2015 grain production welcomes a twelfth consecutive bumper harvest, the report card on agriculture, rural areas and farmers is released
The year 2015, which is about to turn over, leaves a vivid and significant mark in the history of our country's development of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers”. Agriculture and rural areas continue to maintain a sound development momentum, the year's grain production welcomes a “twelfth consecutive bumper harvest”, and continuous new breakthroughs are made in some fields, laying a solid foundation for the upcoming “13th Five-Year Plan”.
Grain production welcomes a “twelfth consecutive bumper harvest”
Watching his own rice unloaded from the transport vehicle enter the sieving machine and then slowly be conveyed to the newly built warehouse of the grain depot, Wei Hailong, a farmer from Chagan Village, Shengli Township, Tailai County, Heilongjiang Province, showed a long-absent joy on his face: “A big rice harvest, and the state purchases at a protective price, so this year's hard work was finally not in vain!”
Data released by the National Bureau of Statistics show that in 2015 the national total grain output reached 62143.5 million tons (12428.7 billion jin), an increase of 1440.8 million tons (288.2 billion jin) over 2014, a growth of 2.4%. This is the twelfth consecutive year since 2004 that the whole country's grain has obtained a bumper harvest.
“Grain obtained another bumper harvest this year, first because the sown area increased, and second because the yield per unit area increased somewhat.” Zeng Yande, director of the Planting Industry Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, introduced that this year the national grain sown area reached 170010.7 million mu, an increase of more than 9 million mu over the previous year, a growth of 0.5%. The national average yield per mu of grain crops reached 365.5 kg, an increase of 6.5 kg over last year, up 1.8%.
Another bumper grain harvest would not have been possible without the “full support” of various policies supporting and benefiting agriculture. This year, the central finance continued to increase support for strengthening agriculture and benefiting farmers, promptly allocated various subsidy funds such as the 2015 direct grain subsidy and improved seed subsidy, stabilizing farmers' expectations for grain-growing income. At the same time, the agricultural planting structure continued to be optimized and adjusted, and the grain planting area of winter wheat, corn and others expanded somewhat. The grain increase due to the expansion of sown area was about 6.7 billion jin, contributing 23.1% to the grain increase.
Agricultural mechanization achieves new breakthroughs
Autumn is the season of harvest. But in many fields across our country, farmers wielding sickles to harvest are rarely seen in the golden autumn season; instead, large agricultural machinery takes their place. Farmers are liberated from heavy physical labor and become “hands-off bosses”.
“In the past, harvesting one hectare by hand took 12 people a whole day of pulling and hauling, and the labor cost was 2200 yuan. Now agricultural machinery finishes the work in 1 hour, and it costs only 1000 yuan delivered to the doorstep. Ordinary people don't have to do anything; they just sit and wait to collect the grain.” said Jiang Enkai, a farmer from Yushu, Jilin, who runs an agricultural machinery professional cooperative.
Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture has widely promoted the “one-stop” combined operation method, and operation efficiency and operation quality have improved markedly. The mechanization rate of rice planting exceeded 40%, the machine harvest rate of wheat in the “three summer” period exceeded 92%, and the machine harvest rate of corn in the “three autumn” period reached 63%, up 5 percentage points year on year. The annual comprehensive mechanization level of national crop cultivation and harvest exceeded 62%, providing strong equipment support for ensuring national food security and enhancing comprehensive agricultural production capacity.
Leisure agriculture enters the fast lane
Though winter has arrived, Wenfeng Town, Wuxi County, in the Qinba mountainous area, is still breathtakingly beautiful. Ruan Qinglong, a 53-year-old villager of Sanbao Village, taking advantage of the warm weather, is busy airing quilts in his courtyard. In front of and behind his house, several hundred mu of osmanthus trees flutter in the wind. Every weekend, large numbers of tourists come for vacation, and then his family's 50 rooms become a farmhouse inn, bringing in more than 300,000 yuan of income each year.
The vast rural areas are not only the homeland where farmers live and work, but also a good place for all people to gaze at the mountains, see the waters and recall their nostalgia. In recent years, our country's leisure agriculture has entered the fast lane of development, not only promoting farmers' income growth, but also providing support and momentum for the agricultural and rural economy to move toward the “mid-to-high end”.
As 11 departments including the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Development and Reform Commission issued support policies on land use, fiscal and tax matters, promoting the transformation of farming areas into scenic areas, fields into parks, farmhouses into guest rooms, labor into sports, and products into commodities, leisure agriculture has achieved considerable development. Data from the Ministry of Agriculture show that in 2015, our country had 1.8 million leisure agriculture operators, with estimated revenue of 350 billion yuan, a growth of more than 10%. Leisure agriculture attracted 1.1 billion tourist visits, and 33 million farmers benefited as a result, powerfully promoting farmers' escape from poverty and pursuit of prosperity.
A tough battle is launched against agricultural non-point source pollution
Behind our country's consecutive years of grain increases, the important role of inputs such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides is indispensable. At the same time, agricultural non-point source pollution has also become one of the main sources of environmental pollution, and accelerating the transformation of the agricultural development mode is imperative.
Since the beginning of this year, the Ministry of Agriculture, centering on the goal of “one control, two reductions and three basics”, has deeply advanced the work of preventing and controlling agricultural non-point source pollution. It has initially built a national agricultural non-point source pollution monitoring network consisting of 273 fixed monitoring points for farmland nitrogen and phosphorus loss, 210 for farmland plastic film residue, and 25 for livestock and poultry breeding waste discharge, plus 20,000 farmland survey points, continuously advancing the normalized and institutionalized operation of agricultural non-point source pollution monitoring.
Monitoring is for better prevention and control. At the beginning of 2015, our country launched and implemented the action of zero growth in the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides; comprehensively popularized soil testing and formula fertilization technology, with a promotion area reaching 1.4 billion mu; deeply implemented green prevention and control, established 150 national-level green prevention and control demonstration zones, and successively phased out 33 highly toxic pesticides; carried out pilot construction for the integrated advancement of specialized unified prevention and control of crop diseases and pests with green prevention and control, and established 218 demonstration bases.
The in-depth implementation of a series of “combined punches” has brought new breakthroughs in our country's work on preventing and controlling agricultural non-point source pollution, steadily advancing toward the goal of green agriculture.