New round of agricultural structural adjustment guidelines issued: never sacrifice grain

The Ministry of Agriculture recently issued the "Guiding Opinions on Further Adjusting and Optimizing the Agricultural Structure", which is a guiding document for transforming the agricultural development model and adjusting the structure in the new period. The document defines 6 tasks for adjusting the agricultural structure, namely adjusting and optimizing the path to national food security, the layout of regional productivity, the production structure of grain and cash crops, the structure of planting and breeding, the industrial structure and the product structure. How should the relationship between grain production and structural adjustment be viewed? The reporter interviewed Ye Zhenqin, Director of the Development Planning Department of the Ministry of Agriculture.

Ye Zhenqin said that it is necessary to break out of the mindset that grain production and agricultural structural adjustment are mutually exclusive, and to embark on a new path of coordinated development and mutual promotion. Stable grain output must be taken as the premise, and enhancing grain production capacity as the foundation, to build a solid and reliable national food security guarantee system. On this basis, the document put forward the goal of "ensuring basic self-sufficiency in cereals and achieving 100% self-sufficiency capacity in staple grains." At the same time, the document takes the development of grain production as one of the key tasks of structural adjustment, and proposes to focus on "storing grain in the land, storing grain in technology, and storing grain among the people," and to adjust and optimize the path to ensuring national food security.

Structural adjustment is also a problem-oriented response to the situation. Structural contradictions in China's agricultural development in terms of quantity and quality, total volume and structure, cost and benefit, and production and environment remain severe; the contradiction between hard resource and environmental constraints and production development is becoming increasingly prominent, and resource conditions are already very tight. The variety and quality structure of agricultural products is not suited to the rapid upgrading of residents' consumption, and the development of high-quality, diversified and specialized agricultural products still lags behind; the problems of loose integration between planting and breeding and poor circulation are becoming increasingly prominent, the structure of grain, cash crops and feed is unreasonable, the supporting linkage between planting and breeding is insufficient, and declining soil fertility coexists with the failure to effectively utilize manure from the breeding industry; the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries is insufficient, the comparative benefits of agriculture are low, and the level of agricultural product processing and the rate of conversion and value-added remain low. These problems have become the breakthrough point for structural adjustment.

This document states clearly at the outset that "further adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure absolutely does not mean relaxing grain production." The document proposes establishing new concepts of big ecology, big food, big market, big agriculture and big science and technology, guiding farmers to make good use of the "classic of mountains and seas," sing well the "opera of forests and grasslands," and play well the "card of fruits and vegetables," using new concepts to lead agriculture into greater breadth and depth and to expand greater space for agricultural development. In the future, the space for agricultural development will not be limited to working on cultivated land, but will also "go up the mountains and down to the sea," facing the entire national territory.

This new round of adjustment also gives greater prominence to sustainable development. The first round of structural adjustment was mainly to adapt to the natural conditions of agricultural production; the second round considered not only natural conditions but also the level of economic development and market demand. This round of structural optimization is based on natural conditions, economic level and market demand, and gives even greater prominence to the ecological environment and sustainability. For this reason, the document proposes taking the carrying capacity of agricultural resources and the environment as the baseline, adapting measures to local conditions, growing grain where grain is suitable, cash crops where cash crops are suitable, grass where grass is suitable, livestock where livestock is suitable, and fish where fish is suitable, so as to improve the matching between agricultural production and resources and the environment.

⟦NL> In response to the upgrading of residents' consumption structure in China in recent years and the sharp increase in consumption of animal products such as beef and mutton, the document takes into overall consideration the production of grain crops, cash crops and animal husbandry, and makes arrangements such as "vigorously developing grass-based livestock husbandry and forming a new type of planting and breeding structure that balances grain and grass, combines agriculture and animal husbandry, and develops cyclically." Ye Zhenqin believes that this takes into account both ensuring the effective supply of major agricultural products and protecting resources and the environment, and that by developing herbivorous animal husbandry, it can better meet the needs of the upgrading of China's food consumption structure.