Food Security Becomes a Key Focus of the 13th Five-Year Plan
As the macroeconomy enters the “new normal,” how will the “13th Five-Year Plan” for agriculture strike a development beat between the squeeze of resources and the market?
On June 4, the reporter learned from the Ministry of Agriculture that the “13th Five-Year Plan” for agricultural and rural economic development will strive, under the topic of sustainable agricultural development, to figure out how to raise grain production capacity, ensure food security, and promote farmers' income growth.
Not long before this, at the reporting meeting on the results of major preliminary research topics for the “13th Five-Year Plan” for agricultural and rural economic development, attending experts held that current agricultural development faces dual constraints from the resource environment and the market, and that to achieve sustainable development, China's agriculture must accelerate the transformation of its development model, not only breaking through bottlenecks but also opening up space.
Resource Problems Compound One Another
Excessive development of agricultural resources, excessive use of agricultural inputs, groundwater overextraction, and pollution from both internal and external sources in agriculture: these resource problems not only each hinder agricultural development, but also compound one another.
Data show that each year about 4.8 million mu of cultivated land nationwide is occupied by newly added construction land, the soil plough layer resources of the occupied cultivated land are wasted severely, and the quality of cultivated land replenished through the balance of occupation and compensation is generally not high. Problems such as declining cultivated land quality, thinning black soil layers, soil acidification, and shallower plough layers have all emerged.
Compared with the average level of developed countries, China's effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water is 0.2 lower, and groundwater overextraction in North China is severe. The area of soil erosion nationwide reaches 2.95 million sq km, and the average annual soil erosion amount reaches 4.5 billion tons.
Not only do water and soil face severe resource constraints; industrial pollution is also eroding the driving force of agricultural development.
According to the recently published National Plan for Sustainable Agricultural Development (2015-2030), external-source pollution such as industrial “three wastes” and urban domestic waste is spreading to agriculture and rural areas, heavy metals such as cadmium, mercury, and arsenic are continually penetrating into the environments of agricultural product production areas, and the exceedance rate of major soil pollutant points nationwide is 16.1%.
“For a long time, in order to increase agricultural product output, agricultural resources have been overdeveloped and utilized, and the ecology has been seriously overdrawn. In some places the land cannot be planted and the water cannot be used for irrigation. Old debts to the resource environment have not been repaid, and new debts are still being incurred,” Han Jun, deputy director of the Office of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, said earlier. He said it is necessary to accelerate the establishment of a sustainable agricultural development system and turn agricultural development onto the track of sustainable development.
Setting the Tone for the “13th Five-Year Plan” Agricultural Plan
As for how to break through the dual squeeze of resources and the market, the “13th Five-Year Plan” agricultural plan has set its main tone on “sustainable agricultural development.”
“‘Food security’ is the theme firmly anchored as the key focus of the ‘13th Five-Year Plan,’ but the question now is how, under the topic of sustainable agricultural development, to raise grain production capacity, ensure food security, and promote farmers' income growth? This is the issue the plan must consider,” a person from the Ministry of Agriculture told the reporter. “On one hand, we need to study regional ecological protection and governance, the reduction and efficiency improvement of agricultural inputs such as pesticides and chemical fertilizers, and the development of circular agriculture and water-saving agriculture; on the other hand, we need to study how to ensure basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of food rations, and there is also research on the issue of agriculture ‘going out,’ for example, different ‘going out’ strategies are needed for different regions such as Africa and ASEAN.”
According to the National Plan for Sustainable Agricultural Development (2015-2030), by 2020, the contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress should reach above 60%, the comprehensive mechanization level of major crop cultivation and harvest should reach above 68%, 800 million mu of contiguous, high-standard farmland that yields stable harvests despite drought or excessive rain should be built, the national agricultural irrigation water volume should remain at 372 billion cubic m, the effective utilization coefficient of farmland irrigation water should reach 0.55, and zero growth in the application amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides should be achieved.
This also means that in the “13th Five-Year Plan” agricultural plan, a modernized agricultural development model featuring water saving, efficiency improvement, and increased conversion rates of agricultural science and technology will be vigorously promoted.