Key Measures to Strengthen the Effectiveness of Agricultural Inputs

The agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy is a national policy that supports agriculture, strengthens agriculture, benefits farmers and enriches farmers. As the economic situation changes, we must continuously improve the policy system for supporting agricultural mechanization and strengthen the guiding role of the policy and the effectiveness of inputs.

In Jiangsu, agricultural mechanization has already taken the lead nationwide in entering an advanced stage. According to the objective laws of agricultural mechanization development, after entering this stage, agricultural mechanization development will place greater emphasis on the unity of speed and quality, more prominently promote the synchronized advancement of mechanization in mid-production links and pre- and post-production links, further strengthen the coordinated development of mechanization levels in major crops and protected agriculture, and more urgently require adapting to the accelerated development of new agricultural business entities, forging a new path of agricultural machinery socialized services that organically integrates self-service and socialized service.

When implementing policies supporting agricultural mechanization, we must focus on the three measures of "guaranteeing, reducing, and shifting." "Guaranteeing" means ensuring that agricultural mechanization support funds are tilted toward key areas and critical links such as full-process mechanization of grain production, mechanized straw return to fields, high-efficiency protected agriculture, new service systems, and public service capacity building; "reducing" means giving play to the macroeconomic regulation and guiding role of agricultural mechanization support policies, and increasing efforts to control and reduce inputs for machinery and areas with unreasonable structures and insignificant input results; "shifting" means redirecting funds and policies toward new agricultural machinery operation service entities, operation subsidies, public service system construction, credit, and other links urgently needed by the farmer masses and agricultural mechanization production, so as to better mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for purchasing and using machinery.

At the same time, we must persist in highlighting key points and improve the targeting and precision of policies. The most important purpose of implementing the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy is still to solve the mechanization problem of bulk crops. For Jiangsu Province, this means solving the problems of full-process and comprehensive mechanization. Centering on the core task of food security, we must focus subsidies on machinery needed for key links in major crop production, and focus on solving the problem of full-process mechanization of rice and wheat production. On this basis, we must strive to break through mechanization in key and weak links, and promote the comprehensive development of mechanization in animal husbandry, fisheries, protected agriculture, forestry and fruit industries, and primary processing of agricultural products.

In addition, in our work we must also strive to achieve two persistences:

Persist in reform and improvement, and highlight the inclusiveness and stability of the policy. Continue to implement open subsidies for machinery included in the scope of agricultural machinery subsidy items, organically combine policy guidance with farmers' needs, guide farmers to rationally purchase subsidized agricultural machinery, and tilt subsidy funds toward key weak links and specialized agricultural machinery cooperative organizations.

Persist in market-oriented principles and safeguard the purchaser's autonomy in choosing and purchasing machinery. The original intention of establishing the subsidy policy is not to distort market competition, but to guide, through subsidy policy, the selection of agricultural machinery that is safe and reliable, technologically mature, advanced and applicable, energy-saving and environmentally friendly, and well-serviced, to guide and promote the healthy development of the agricultural machinery industry, and to benefit the broad farmer masses. We must be good at using market mechanisms to make limited fiscal funds play the greatest leveraging role, and correctly handle the relationship between efficiency and fairness. We must both cultivate development entities, focusing on supporting specialized cooperatives, family farms, and other new agricultural production and operation entities, and satisfy the broad farmers' desire to purchase machinery. We must optimize institutional design, cut off improper connections between management departments and agricultural machinery enterprises, safeguard purchasers' independent choice of dealers to purchase machinery, have dealers independently determined and independently announced by production enterprises, and gradually decouple the operational process of subsidy policy implementation from agricultural machinery product dealership enterprises.