Agricultural structural adjustment should open up greater space for agricultural development

This year's Central Document No. 1 makes deepening agricultural structural adjustment an important task in modern agricultural development and lays out comprehensive plans for it. On the basis of “eleven consecutive years of growth” in grain production and “eleven consecutive years of rapid growth” in farmers' incomes, carrying out a new round of agricultural structural adjustment is both proactive action from a high starting point and a problem-oriented move that follows the broader trend.

Why is it called proactive action from a high starting point? Domestically, after years of consecutive agricultural harvests, the supply of major agricultural products is sufficient; as domestic economic development enters a new normal, growth in demand for agricultural product consumption and processing may weaken, creating favorable timing for promoting crop structure adjustment; the full implementation of the new national food security strategy has made the focus of agricultural production safeguards more prominent, providing a more relaxed policy environment and resource space for advancing crop structure adjustment; the upgrading of agricultural product consumption structure is accelerating, and the future potential demand for high-quality agricultural products is emerging. People not only want to eat their fill and eat well, but also to eat safely and nutritiously, which brings market momentum to advancing crop structure adjustment. At the same time, international agricultural product market supply is sufficient, and the stock-to-consumption ratios of bulk agricultural products are all at historical highs, which provides more room for maneuver for China to further adjust and optimize its agricultural structure. It can be said that further adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure is facing a rare opportunity, and it is the right time to promote the transformation of agricultural development from focusing on quantity growth to placing equal emphasis on quantity, quality and efficiency.

⟦NL> Why is it called a problem-oriented move that follows the broader trend? This is because while grain output has increased for many consecutive years, the contradictions in China's agricultural development between quantity and quality, total volume and structure, cost and efficiency, and production and the environment remain prominent. The quality of black soil in Northeast China has declined, cultivated land in some areas has excessive heavy metals, and groundwater is overexploited; “transporting grain from the north to the south” coexists with “transporting water from the south to the north”, and the contradiction between hard resource and environmental constraints and production development is increasingly prominent; the development of high-quality, diversified and specialized agricultural products lags relatively behind. On one hand, agricultural products are repeatedly “difficult to sell”; on the other hand, consumers' demand for high-quality beef and mutton, vegetables and fruits cannot be well satisfied, and the contradiction between the quality structure of agricultural products and the rapid upgrading of residents' consumption is increasingly prominent; the structure of grain, cash crops and feed is unreasonable. On one hand, the burning of crop straw is repeatedly banned but not stopped; on the other hand, feed raw materials such as corn and soybeans are in short supply; on one hand, cultivated land fertility continues to decline; on the other hand, pollution from livestock and poultry manure is difficult to control, and the contradiction of loose integration between planting and breeding and poor circulation is increasingly prominent; the integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries is insufficient. On one hand, the ecological, social and cultural functions of agriculture are insufficiently tapped; on the other hand, agricultural added value is not high, and the problems of low comparative efficiency in agriculture and weak market competitiveness are increasingly prominent. These problems show that China's agriculture has reached an important juncture for structural adjustment, and further adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure is imperative.

Opening up new paths in optimizing the agricultural structure shows that this new round of adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure is not patching up the original structure, nor is it a matter of planting a few fewer mu of grain and a few more mu of vegetables. Rather, it is necessary to establish the four major concepts of large ecology, large food, large market and multifunctionality, scientifically determine the self-sufficiency level of major agricultural products, reasonably arrange the priority order for the development of agricultural industries, and open up greater space for agricultural development. In response to the problem of loose integration among the grain, cash crop and feed structure and the planting and breeding structure, Document No. 1 proposes accelerating the development of the grass-based livestock industry, promoting the coordinated development of the three-part planting structure of grain, cash crops and forage grass, and vigorously cultivating specialty agriculture, with greater emphasis on “cross-boundary” development and on guiding farmers to make good use of the “classic of mountains and seas”, perform well the “play of forests and grass”, and play well the “card of fruits and vegetables”. Only in this way can “guaranteeing supply” mean more than merely having rice in every rice jar and vegetables in every vegetable basket at a subsistence level. Document No. 1 also proposes developing deep processing of agricultural products, accelerating large-scale, intensive and standardized livestock and poultry breeding, and promoting healthy aquaculture, which precisely responds to improving agricultural efficiency and meeting diversified consumer demand.

It is worth noting that further adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure absolutely does not mean relaxing grain production. The agricultural structural adjustment in the mid-1980s once caused grain production to stagnate for five consecutive years. In the agricultural and rural economic structural adjustment in the late 1990s, because grain production was somewhat relaxed, cultivated land area and grain sown area continued to decrease, and grain output continued to slide. Under the new situation, adjusting and optimizing the agricultural structure must fully summarize and draw on previous experience and lessons, break out of the fixed mindset that grain production and cash crops are mutually exclusive, take stabilizing grain output as the premise and improving grain production capacity as the foundation, and adhere to the four bottom lines: grain production capacity must not be lowered, basic farmland must not be reduced, the growth rate of farmers' incomes must not be slowed, and the ecological environment must not be damaged. Only when the rice bowl of the Chinese people is firmly held in their own hands at all times will it be more than just a dream for the Chinese people's dining table to become richer and safer.