New Scenes of Spring Plowing Show the New Normal of Agricultural Development

At Grain Rain the wheat lifts its flag, at the Start of Summer the wheat ears are even.

Grain Rain has now passed, and it is the busy season for spring sowing and spring field management. The frozen soil of the black land in the Northeast has thawed, and farmers are beginning to sow new hope; the wheat seedlings on the North China Plain are already lush and green, beginning to joint and head; across the rice paddies and rapeseed fields of Jiangnan, South China and the Southwest, all is brimming with vitality……

When agriculture is stable, the world is at peace. Recently, Xinhua News Agency reporters in several teams came to the vast fields, searching in spring for the new changes and new atmosphere in agricultural production, and exploring the new direction for safeguarding food security and transforming the mode of agricultural development.

From drones to the Internet of Things, new technologies paint a new picture of spring plowing

On the 21st, in Sheyang County, Jiangsu, located on the Huanghuaihai Plain. Above a stretch of green wheat fields, a drone about two meters long rose into the air, flying smoothly and effortlessly like a light, graceful dragonfly. The young "flight controller" Xu Jian operated it at the edge of the field. Wherever the aircraft passed, a thin mist gently fell, this was the control of wheat scab.

"Though this little fellow isn't big, one flight can carry 10 kilograms of pesticide, and in a day it can spray up to 400 mu, equivalent to 40 laborers." said Xu Guangjun, chairman of the Zhuocheng Plant Protection Professional Cooperative in Sheyang County. The cooperative has 6 unmanned plant protection aircraft in total, greatly improving the efficiency of pest and disease control.

As a new "magic tool" for spraying fields, drones have been warmly welcomed by farmers as soon as they appeared. In Henan, a major agricultural province, driven by pilot agricultural machinery subsidies, the province's total holdings reached more than 300 in just two or three years.

On this day, a thousand li away in Hebi City, Henan, 58-year-old farmer Tang Quanhe was drawing up the next field management plan based on the earlier cold spell in late spring and the wheat's growth. Relying on the "Satellite-Ground Dual-Base System," he can know when to fertilize, when to spray, and when to guard against dry hot winds.

Old Tang said: "Now farming has 'clairvoyance' and 'clairaudience'; the wheat is all first-class seedlings, with a relatively high proportion of green leaves per unit area and good seedling conditions."

Tang Quanhe is the first farmer in the country to grow grain using the "Satellite-Ground Dual-Base System." The grain he grows each year is enough to feed 100,000 people for a year.

In the Northeast, where spring sowing is about to begin, the "great granary" of Heilongjiang is at a critical stage for managing rice seedlings, and corn is about to be sown. At the Yongsheng Modern Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Heihe City, a total of 41 large agricultural machines, including plows and seeders, have all been overhauled. Chairman Yang Yonghe said the cooperative farms 30,000 mu in total, the corn seeds and fertilizer have all been bought, and plowing will begin after "May Day." Once the land is plowed, it can all be planted in less than half a month.

As the saying goes, good seedlings mean half a year's grain. Today, the widespread application of a series of new technologies for centralized rice seedling cultivation has laid a good foundation for a bumper harvest. In a seedling cultivation greenhouse at Suibin Farm in Heilongjiang, the ground looks as if it is covered with a lush green carpet. Grower Li Yanfen is inspecting the growth of the seedlings and from time to time uses a spray nozzle to replenish water for them. "Now they are all standardized seedling greenhouses, cultivating good, strong seedlings." Li Yanfen said.

The new technology of "Internet of Things agriculture" has even been applied to seedling cultivation. In the control room of the intelligent seedling greenhouse of the First Management District of 859 Farm in Heilongjiang, a worker lightly clicks the mouse, and the relevant data from the greenhouse several kilometers away is displayed in real time on the computer screen, forming dynamic curve charts one after another. If you want to irrigate or ventilate, just click the mouse. Major grain grower Li Shuquan takes out his phone, opens the seedling greenhouse monitoring system, and data such as temperature, humidity and air pressure, synchronized with the computer, immediately appears.

