How to ensure food security in a bumper harvest year? Accelerate reform of the rural property rights system
An abundant harvest of all grains, granaries full of grain, farmers overjoyed. In 2014, the major agricultural province of Heilongjiang achieved another bumper grain harvest, realizing eleven consecutive years of increase, with an estimated total output of 135.2 billion jin, continuing to rank first nationwide, with its increase accounting for nearly 50% of the national total increase, and farmers' per capita income surpassing 10,000 yuan. However, to ensure national food security, it is necessary not only to maintain grain output, but also to transform the mode of agricultural development and achieve greater agricultural efficiency and higher farmer incomes.
Promoting the socialization of agricultural production and operation
The specialization and socialization of production and operation methods are the essential features of modern agriculture; socialization is the inevitable path for sharing responsibilities, dispersing risks and pooling financial resources. In the comprehensive supporting reform pilot for modern agriculture in the “two major plains,” further attention must be paid to promoting the specialization and socialization of agricultural production and operation methods.
⟦NL> Financial institutions must shoulder their historical responsibility and seize historical opportunities. Various financial institutions should continuously innovate small-sum agricultural loan products serving agriculture, simplify loan procedures and optimize services benefiting farmers.
Agricultural insurance is the main way to disperse the risks of agricultural production and operation. By forming an agricultural insurance network, establishing insurance funds, continuously increasing participating farmers and raising the level of protection as much as possible, the basic function of dispersing risks can be achieved and the socialization of agricultural production promoted. Futures companies can, through agreements with banks, mortgage transaction contracts, and banks can issue letters of credit to guarantee farmers' purchase of agricultural materials such as seeds, fertilizer, fuel and even agricultural machinery. Through socialized services, farming can be done without spending money, and after the autumn harvest the bank settles accounts uniformly.
Accelerating reform of the rural property rights system
Reform of the rural property rights system in Heilongjiang Province is being steadily carried out. However, a market-oriented mechanism has not been fully established. Marketization of property rights related to housing, residential land and collective construction land has not yet started, and channels for rural property rights to enter standardized market transactions have not yet been established; the property rights trading mechanism is not standardized and the system is incomplete; property rights transfer channels are not smooth and procedures are not sound; the financial guarantee system is uncoordinated and the service system is not fully matched.
Improve the responsibility system for property rights reform and form a joint force of coordinated management. Actively identify pilot projects, summarize experience and drive overall reform; coordinate relevant government functional departments for joint participation; establish a working mechanism of direct leadership by districts and counties, organized implementation by townships, specific operation by villages and groups, and good service by departments, so as to provide organizational guarantees for the smooth and orderly progress of reform.
Accelerate the confirmation, registration and issuance of certificates for land contractual management rights, earnestly carry out confirmation and registration of ownership and use rights for rural collective construction land, newly added cultivated land and farmers' residential land, and promote land transfer and scaled operation through rights confirmation. With asset verification, asset quantification and equity management as the main content, advance reform of the shareholding cooperative system for rural collective assets. Quantify collective resource-based and operational assets other than contracted land into shares for members of village collective organizations, establish new-type economic organizations, explore effective forms for realizing the collective economy, and develop and strengthen the rural collective economy.
Vigorously promote the upgrading of the grain processing industry
Heilongjiang Province is a major grain-producing province with sufficient raw material supply. However, the grain processing industry has backward technology and insufficient processing depth; it is small in scale and weak in overall strength; it operates extensively and its brand effect is not prominent; financing is difficult and development funds are insufficient; policies are lacking and supporting services are incomplete.
Resources must be integrated to enhance competitiveness. Formulate a development plan for the grain processing industry and promote its upgrading; rely on leading enterprises to cultivate “non-GMO” specialty brands; actively develop the production of nutritional health foods and snack foods; guide enterprises to strengthen joint collaboration with scientific research institutions and institutions of higher learning, promote the local transformation of scientific research achievements, realize comprehensive development and utilization of raw materials and increase added value; build grain industrial parks with distinctive features, cultivate grain processing enterprises with good market prospects, high added value and long industrial chains, and “squeeze them dry” to produce fine products; integrate advantageous elements such as funds, projects and policies from various administrative departments to form a joint force supporting the development of the grain processing industry.