Ten-year development goals for agricultural equipment set: total output value of industry and agriculture to reach 800 billion

A reporter from Economic Information Daily recently learned from the National Strategic Advisory Committee for Building a Manufacturing Power that China's roadmap for agricultural equipment development over the next ten years has been drawn up. The technology roadmap for key areas of Made in China 2025 shows that by 2025, the total output value of the agricultural industry must reach 800 billion yuan, the market share of domestically produced agricultural machinery products must exceed 95%, and the market share of high-end products such as large tractors of more than 200 horsepower and cotton pickers must reach 60%.

In addition, the roadmap shows that in the next ten years, the full range of machinery varieties for the entire production process of bulk grains and strategic cash crops will be complete, and the capabilities of agricultural machinery equipment in information collection, intelligent decision-making and precision operations will be significantly improved, forming an overall information-based solution for agricultural production. Intelligent seeding and fertilizing, plant protection, harvesting machinery and other equipment will be put into use, and the effective utilization rate of chemical fertilizers and pesticides will reach more than 50%. Core equipment manufacturing and key technologies for whole-machine reliability will be fully mastered, and the mean time between failures for tractors and combine harvesters will reach 350 hours and 100 hours respectively.

As the most basic material guarantee and core support for realizing agricultural modernization, China's agricultural equipment industry has developed rapidly in recent years and has become the world's largest country in both the production and use of agricultural equipment. However, more than 90% of domestically produced agricultural equipment, which accounts for more than 90% of market demand, consists of low- and mid-end products and cannot fully meet the needs of modern agricultural development. The rapid application of information and intelligent technologies has further widened the gap with developed countries. Some experts say that advancing the "four modernizations" of new industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization in parallel, safeguarding the three major security areas of food, foodstuffs and ecology, transforming the mode of agricultural development, and promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries require the agricultural equipment industry to expand its fields, increase varieties, and accelerate its development toward automation, informatization and intelligence.

It is worth noting that in the field of agricultural machinery, the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation, planting and harvesting nationwide had already exceeded 60% in 2014, achieving a historic leap from mainly relying on human and animal power to mainly relying on mechanical operations. However, as foreign-funded brands have entered the domestic large agricultural machinery market on a large scale in recent years, domestic brands find it very difficult to gain a voice. Fang Xianfa, vice president and chief engineer of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Mechanization Sciences, said in an earlier interview with reporters that the world's five major agricultural machinery enterprises have all "taken root" in China, adopting the approach of first forming joint ventures with Chinese enterprises and then turning them into wholly foreign-owned operations through complete acquisitions, slowly squeezing local capital out of the market. As for the so-called technological transformation of independent brands, they all expand scale on the basis of original products, but no progress can be seen in technology; there is expansion in quantity, but no improvement in quality.

In terms of strategic support and safeguards for the next ten years, the roadmap points out that support should be given to establishing a national agricultural equipment industry innovation center. Establish data platforms for research and development, design, testing and standards; carry out collaborative innovation in basic frontier technologies, key common technologies and major strategic equipment; carry out public technical services such as research and development design, science and technology services, inspection and testing, and information services; and build an agricultural machinery equipment industry innovation system that adapts to national conditions, is based on industry, is collaborative and efficient, and supports development.