Ministry of Agriculture: We walk into farmers' eyes, farmers walk into our hearts
The spring light is infinitely beautiful, and the busy farming season is just right. Accompanied by the dense drumbeat of spring plowing and preparation, the Ministry of Agriculture carried out the “Hundred Townships, Ten Thousand Households Survey” activity for the 5th consecutive year, drawing a total of 108 cadres and agricultural science and technology personnel to form 27 groups, and in March and April, in two batches, went deep into the grassroots of 27 provinces and autonomous regions to carry out village-entry and household-visit research.
Today, the “Hundred Townships, Ten Thousand Households Survey” activity, as a concrete measure for the Ministry of Agriculture to practice the requirements of “Three Stricts and Three Honests,” as a good platform for agricultural cadres to deeply understand agricultural conditions and public opinion, and as a way and mechanism for exploring work, has become a brand activity of the Ministry of Agriculture for “strengthening work style, transforming methods, and cultivating cadres.”
This year, the survey groups, bearing reverence for the cause of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers,” kept in mind the earnest entrustment of the Ministry Party Leadership Group, and in accordance with the requirement of Han Changfu, Secretary of the Ministry Party Leadership Group and Minister, that “only after going to the field first and returning to the desk can decisions be made more accurately,” continued to deliver the central government's policies of strengthening agriculture, benefiting farmers, and enriching farmers to thousands of households, and to bring the Ministry Party Leadership Group's concern for the farmer masses to the fields.
Coming to the village and going to the field to grasp the real situation of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers”
Letting farmers obtain the greatest benefits in reform and development is the starting point and foothold of the work on “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers.” It requires agricultural cadres to squat down, plunge in, and go to the frontline of rural areas to understand and grasp the real situation of “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers.” “Grassroots conditions are complex. Policies and decisions cannot be made by sitting in the office and ‘slapping one's head.’ Only through in-depth investigation can one have the right to speak.” said Chen Ping, head of the Liaoning survey group and deputy director of the Department of Market and Economic Information of the Ministry of Agriculture.
When conducting research in Yueyang and Liuyang, the Hunan survey group found that, on the one hand, agricultural machinery operators began to transfer large amounts of land in order to increase returns; on the other hand, large grain growers became increasingly dependent on mechanization, and with the “east wind” of agricultural machinery purchase subsidies, they also quickly became owners of large agricultural machinery. The two are quietly merging and developing rapidly, and may become the main force of modern agricultural production in the future.
The Zhejiang survey group visited “Taobao villages” and personally felt the gratifying momentum of the rapid development of agricultural product e-commerce. At the same time, it also truly felt that beneath the appearance of rapid development, rural e-commerce still faces development bottlenecks such as a lack of professional talent, incomplete industrial supporting facilities, serious homogenization, and vicious disorderly competition.
Through visits to the breeding bases of two leading enterprises and the farms (households) cooperating with them, the Henan survey group found that the two enterprises had made many beneficial explorations in large-scale standardized breeding, integrated operations, and standardized management, and had an obvious driving effect on agricultural industry development and farmers' income growth. However, there were also problems such as insufficient deep-processing capacity for meat products, weak bargaining power of farmers, and backward harmless treatment methods for sick and dead livestock and poultry.
Township agricultural technology extension institutions have made important contributions to training and guiding farmers and promoting increased agricultural production and farmers' income. Through visits and discussions, the Jilin survey group found that with changes in agricultural production and farmers' lifestyles, township agricultural technology extension work is facing challenges such as diversified channels for farmers to obtain information, insufficient innovation of its own, and reduced demand for technical services.
The Ministry of Agriculture Party Leadership Group is very concerned about the situation of migrant workers returning home, and Minister Han Changfu specially assigned research tasks to each survey group. Each research group conducted in-depth understanding through different methods and objectively and truthfully reflected the local situation of migrant workers returning home. Among them, the Chongqing survey group relied on the Municipal Agriculture Committee to carry out a questionnaire survey in 9 villages with fixed rural observation points across the city, understanding both the situation at the points and the information on the broader surface, and also conducting certain data analysis, which has strong reference value.
