Deepen Comprehensive Reform to Better Serve Agriculture, Rural Areas and Farmers

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council recently issued the "Decision on Deepening the Comprehensive Reform of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives," making a comprehensive deployment for deepening the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives. This is of far-reaching significance for accelerating agricultural modernization, promoting farmers' income growth and prosperity, and advancing the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects in rural areas.

As cooperative economic organizations serving "agriculture, rural areas and farmers," supply and marketing cooperatives are an important vehicle for the Party and the government in their work related to "agriculture, rural areas and farmers." Deepening the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives is an inherent requirement of comprehensively deepening rural reform, and also an inevitable requirement for supply and marketing cooperatives to innovate their institutions and mechanisms, enhance their development vitality, and improve their service capacity. At present, rural economic and social development has entered a new stage, agricultural production and operation methods are undergoing profound changes, and farmers' living needs are upgrading at an accelerated pace. There is an urgent need for full-process, comprehensively equipped, convenient and efficient agricultural socialized services, and for multi-level, diversified, convenient and affordable living services. Supply and marketing cooperatives have long taken root in rural areas and stayed close to farmers; they have relatively sound organizational systems and business networks, a solid foundation and unique advantages in serving agriculture, and are best positioned to become the backbone force serving "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" in the new era. At the same time, supply and marketing cooperatives still have problems such as insufficiently close cooperative relations with farmers, weak comprehensive service strength, relatively loose connections between levels, and systems that have not yet been fully rationalized. It is necessary to further stimulate internal impetus and development vitality through deepening comprehensive reform, better leverage their advantages in serving "agriculture, rural areas and farmers," and take on greater responsibilities.

Serving agriculture is the fundamental purpose of supply and marketing cooperatives. To deepen the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives, it is necessary to closely focus on the overall work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers," always put serving "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" first, and ensure that they serve agriculture, work for agriculture, and belong to agriculture. No matter how the reform proceeds, the direction of supply and marketing cooperatives in serving agriculture must not waver. To deepen the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives, it is necessary to take closer ties with farmers' interests as the core, take enhancing the capacity to serve agriculture as the foundation, and take strengthening grassroots cooperatives and innovating the governance mechanisms of federations of cooperatives as the focus, promote the extension of supply and marketing cooperatives from circulation services to full-process agricultural socialized services and their expansion into all-round urban and rural community services, and build the supply and marketing cooperative system into a cooperative economic organizational system that is more closely connected with farmers, has more complete agricultural service functions, and operates more efficiently under market mechanisms, becoming a new force and comprehensive platform oriented toward agricultural modernization, serving farmers' production and daily life, and prospering urban and rural economies, and becoming a bridge and bond for the Party and the government to maintain close ties with the masses, so as to effectively enhance the sense of gain of the broad masses of farmers.

Supply and marketing cooperatives have a long history and a large workforce; they are an old system and a large system. The task of comprehensive reform is extremely heavy, and what lies ahead are hard bones to chew; it cannot be accomplished overnight. The development of supply and marketing cooperatives is very uneven, conditions vary greatly from place to place, and farmers' needs are also diverse. To deepen the comprehensive reform of supply and marketing cooperatives, it is necessary to adapt measures to local conditions, provide categorized guidance, fully respect farmers' wishes, pay attention to giving play to the enthusiasm and creativity of all localities, encourage bold exploration and piloting first, avoid a "one-size-fits-all" approach, and not seek to accomplish everything in one step. It is necessary to adhere to the basic attributes of the cooperative economy and uphold the direction of socialist market economy reform, both conforming to market laws and fulfilling social responsibilities well, ensuring that this reform advances actively, steadily, and in an orderly manner, continuously improving the economic strength and service level of supply and marketing cooperatives, and striving to open up new prospects for the supply and marketing cooperative cause with Chinese characteristics.