"The changes in agricultural production are as great as the changes in the whole country and the changes of the times, and they are astonishing." said Xu Chengzhi, head of the agricultural technology station of Chihe Town, Dingyuan County, Anhui. "More than 20 years ago, plowing the land with a pulled plow relied on human and animal power; in the early days of land distribution to households, a rice yield of more than 600 jin per mu was already good. Now with new technology, it has reached 1,200 jin."

The answer to "Who will feed the Chinese people" is gradually becoming clear: new-type major grain growers have become the main force

In 2014, China's grain production achieved an "eleventh consecutive increase," but currently both the variety and quantity of grain imports are increasing, and the supply-demand pattern for staple grains has shifted from "overall balance, with a surplus in good years" to "tight balance." As production costs continue to rise and resources such as arable land become increasingly strained, is China capable of continuing to feed its more than 1.3 billion people?

In interviews across various places, reporters saw that in addition to the accelerated application of new agricultural technologies, the rapid rise in the level of farming mechanization and the widespread emergence of major grain growers and professional cooperatives are also working toward the goal of "ensuring that the Chinese people's rice bowl is firmly held in their own hands."

Zhu Mengzhou, director of the Henan Provincial Department of Agriculture, said that winter wheat in Henan is entering the heading and flowering stage from south to north, which is an important stage for yield formation and also a critical period for preventing and controlling major pests and diseases at the ear stage, such as scab and stripe rust.

Winter wheat is the main body of the summer grain and is also the first crop of grain that Chinese farmers harvest each year. In China's grain production structure, although summer grain output accounts for only 1/4 of the annual total, it is crucial, as it determines whether the subsequent grain production can proceed as scheduled. After the summer grain, the autumn grain, mainly rice and corn, determines the overall success of the year's grain harvest.

Henan is the largest province for winter wheat output, and winter wheat is a crop with the highest rate of agricultural machinery use. In this province, mechanized tillage and harvesting have become commonplace. According to Zhang Kailun, director of the Henan Provincial Agricultural Machinery Bureau, in the past 5 years the province's tractors increased from 3.39 million to 3.877 million, a growth of 14.4%, among which the increase in medium and large tractors was as high as 130%.

As China's urbanization accelerates and the agricultural population flows out, rural aging and part-time farming once triggered worries about "who will farm the land." Zhang Kailun believes that Henan Province has as many as 20 million people working away from home year-round, yet grain production can still achieve consecutive annual increases, which is closely related to mechanization development reducing the agricultural labor force.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, last year the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation and harvesting nationwide exceeded 61%, and China's agricultural production has shifted from being mainly reliant on human and animal power to being mainly mechanized, a historic new stage. What is especially encouraging is that this proportion for the three major grain crops all exceeded 75%, and wheat production has basically achieved full mechanization.

With the vigorous rise of various professional cooperatives that grow grain and provide services such as fertilization and spraying for grain growing, land output efficiency has been improved, making a huge contribution to increasing per-unit grain yields.

In Zhenghe Village, Changfa Town, Jiamusi City, Heilongjiang, many courtyards are tightly shut, and the reporter saw mostly elderly people. Village committee director Wang Fengcai said that of the village's 1,330 people, more than 600 have gone to the city to work, accounting for more than 80% of the able-bodied labor force. Those left behind in the village are mostly people over 60, women around 50, and children. "All 8,700 mu of arable land in the village is farmed by one cooperative, and not a single mu has been left fallow." Wang Fengcai said.

According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, there are currently 3.17 million various specialized major households in rural areas nationwide, 870,000 family farms, and 1.24 million farmer cooperatives, with the average size of a family farm being 200 mu. These new-type business entities have become the main force in agricultural production in the new era.

Old pressures and new challenges run in parallel: Chinese agriculture breaks through amid reform and innovation

Although the fields breed new hope, there are also hidden worries due to some old and new problems.

