How can farmers grow more grain and earn more money?
Summer grain is ripe, and Henan has a great harvest; after autumn planting, the fields are covered with green corn.
In the 100,000-mu high-standard grain field in Erlang Township, Xiping County, the agricultural technology service center is not large in area, but its role is not small. Han Weiyu, a large grain grower in Maozhai Village, Jiaozhuang Township, is pointing and tapping at the agricultural information query machine in the agricultural technology service center: "On this machine, with just a few easy taps, you can see the weather forecast for the next few days, and with a few more taps, even what diseases to prevent and what pesticides to spray are all there."
Cai Xinting, director of the Xiping County Agriculture Bureau, told reporters that this year, based on the original agricultural technology extension system, according to the actual needs of the high-standard farmland project area, the county built regional agricultural technology extension stations within the 10,000-mu zones at the unit of 100,000 mu, truly solving the "last kilometer" problem.
In grain production, the way out lies in science and technology. This year, Henan Province planned and built 970 regional stations, using expert lectures to promote and train agricultural technology, taking meteorology for agriculture as the entry point, linking soil moisture, pest and disease conditions, and guidance measures with meteorological information, providing packaged agricultural information, and offering it to farmers in a concentrated way through the agricultural information query machines in the agricultural technology service centers.
"The agricultural technicians in the regional agricultural technology service stations are all county-level agricultural technology extension personnel directly stationed there. They are like doctors in village health stations, knowing all fields. When farmers encounter any problem in growing grain, they can just walk in and find them directly," said Wei Mengguan, deputy director of the Henan Provincial Department of Agriculture.
Turning our gaze from the Yellow River basin to the banks of the Yangtze River, in Jingzhou, Hubei, Jianli County's estimated yield this year is 2.95 billion jin, an increase of 140 million jin over the previous year. Hubei's top grain-producing county has increased production again, and the seedling-raising factory made the greatest contribution.
"Farmers can earn money while holding a teacup and wearing leather shoes." At the Shanghe Farmers' Cooperative in Lintang Village, Chiba Township, Jianli County, chairman Ouyang Bin gave reporters a detailed introduction to how the seedling-raising factory benefits farmers.
According to Ouyang Bin, at present, the seedling-raising factory no longer only carries out the function of raising seedlings. In fact, it is a specialized service organization in the form of a cooperative that carries multiple functions such as centralized seedling raising, agricultural machinery services, unified prevention and control, agricultural input supply, rice planting, and vegetable production. "By relying on the services of the seedling-raising factory to grow grain, farmers can save at least 200 yuan per mu," Ouyang Bin said.
As of now, Jianli County has built 220 centralized seedling-raising demonstration sites, including 43 large-scale factory-based seedling-raising bases. The 43 seedling-raising factories have a total investment of 300 million yuan, serve an area of 600,000 mu, and drive the county's mechanized transplanting area to 1.1 million mu.
Xu Jinpu, a member of the Standing Committee of the Jianli County Party Committee, explained to reporters that in the past two years, Jianli County has fully supported the development of seedling-raising factories through three methods: subsidies, financial services, and policy support. In terms of funding support, it implements rewards instead of subsidies and subsidies after construction first. The county finance department gives a one-time subsidy of about 200,000 yuan to each standardized seedling-raising factory completed. In terms of financial services, it implements competitively allocated interest-subsidized loans. In 2014, the county finance department set aside 110 million yuan in working capital to support the development of leading enterprises in agricultural industrialization, provided 29 million yuan in loan interest subsidies to 7,000 new business entities across the county, and financed 300 million yuan. In terms of policy support, for transferees of contiguous land transfers of more than 500 mu, a reward of 30 yuan per mu is given, and land trusteeship is piloted with cooperatives providing full-process packaged services. Farmers only need to pay the cooperative at a price of 30 yuan/mu or according to a certain percentage of that year's total grain output.