Pilot Crop Rotation and Fallow Programs Should Focus on Storing Grain in the Land

In the explanatory notes on the recommendations of the “13th Five-Year Plan”, “exploring the implementation of a pilot system of cultivated land rotation and fallow” was listed among several issues requiring key explanation, and it was explicitly pointed out that after long-term development, China's cultivated land has been developed and utilized too intensively, the soil fertility in some places has been seriously overdrawn, and soil erosion, severe overdraft of groundwater, soil degradation and worsening non-point source pollution have become prominent contradictions constraining the sustainable development of agriculture. At present, domestic grain output continues to grow, inventories have increased considerably, and imports have also risen substantially. Taking advantage of the current period of ample grain supply in domestic and international markets to implement cultivated land rotation and fallow in some regions is conducive both to allowing cultivated land to recuperate and to the sustainable development of agriculture, and also to balancing the contradiction between grain supply and demand, stabilizing farmers' incomes and easing fiscal pressure.

The system of crop rotation and fallow has existed since ancient times. The Northern Wei dynasty work Qimin Yaoshu records that “grain fields must be changed every year”, “for hemp one wants good land, and old sites should not be used”, and “for all grain fields, mung bean and adzuki bean stubble is best, hemp, broomcorn millet and old hemp stubble are next, and turnip and soybean are inferior”, showing that China's ancient farming culture already contained the traditional wisdom of valuing land rotation and fallow. Rotation and fallow are also commonly used farmland protection measures abroad. In the United States, faced with the challenges of grain oversupply and the urgent need to improve the ecological environment, the 1985 farm bill determined that a conservation reserve program would begin the following year, carrying out planned fallowing; in the farm bill amended in 2002, the maximum fallow limit was 230 million mu, about 16% of total cultivated land area. In Europe, “two-field rotation” appeared as early as the 8th century, later followed by “three-field” and “four-field” systems, such as the British Norfolk “four-field” system, which divided cultivated land into 4 sections, rotating in turn red clover, wheat (or rye), fodder turnip or sugar beet, and two-row barley (or with red clover sown in addition); if fallow was needed, one of the sections could in turn no longer be planted with crops.

Exploring a system of cultivated land rotation and fallow must take safeguarding national food security as its premise. Although China has had many years of grain harvests, with total grain output reaching 12142 hundred million jin in 2014 and remaining stable above 12000 hundred million jin for two consecutive years, some experts predict that by 2020 China's annual grain demand will be about 14000 hundred million jin, leaving a gap of around 2000 hundred million jin. Grain output can be adjusted according to market demand, but grain production capacity must be ensured and steadily improved. That is to say, according to the size of market demand, the area planted with grain can be adjusted through measures such as rotation and fallow, but the area of cultivated land, the quality of cultivated land and agricultural technology must be maintained at a high level; when grain output needs to increase, there must be the capacity to produce that much grain.

Exploring a system of cultivated land rotation and fallow requires accurately identifying the “three types of fields”. Fields with tightening resources, fields with deteriorating environments and fields with excess production capacity. After years of continuous cropping, plots where groundwater resources are overdrawn, soil fertility declines and soil salinity and alkalinity increase can be called fields with tightening resources. For example, in some areas of the North China Plain, groundwater overdraft has already formed a “groundwater funnel”; the planted area of crops with high water consumption can be reduced, drought-resistant crops or varieties can be promoted, or a certain proportion can be set aside for fallow. In many places, however, excessive or imbalanced fertilizer input exceeds the carrying capacity of the soil environment, leading to cultivated land environmental problems such as quality deterioration, heavy metal pollution and ecological degradation; in such cases, the principle that “different crops have different proportions of nutrient demand” can be used to regulate and improve soil quality.

Exploring a system of cultivated land rotation and fallow requires appropriate subsidies for farmers. If the pilot system of crop rotation and fallow is to proceed in an orderly manner, the guiding role of subsidy policy must be brought into play. At present, China is gradually expanding the scale and scope of implementation of “green box” subsidy policies and adjusting and improving “amber box” subsidy policies. Although fallow subsidies are listed by the WTO within the “amber box”, in order to meet the requirements of the EU and the United States, fallow subsidies have been included in “blue box” policy, with reduction commitments given, and are not subject to the restrictions of the Agreement on Agriculture. When countries such as the United States and France implement fallow programs, most fallow programs are subsidized by the government, with farmers participating voluntarily. For example, the subsidies provided by the United States mainly include two aspects. On the one hand is land rent subsidy: based on the relative productivity of the land in its location and the local dryland rent price, an annual land rent subsidy price is assessed and determined. On the other hand is sharing with farmers the cost of implementing vegetation protection measures: based on the cost to farmers of implementing vegetation protection measures such as planting grass and trees, farmers are provided with cash subsidies not exceeding 50% of the cost.

In short, exploring a system of cultivated land rotation and fallow in China involves complex circumstances. It is necessary both to ensure ration security and to store grain in the land; both to consider labor input and to guarantee farmers' incomes; both to balance the supply of various agricultural products and to identify the different problems of cultivated land. Therefore, the red line for cultivated land must be firmly guarded, and pilots must be carried out in an orderly manner.