How to grasp the trend-based changes in agricultural development under the new normal

Economic development has entered a new normal, which has a profound impact on the development of all industries, including agriculture. At the same time, the trend-based changes in agriculture itself are also an important part of economic development changes. At present, it is necessary to accurately grasp the trend-based changes in agricultural development, adapt to and lead the new normal of economic development.

Changes in demand structure. One basic feature of the new normal of economic development is that consumer demand is changing, with personalized and diversified consumption gradually becoming the mainstream, and the importance of ensuring product quality and safety and activating demand through innovative supply rising significantly. From the perspective of agriculture, changes in demand structure can be summarized in two major aspects: first, from the perspective of variety structure, urban and rural residents' consumption of grain products such as rice and wheat is relatively stable, while demand for high-value-added products such as meat, aquatic products, fruits and dairy products is increasingly strong. Second, from the perspective of quality level, consumers at different income levels show a differentiated and stratified demand for agricultural products, but on the whole their requirements for the quality and safety of agricultural products are becoming higher and higher. The demand of our country's residents for agricultural products has moved beyond the stage of meeting quantitative demand and entered a new period in which quantity, quality and safety are all given equal importance.

Changes in supply model. In the past, the supply of agricultural products focused more on the domestic market and domestic resources, and grain, cotton, oil, sugar, livestock, poultry and aquatic products were all required to achieve as high a self-sufficiency rate as possible. Since our country joined the WTO, the supply model relying on both international and domestic markets and both types of resources has become increasingly obvious, and the quantity of imported agricultural products has increased significantly. According to estimates, through international trade and cooperation, our country is equivalent to using 600 million mu of cultivated land abroad to produce grain, soybeans, cotton, sugar crops and other crops. While adhering to absolute food security and basically solving the issue of feeding people on the basis of domestic production, appropriately expanding imports of agricultural products in short supply domestically and accelerating the pace of agriculture “going global” so as to meet demand for agricultural products through self-sufficiency plus appropriate imports has become the basic model and pattern of agricultural product supply at present and for a period to come.

Changes in resource functions. For a fairly long period in the past, natural resources such as cultivated land and water were used more to meet the production of agricultural products, and the supply of agricultural products mainly relied on resource inputs, putting great pressure on resources and the ecological environment. We used 10% of the world's cultivated land and 6% of its fresh water to feed 20% of the world's population and provide 25% of the world's grain, while also using 40% of the world's chemical fertilizers, and the amount of pesticides applied per unit area was 2.5 times the world average. In recent years, the concept of ecological civilization has become increasingly deeply rooted in people's hearts. Agriculture must not only undertake the function of product supply, but its production process must also achieve resource conservation and environmental friendliness, and it must also expand multiple functions such as ecological environmental protection, sightseeing, tourism and leisure, and cultural inheritance.

Changes in operating methods. Agricultural operating methods are manifested in two aspects, agricultural production and the circulation of agricultural products, involving both the productive forces and the relations of production. From the perspective of agricultural production, in the past the main body of agricultural production was 230 million contracted farm households, mainly characterized by small-scale decentralized operation; now new types of operating entities are developing vigorously, engaging in agricultural production and services together with decentralized contracted farm households, and the degree of commercialization, scale, intensification, specialization, organization and socialization of agricultural production has been greatly raised. From the perspective of the circulation of agricultural products, in the past, from planting to harvesting and from the field to the table, it was mainly manifested as a circulation model of agricultural products in physical form, with a long chain, many links, large losses and low efficiency; in recent years, cold-chain logistics has developed faster, various forms of production-sales linkage have become increasingly active, there are more than 3,000 agricultural e-commerce platforms nationwide, and in 2013 the transaction volume of agricultural e-commerce exceeded 50 billion yuan. The mode of agricultural production is changing from the past “manpower + animal power + intensive farming + decentralized operation” to the current stage of “human capital + mechanization + modern science and technology + new types of agricultural operating entities + moderate-scale operation”, and the circulation of agricultural products is also changing from physical circulation to a combination of physical circulation and e-commerce marketing.

Changes in regulatory behavior. After reform and opening up, our country broke the unified purchasing and marketing system for the circulation of agricultural products and established a two-tier operating system based on household contracted operation and combining unified and separate management, farmers became independent production and operation entities, and the market mechanism began to play a positive role in agricultural development. Entering the new century, the government increased investment in agricultural infrastructure construction, scientific and technological extension and other areas, provided various subsidies to agriculture and farmers, and built and improved the agricultural support and protection system, with the government's behavior-oriented role being very obvious. As economic development enters the new normal, greater emphasis is placed on letting the market play a decisive role in resource allocation, and the government adopts effective measures to vigorously advance streamlining administration, delegating power and stimulating market vitality. In addition, as the growth rate of fiscal revenue slows, to increase support for agriculture, it is all the more necessary to use policy guidance and market methods to leverage more social capital and financial capital. At the same time, more forceful measures should be taken to relax the threshold for entry into agriculture, strengthen interim and ex-post supervision, and maintain market order, so that the market mechanism can play a greater role in regulating agricultural production.