What Does Modern Agriculture Look Like? 7 Major Categories and 27 Specific Indicators Are Being Advanced in an Orderly Manner
What is modern agriculture? Modern agriculture is a concept of agricultural development whose essence is efficient output, safe products, resource conservation and moderate scale. Correspondingly, it is necessary to establish and improve the industrial system, support system and operating system of modern agriculture. The National Modern Agriculture Development Plan lists 7 major categories and 27 specific indicators, and divides the country into three types of regions: key advancement areas, steady development areas and take-the-lead realization areas. Modern agriculture is also a dynamic process of building traditional agriculture into an industry with remarkable economic, social and ecological benefits.
Industrial System
Efficient Output, Safe Products
Modern agriculture must pursue standardized production. This is the fundamental way to raise the level of agricultural product quality and safety, and an important part of promoting agricultural transformation and upgrading
From the Xinjiang cotton base at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, to the boundless natural rubber forests of Hainan, to the rice paddies on fertile black soil, high-horsepower machinery for plowing, planting and harvesting, agricultural aircraft for spraying pesticides, and agricultural monitoring and scheduling systems - these advanced agricultural technologies once mostly used abroad are now showing their power, painting spectacular scenes of modern agriculture. According to statistics, China's agricultural science and technology contribution rate has reached 56%, the comprehensive mechanization level of crop plowing, planting and harvesting exceeds 60%, and major crops have basically achieved full coverage of improved varieties.
But at present, China's agriculture is still far from modern agriculture. The “bottleneck” of weak agricultural infrastructure still exists, the level of material and technical equipment is low, and the problem of “depending on heaven for food” has not been fundamentally solved. Taking only the rapidly developing agricultural mechanization as an example, at present only 9 provinces nationwide have a mechanization level above 70%. Among the “three major staple grains”, only wheat has achieved full-process mechanization; mechanical rice transplanting and mechanical corn harvesting are improving slowly, and many links in the mechanization of cash crops such as sugarcane and cotton are still blank.
“Enhance agricultural science and technology innovation capacity, seize the high ground in high-tech agricultural fields; accelerate the promotion of resource integration, and focus on solving the disconnect between science and technology innovation and agricultural production; actively develop the agricultural machinery and equipment industry, and comprehensively raise the level of agricultural mechanization.” According to the relevant plan, during the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan” period, the whole country should create about 300 national modern agriculture demonstration zones at a high level, and achieve breakthroughs around key points such as raising the level of modern agricultural facilities and equipment, promoting the application of agricultural science and technology, and building agricultural product quality and safety.
Modern agriculture is agriculture of quality and safety. Consumers should not only eat enough and eat well, but also eat safely and with peace of mind. Because agricultural production methods are still somewhat extensive, market order is not yet standardized, and moral integrity needs to be strengthened urgently, hidden dangers to the quality and safety of agricultural products still exist. Taking animal husbandry as an example, the whole country consumes 220 million kg of meat and 77 million kg of eggs every day. From the production side, the group of farmers is huge, free-range farming is still the majority, production levels vary unevenly, there are many links in the industrial chain, and the quality and safety traceability system is not yet complete. Experts believe that four types of problems deserve special attention: excessive residues of agricultural and veterinary drugs, heavy metal contamination of production areas, illegal addition of toxic and harmful substances, and fake and inferior agricultural inputs.
Modern agriculture must pursue standardized production. This is the fundamental way to raise the level of agricultural product quality and safety, and an important part of promoting agricultural transformation and upgrading. This requires continuing to advance standardized production of horticultural crops and standardized large-scale breeding of livestock and poultry, strengthening source control, standardizing production processes, and striving to build a large number of agricultural standardized production bases and well-known agricultural product brands.
Support System
Resource Conservation, Environmentally Friendly
To develop modern agriculture, the first step is to withdraw production that exceeds the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, improve soil whose fertility has declined, and gradually restore and remediate damaged ecosystems
Resource constraints and environmental pressure are the two major obstacles to current agricultural development. In recent years, agricultural production has maintained a high-input, high-output model, and resources such as arable land and water have been used at high intensity and overload for a long time. Only 30% of China's farmland is high-yield land, 40% of arable land has degradation problems, the black soil layer in Northeast China is thinning, soil in the South is acidifying, the plow layer of the North China Plain is becoming shallower, and salinization of arable land in the Northwest is prominent. China's per capita fresh water is only 25% of the world average; more than half of arable land belongs to arid and semi-arid areas short of water resources, one third of arable land is vulnerable to floods, and agricultural water conservancy facility construction has many arrears.
