How can agricultural machinery make a fresh push after the golden decade?
Recently, the Management Cadre College of the Ministry of Agriculture held the second national rotation training class of this year for directors of major agriculture, animal husbandry and fishery counties, with 115 participants including agricultural machinery directors from national demonstration counties for full mechanization of major crops, as well as cadres from the Ministry of Agriculture system. This rotation training organized nearly ten sessions in total, including special lectures, case analyses and on-site teaching, and the trainees held group discussions on issues such as how to advance full mechanization well, how to implement agricultural machinery purchase subsidies well, how to complete agricultural machinery deep loosening and land preparation operations well, and how to cultivate new market entities for socialized agricultural machinery services well.
From 2004 to now, China's agricultural mechanization development has gone through a “golden decade”: the total amount of agricultural machinery has continued to rise, the equipment structure has been further optimized, the comprehensive mechanization rate of crop cultivation and harvest has reached 61%, new socialized service organizations such as large agricultural machinery households and agricultural machinery cooperatives have flourished, and agricultural mechanization development policies have also continued to develop.
After the “golden decade,” how agricultural machinery can make a fresh push and promote the transformation of the agricultural development mode became the question that every trainee thought about most.
The main direction for raising the level of full mechanization in grain crop production lies in promoting advanced agricultural mechanization technologies, and deep loosening and land preparation is an important one among them. This year, the State Council required 200 million mu of deep loosening and land preparation operations. Some directors reported that quite a few farmers still have not recognized the benefits of deep loosening and land preparation. “The key is to do comparative experiments and demonstrations well, so that farmers can see that deep loosening and land preparation can increase yields.” said Zheng Ronghui, director of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Yuci District, Jinzhong City, Shanxi Province.
Potato machine harvesting, cotton machine picking, sugarcane machine harvesting, and rapeseed machine sowing and machine harvesting are all bottlenecks in the full mechanization of cash crop production. “I was very moved during the training class, but after going back I have no way to act.” In the view of Xiang Jihua, deputy director of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Zhanyi County, Yunnan Province, making a breakthrough in agricultural mechanization technology is the key to realizing full mechanization of potatoes, and he called for policy guidance to promote research and development of agricultural machinery suitable for potato planting in hilly and mountainous areas.
Since the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy was implemented in 2004, it has played an important role in raising the level of China's agricultural mechanization. How to further give play to the policy guidance role of purchase subsidies is also a issue of general concern to the directors. “The subsidy standard for renewal and scrapping of agricultural machinery should be a bit higher, and the preconditions should be a bit lower, otherwise farmers' enthusiasm will not be high.” The words of Yang Zhengjun, director of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Donghai County, Jiangsu Province, represented the voice of many directors.
On the issue of agricultural machinery renewal, Wang Jianxi, director of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Bole City, Xinjiang, thought even more. At the special seminar, he suggested establishing a nationally unified second-hand agricultural machinery trading market; after the meeting, he introduced this idea in detail to reporters: in Xinjiang, a large number of old agricultural machines lie dormant in farmers' homes and have already affected the renewal and upgrading of agricultural machinery. By establishing a second-hand agricultural machinery trading system, it is possible both to revitalize the assets in farmers' hands and to drive the upgrading of the level of agricultural machinery equipment, and it is also convenient to realize agricultural machinery safety supervision, which can be described as “killing three birds with one stone.”
Agricultural machinery cooperatives are market entities for new socialized agricultural machinery services. The case teaching of this rotation training class focused on Renfa Farmers' Cooperative in Keshan County, Heilongjiang Province, and the on-site teaching was arranged in Haibin Cooperative in Liyang City, Jiangsu Province——the two “feasts” made the directors concerned about cooperative issues feel very “satisfied.”
“Agricultural machinery cooperatives should not only provide specialized services, but also improve the efficiency of agricultural machinery use through land circulation and carry out diversified operations.” After listening to the development experience of Haibin Cooperative, Li Jian, deputy director of the Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau of Zunyi County, Guizhou, felt a great deal.
Difficulty in financing has always been a major problem faced by cooperatives, but Dazu District in Chongqing found a solution suited to the local area. Jiang Shengbin, director of the district's Agricultural Machinery Bureau, introduced that Dazu District fully gave play to the main-force role of state-owned enterprises, encouraged enterprises to establish modern agriculture companies, and had the latter form agricultural machinery cooperatives. The difficulty in financing was thus readily solved because of enterprise guarantees.
The 5-day rotation training ended quickly, and “gains” and “confidence” became the common keywords when the director representatives summarized their learning. “Look, this is about socialized agricultural machinery services, and this is about agricultural machinery scrapping and renewal……” Bo Chuanmin, director of the Agricultural Machinery Bureau of Lijin County, Shandong Province, said to reporters, pointing to the seven or eight pages he had filled with notes, “these are all the discussion results of our group, and also the ‘magic weapons’ for everyone to carry out work in the future.”