added industries, there is a basic premise: the bottom line of ration security must be upheld and the supply of bulk agricultural products must be ensured.
Transforming Methods: Strengthening the Support and Application of Modern Factors
Agricultural and rural development cannot be separated from science and technology, talent and financial services. In response to phenomena such as non-agricultural use of capital and outflow of talent in some rural areas, it is urgent to strengthen the support of modern factors and transform agricultural development methods.
Scientific and technological leadership. The past practice of only emphasizing the promotion and application of technology in the production link while neglecting pre-production and post-production technical services should be changed, and a new model of technological innovation and extension covering the entire agricultural and animal husbandry industry chain should be formed. Actively build technology transformation platforms and promote the development of advantageous industries.
Financial support. Building a new rural financial service system should be closely combined with land system innovation. Clarify farmers' and herders' contracting rights to land and grassland, grant management rights the attribute of property rights, establish a price formation mechanism for land and grassland management rights, and realize mortgageability and transferability. Explore a diversified agricultural investment and financing model guided by government funding, with social investment as the main body, bank loans as a supplement, and market-oriented operation.
Human resource support. In response to the key links and key areas before, during and after production, integrate training resources from various departments and industries, strengthen policy support, build training bases, improve training content, innovate training methods, and vigorously cultivate new-type professional farmers.
Government Role: Advancing Reform of Agricultural Macro Management
Better leveraging the government's role and advancing the modernization reform of the macro management system for agriculture and animal husbandry is crucial to the modernization of the governance system and governance capacity of agriculture and animal husbandry.
Improve market information services. In recent years, the linkage effect of agricultural product markets has strengthened. Due to the lagging impact of production cycles, small fluctuations in agricultural product prices often bring greater reactions on the supply or demand side, aggravating structural imbalances between supply and demand of agricultural products and causing “difficulty in buying” or “difficulty in selling”. In this regard, it is necessary to actively explore the establishment of a macro information early warning mechanism for leading and advantageous industries, provide farmers and herders with services such as production information, demand and price information, and gradually establish production early warning, market early warning and disaster early warning systems.
Improve the supervision mechanism for industrial and commercial capital. Industrial and commercial capital entering agriculture needs effective guidance, strict prevention and control of non-agricultural tendencies, standardized land transfer, and prevention of wasting land resources and harming farmers' rights and interests. At the same time, industrial and commercial capital operating agriculture should obtain reasonable returns. Combine access review with policy support, support operating entities with good reputation, strong strength, advanced concepts and strong sense of social responsibility, and establish enterprise credit files.
Strengthen risk management in agriculture and animal husbandry. In recent years, all parts of the country have initially established a policy-based agricultural insurance system, but the variety of insurance products is relatively small, the level of protection is still relatively low, and commercial insurance institutions mainly bear general natural disaster losses, do not underwrite devastating losses caused by quarantine pests and diseases in planting and infectious disease outbreaks in breeding, and underwriting of agricultural product price risks is still only a small-scale pilot. It is necessary to combine the development needs of leading and advantageous industries in various localities, encourage and support the development of agricultural product price insurance, comprehensively build a modern risk management system for agriculture and animal husbandry, and gradually raise the level of agricultural risk protection.
Establish an ecological compensation mechanism for agriculture and animal husbandry. Ecological sustainability is an unavoidable issue in forming a new governance system for agriculture and animal husbandry, but existing ecological protection measures are still clearly insufficient compared with ecological protection requirements. It is recommended that relevant national departments further increase ecological compensation, implement policies in pastoral areas such as grazing bans and subsidies, grassland-livestock balance rewards, herders' production subsidies, grassland supervision systems and subsidies for herders' follow-up industries, and designate special areas to establish permanent ecological compensation zones.
Improve the level of socialized services. Building a modern governance system for agriculture and animal husbandry requires simultaneously advancing the construction of a socialized service system and forming a new socialized service system for agriculture and animal husbandry in which public services, cooperative services and market-oriented services are organically combined, coordinated as a whole, and comprehensively developed. In recent years, certain progress has been made in the construction of socialized service systems for agriculture and animal husbandry in various localities, but some problems also exist, such as unsound institutions, unreasonable supply-demand structure, and lagging services. It should be recognized that establishing and improving a new socialized service system for agriculture and animal husbandry with diversified entities, specialized services and market-oriented operation has important practical significance for operating entities to form mutually beneficial relationships, reduce industrial operating costs and risks, promote integrated industrial development, realize economies of scope, and accelerate the modernization transformation of rural society.