In many places, agricultural production is still mainly extensive, polluting the environment and wasting resources, producing many negative effects on the sustainable development of agriculture. At present, China's arable land area is less than one tenth of the world's, yet it uses nearly 40% of the world's chemical fertilizers, and direct economic losses each year through volatilization, leaching and other pathways reach more than 50 billion yuan. China's pesticide use per unit area is 2.5 times the world average.
Modern agriculture must be resource-conserving and environmentally friendly. To develop modern agriculture, the first step is to withdraw production that exceeds the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, improve soil whose fertility has declined, and gradually restore and remediate damaged ecosystems.
Starting in 2014, the state carried out regional demonstrations for the resource utilization of straw and livestock and poultry manure and the recycling of residual plastic film in farmland; participating enterprises can enjoy relevant fiscal and tax policies. Central government financial funds support pilot projects for comprehensive treatment in areas with severe groundwater overexploitation and pilot projects for heavy metal pollution treatment and remediation. Since the state launched the soil testing and formulated fertilization subsidy project, cumulative investment has reached 7.1 billion yuan, project counties (farms) have reached 2,498, and more than 8.5 million tons of unreasonable fertilization have been reduced, promoting the spread of scientific fertilization methods.
Second, it is necessary to strengthen treatment of prominent agricultural environmental problems, increase efforts to treat soil and water, appropriately reduce the intensity of agricultural land development and utilization, promote cost-saving and efficiency-increasing agricultural technologies, strictly control the abuse and misuse of agricultural inputs, and purify and restore the environment of agricultural product production areas. It is necessary to strengthen the construction of arable land quality, strengthen the construction of pollution-free, green and organic food bases, and actively promote advanced and practical technologies such as ecological production and healthy breeding.
Zhejiang Province plans that within 3 years, chemical fertilizers and pesticides will not only achieve zero growth, but nitrogen fertilizer application will fall by 8%. In areas with severe groundwater overexploitation, Hebei Province will appropriately reduce the winter wheat planting area irrigated by groundwater, changing from a two-crop-per-year system to a one-crop-per-year system.
Operating System
Moderate Scale, Strong Competitiveness
Adhere to the development direction of moderate-scale operation, promote orderly and standardized transfer of land management rights, especially to new types of operating entities, and improve scale benefits
Modern agriculture must be an industry that adapts to market changes. Although China's new types of operating entities are developing rapidly, small-scale operations still account for the majority, limiting the improvement of agricultural labor productivity. Although China's agricultural product market system has taken initial shape, in many places farmers still plant and raise by habit, by feeling, and by following trends, unable to escape the troubling cycle of “rising and falling.”
An operating scale of less than half a hectare per household clearly makes high benefits difficult, and inevitably produces the above problems. This has become the consensus of more and more agricultural experts. According to estimates, in 2013 China's agricultural added value per agricultural laborer was only 64% of the world average. Due to the gap in scale operation, domestic agricultural production costs continued to rise, and in 2014 prices of major agricultural products such as grain, cotton, oil, sugar and meat showed a comprehensive inversion.
Adhering to the development direction of moderate-scale operation requires promoting orderly and standardized transfer of land management rights, especially to new types of operating entities. To develop modern agriculture, we must start with reform of the agricultural operating system, focus on improving the quality of agricultural operators and the level of social services, advance the specialization, organization and socialization of agricultural production, and promote the transformation of traditional farmers into new types of agricultural operating entities.
Traditional agriculture is an industry with very low added value. Farmers merely engage in raw material production, agricultural products are mostly sold as raw materials, and deep processing and utilization of agricultural products are still at an initial stage. Modern agriculture must be an industry based on resource endowments and giving full play to comparative advantages. It should pay more attention to the benefits of agricultural production, shifting from the original focus only on output to equal emphasis on output, quality and benefits.
In response, it is necessary to develop the multiple functions of agriculture, vigorously develop leisure agriculture and “one village, one product,” enhance the ecological value, leisure value and cultural value of agriculture, and strive to build a “sixth industry” integrating the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. According to changes in market supply and demand and regional comparative advantages, it is necessary to adjust toward scarce varieties and the entire industrial chain of planting, breeding, processing and sales, expand the space for agriculture's multiple functions and value-added efficiency, and vigorously develop business forms such as agricultural product processing, storage and preservation.