Six key points to understand this year's seed market crackdown

The solar term of Major Cold has passed, and this is the coldest time of the year, yet the special campaign against infringement of variety rights and the production and sale of fake and inferior seeds is showing a fiery momentum of deployment and mobilization, with the sound of drums and horns sounding together. On the morning of January 21, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Ministry of Public Security and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, held a video conference in Beijing. The meeting required agricultural authorities at all levels across the country to accurately grasp the current situation of seed market supervision, raise awareness of the seed crackdown work, persist in strict investigation and strict cracking down, address both root causes and symptoms, maintain a high-pressure stance on cracking down on counterfeiting, and vigorously implement tasks with a nail-driving spirit to ensure a marked improvement in seed market order.

This video conference was like sounding the advance call for continuing the special campaign. Almost at the same time, the Ministry of Agriculture announced the implementation plan for the 2015 special campaign against infringement and the production and sale of fake and inferior products, and issued a notice on supervision and inspection of seed production enterprises. Within days, dozens of supervision teams will head to all parts of the country to guide and assist agricultural administrative departments at all levels in carrying out full-coverage inspections of corn, rice and cotton seed production and operation enterprises within their jurisdictions, and full-coverage sampling of all varieties packaged and operated by key supervised enterprises, focusing on production and operation licenses, variety approval and authorization status, production and operation files, seed sources and destinations, packaging labels, relevant production and sales contracts, variety authenticity and seed quality. This is to make lawbreakers dare not counterfeit and be unable to counterfeit.

After enterprise spot checks, the special campaign enters the market inspection stage. All localities should focus on hybrid corn, hybrid rice and conventional rice seeds to carry out special spring market inspections, and focus on wheat seeds to carry out special autumn market inspections. Special attention should be paid to seed markets, business stores and rural sales outlets where problems have been found in market supervision in recent years, and where rights-protection enterprises have reported and farmers have complained. For large centralized trading markets, it is necessary to work with industry and commerce departments to ascertain the registered locations of each stall. In areas with a high proportion of direct seed sales to households, it is necessary to go into villages and households to trace clues to problematic seeds and ascertain seed sources. The Ministry of Agriculture will supervise and conduct undercover inspections of key markets and stores to ensure no regulatory blind spots remain.

⟦NL> The source of fake and inferior seeds lies in seed production bases. In order to eliminate fake and inferior seeds from the source, the Ministry of Agriculture requires county-level agricultural administrative departments in national hybrid corn and hybrid rice seed production bases to fully and accurately grasp information such as seed production locations, varieties, areas, qualifications of entrusting enterprises and seed production contracts within one month before and after sowing in the bases, and to report it to provincial-level competent departments. Provincial-level competent departments should focus on checking variety authenticity before seed harvest and during the drying and processing stages, and during the seed transportation season, focus on checking the production license, plant quarantine, destination and quantity of transported seeds. The Ministry of Agriculture will include bases, plots and production and processing enterprises reported by rights-protection enterprises as key supervision targets for follow-up inspections. This is to ensure good production order in national-level bases.

Variety cleanup and withdrawal is also a major part of the special campaign. National and provincial variety approval authorities will continue to clean up approved varieties, and resolutely withdraw varieties with major defects, those that have not submitted standard samples, and those with no production area, so as to remove the "shell" of falsely labeled seeds. Provincial agricultural administrative departments must publicly announce to society the list of withdrawn varieties. Increased transparency in variety cleanup will help promote reform of the variety management system.

For illegal acts found in various inspections, the Ministry of Agriculture requires agricultural administrative departments in all localities, in accordance with the principles of linking inspection and cracking down, departmental coordination and regional coordination, to take the initiative to work with public security and industry and commerce departments to investigate and deal with them strictly; cases that constitute crimes shall be transferred to public security organs, and it is absolutely not allowed to fail to transfer cases or substitute fines for criminal punishment; major and important cases and key cases of social concern shall be supervised with listed handling; for units and relevant responsible persons involved in serious local protection, inaction, arbitrary action or participation in illegal operations, higher-level competent departments must take the initiative to work with local governments to launch the administrative accountability mechanism and promptly disclose information on completed cases. The Ministry of Agriculture will disclose them to society through the seed administrative penalty case information disclosure aggregation platform (www.seed.gov.cn), so that illegal records can be queried by society.

Spot checks are for discovering problems, supervision is for solving problems as quickly as possible, and the establishment and improvement of long-term mechanisms are the effective guarantee for purifying market order. In addition to sampling inspections of enterprises, markets and bases, clearing out problematic varieties, and strictly investigating and publicly handling major and important cases, the Ministry of Agriculture will launch systemic mechanisms and build a series of platforms, including establishing a DNA identity authentication system for corn and soybean varieties, a variety SNP identity information database and query platform, increasing variety trial types, optimizing the layout of regional trial sites, intensifying approval of varieties suitable for mechanized operations, simplified and lightweight planting, and broad adaptability and multiple resistance, improving the safety and adaptability of approved varieties, expanding pilot programs for full-process traceability of seed quality, promoting the operation of seed e-commerce platforms, actively guiding enterprises to implement entrusted operations, establishing main channels for seed operations and farmers' seed purchases, and meeting the actual needs of agricultural production.

In 2015, the special crackdown campaign will still follow the principles of territorial management, linking inspection and cracking down, departmental coordination and addressing both root causes and symptoms, persist in combining departmental coordination with systemic linkage, departmental crackdown with reporting and rights protection, listed supervision with disciplinary accountability, investigation of major and important cases with public exposure, and special rectification with establishing long-term mechanisms, maintain a high-pressure stance of strict cracking down, severely crack down on illegal acts such as variety infringement and promotion without approval, and strive to use about 3 years to achieve a fundamental improvement in seed market order. It is believed that the vast number of farmers, all law-abiding enterprises and every consumer are full of expectations for this.