To do the work on “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers” well, it is extremely important to know farmers' mindsets and grasp the real rural situation. This directly relates to the formulation and introduction of policies. Wang Zhonglin, director of the Heilongjiang Provincial Agriculture Committee, said: “The work style of our Ministry of Agriculture cadres is truly solid. In just one month, they grasped the situation truly accurately and thoroughly.”
Explaining policies, listening to people's voices, and promoting implementation of work
During research visits, members of the survey groups always strove to use language that farmers are willing to hear and can understand, and methods that are well liked, to enter farmers' homes and face-to-face introduce in detail to farmers the central government's various policies for strengthening agriculture, benefiting farmers, and enriching farmers, answer in detail farmers' questions and doubts in production and life, strive to be good propagandists and explainers, and promote the implementation of policies at the grassroots and their fulfillment to farming households.
Lei Yingguo, chairman of the Jiahe Planting Professional Cooperative in Xiushi, Fengcheng City, Jiangxi Province, is a well-known good grain grower. Seeing the survey group, he could hardly conceal his excitement and said that in recent years the state has given large grain growers a lot of policy support, which has played a great role in promoting the development of the cooperative, but he is still troubled by the difficulty of storing agricultural machinery. When the survey group comrades told him that last year the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Land and Resources jointly issued a notice supporting the healthy development of facility agriculture, giving preferential policies for land used for facilities needed for large-scale grain production, and that this problem could soon be solved, he hurriedly wrote down the document name and said he would certainly study it well and use this policy to seek support for facility land.
Feng Kun of Jinsha County, Guizhou Province, began operating a family farm in 2010 and had always developed well, but the year before last she encountered drought. Because she had no insurance and no collateral for a loan, she suddenly fell into difficulty. She told the survey group: “The fixed asset investment in my farm has already exceeded 5 million yuan. I only need to borrow 1 million yuan to tide over the difficulty, but the bank determined that my fixed asset investment cannot be used as collateral. If I go to a guarantee company, the interest rate is high and I simply cannot afford it.” Her words were full of helplessness. The survey group immediately told her that this year the central finance would allocate more than 20 billion yuan from agricultural subsidies to focus on supporting the establishment of an agricultural credit guarantee system, which gave her a “reassurance pill.”
Such stories happened at any time in one survey point after another, moving farmers and drawing praise from grassroots cadres.
The Sichuan group gained a detailed understanding of the progress of provincial policies, the difficulties encountered in implementation at the city and county levels, and farmers' needs, and put forward targeted countermeasures and suggestions. The Hebei group conducted a questionnaire survey on issues related to rural land contracting and made a detailed analysis of farmers' understanding of land contracting relationships. The Hunan group, Ningxia group, Gansu group, Yunnan group, and Jiangsu group conducted in-depth research on the implementation of rural reform policies such as the registration and issuance of certificates for land contractual management rights, land transfer and large-scale operations, the cultivation of new agricultural operation entities, and the agricultural socialized service system, and grasped first-hand materials.
During the Hubei group's research, an old village party secretary in his 80s sang on site “Shepherd's Joy,” for which he wrote the lyrics and composed the music, to express gratitude for the Party's rural policies. Li Demei, a villager from Nanta Village, Yijun County, Shaanxi Province, had been looking forward to the arrival of the survey group early in the morning. She said: “Last year the state's policies were good, and our harvest was also good. This year we all want to come and hear what changes there are in the state's policies, and also raise our own problems.” Speaking of his research experience, He Caiwen, head of the Jiangxi survey group and deputy director of the Department of Crop Production Management of the Ministry of Agriculture, said with deep feeling: “The formulation of policies by all parties must be down-to-earth, must be able to be implemented, and must be able to resound firmly, so that they can truly benefit farmers.”