How to Advance the Upgrading and Transformation of the Entire Agricultural Industry Chain
The Central Rural Work Conference held at the end of last year put forward the clear requirement of “adhering to the protection of national food security as the primary task and ensuring basic self-sufficiency in grain and absolute security of staple food.” As a major agricultural city and a major grain-producing city, how can it translate the spirit of the central government into momentum for accelerated development and achieve the leap from a traditional major agricultural city to a strong modern agricultural city as soon as possible? Recently, a reporter conducted an exclusive interview with Mu Weimin, a deputy to the National People's Congress and secretary of the Nanyang Municipal Party Committee of Henan Province.
Mu Weimin introduced that Nanyang has always placed the work related to “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” in a position of paramount importance, closely centering on the overall situation of building a highly efficient ecological economy demonstration city, taking “ensuring grain, adjusting structure and promoting income growth” as the goal, and persisting in taking the path of continuously advancing the intensive, standardized, organized and industrialized development of agriculture without sacrificing agriculture and grain, ecology and the environment as the cost. This has promoted agricultural efficiency and farmers' income growth and brought Nanyang to a new starting point in the transformational development of agricultural modernization.
⟦NL> Mu Weimin said that although Nanyang has achieved certain results in the construction of new-type agricultural modernization in recent years, as a traditional major agricultural city in transition and as a major national grain-producing area, the location of the canal head of the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project and an important water source area, Nanyang still faces multiple pressures of accelerated development, transformational development and sustained growth in grain output. It also faces problems such as a relatively weak agricultural foundation, a not-high degree of large-scale and intensive agricultural production and relatively backward methods of agricultural production and operation. There is still a long way to go in developing modern agriculture and advancing urban-rural integration.
In the next step, Nanyang will take the building of a highly efficient ecological economy demonstration city as the overall guide, accurately grasp the stage-specific characteristics of Nanyang's agricultural and rural development, aim at the goal of building a major modern agricultural city, devote itself to turning big agriculture into big characteristics, turning big characteristics into big industries and using big industries to support big development, and strive to push Nanyang's work related to “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” to a new stage. In specific work, with the goals of “increased grain output, increased agricultural efficiency, increased farmers' income, industrial upgrading and rural stability,” it will focus and concentrate on key work such as the construction of high-standard grain fields, the cultivation of agricultural industrialization clusters, standardized agricultural production, the entry of organic agricultural products into Beijing and the improvement of rural human settlements, make overall plans and coordinated advances, accelerate the improvement of agricultural development levels, accelerate the development of modern agriculture, promote Nanyang's transformation from a traditional major agricultural city to a major modern agricultural city, and build “Beautiful Nanyang, Dynamic Nanyang and Happy Nanyang.”
Mu Weimin believes that in advancing the work, it will persist in stabilizing grain, transforming and increasing efficiency, firmly grasp the general requirements of transformational development, accelerated development and innovative development, and closely center on “one center,” namely: developing modern agriculture and producing organic agricultural products; focus on “three builds,” namely: building one leading entity——the Central Plains Organic Agricultural Product Processing and Trade Zone, building two main channels——the foreign trade export channel for agricultural products and the domestic high-end market channel for agricultural products, and building three major brands——the comprehensive agricultural standardization demonstration city, the export agricultural product quality and safety demonstration city and the organic agricultural product production demonstration city; implement the “six major projects” for modern agricultural development and carry out the “eight major measures” for the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.
Mu Weimin stressed that through grasping “stabilizing grain” and “increasing income,” it is necessary to accelerate the construction of modern agriculture, build the whole city into a major national high-quality grain-producing area, a production and processing area for specialty agricultural products in the adjacent region of Henan, Hubei and Shaanxi, and a pilot area for eco-friendly agricultural development in the Central Plains as soon as possible, so as to lay the foundation for accelerating the upgrading of Nanyang's agriculture from a single-chain link of an agricultural product base to a full-chain industry chain and for the transformation from a “big granary” to a “big kitchen.”