Major grain growers generally report being "short of money." Lian Jinsheng, a major grain grower in Zhaoguang Town, Bei'an City, Heilongjiang, said that although there are loans targeting major grain growers, "there are too many procedures, asking for this document and that document, too much hassle." He hopes for credit products that allow loans with just a land transfer contract, lower bank interest, and fewer farming costs.

Some "small" grain growers face the predicament of land being left fallow. In Lutai Town, Huaiyang County, eastern Henan, watching neighbors busy weeding and spraying, farmer Zheng Ruihai, who has nothing to do, is burning with anxiety——last year the 12 mu of contracted land of his three brothers was transferred in one lump to a company to grow sorghum, but by autumn the company, due to poor management, failed to pay the rent as agreed, and the farmland was left fallow.

In the past three years, the area of contracted land flowing into enterprises has grown at an average annual rate of more than 20%. By the end of 2014, the area of contracted land flowing into enterprises had reached 38.825 million mu, accounting for about 10% of the total area of farmer contracted land transferred nationwide. Zhu Jinfang, deputy director of the Agricultural Economics Division of the Henan Provincial Department of Agriculture, believes that land transfer has pushed grain production toward intensification and large-scale operation, but similar cases of industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside to "stake out land" also involve blind investment and conceptual speculation, and the risks and hidden dangers cannot be ignored.

Pressure and risk from the market are a challenge to the enthusiasm of all grain producers. From September last year to February this year, domestic grain market prices moved lower, and the prices of many major agricultural products fell sharply. This year's Central Document No. 1 points out that, against the backdrop of slowing economic growth, how to continue strengthening agriculture's principal position and promote sustained increases in farmers' incomes is a major issue that must be solved.

Although the growth rate of central fiscal revenue has declined, this year's investment in agriculture, rural areas and farmers has still increased somewhat. Early this month, the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Agriculture jointly issued a notice, allocating 143.4 billion yuan this year for three items of funding: comprehensive agricultural input subsidies, direct subsidies to grain farmers, and crop improved seed subsidies. At the same time, all localities are required to adopt effective methods such as agricultural credit guarantees, interest subsidies, direct cash subsidies, and subsidies for the extension of major agricultural technologies to support new-type business entities in solving the problems of difficult and expensive financing in appropriately scaled grain operations.

Regarding land transfer, the Ministry of Agriculture and three other departments issued on the 24th the "Opinions on Strengthening Supervision and Risk Prevention of Industrial and Commercial Capital Leasing Farmland," focusing on protecting farmers' rights and interests.

In order to let more people farm the land better, all localities are trying new methods.

"My family has 6 mu of contracted farmland. In the past, once the Spring Festival was over we had to prepare the seedling beds. Now the government-supported seedling cultivation and supply base provides 'one-stop' services, so all we have to do is check the seedlings and let in the water. The technology is more in place, and the harvest is guaranteed." said Wang Jiamin, a farmer in Haihe Town, Sheyang County.

The locality is exploring a large-scale planting model called "joint plowing and joint planting," letting the "two hands" of the government and the market form a virtuous cycle, promoting the improvement of socialized service capacity through institutional adjustment, and making more and more smallholder farmers more willing to farm and able to farm with ease.

Due to the excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, problems such as soil compaction and declining soil fertility have become increasingly prominent. How to achieve sustainable use of arable land is worrying. As Liu Junli, a major grain grower in Fujin City, Heilongjiang, said, "The old path of relying on fertilizer to force up yields is hard to sustain; the land will become more and more 'greedy.'"

The reporter saw that "soil testing and formulated fertilization" technology is being promoted on the black land of the Northeast. By testing the content of trace elements in the soil, whatever is lacking is supplemented, avoiding blind fertilization.

This year is a key year for comprehensively deepening reform and also an important year for adjusting agriculture's structure and transforming its development mode. Behind the endless new stories of spring plowing is precisely the profound transformation of agricultural production. The superposition and resonance of new technologies, new farmers and new mechanisms are opening up the future of Chinese agriculture.