The coverage rate of unified pest and disease control for major crops reaches 30%
According to the Ministry of Agriculture, the coverage rate of specialized unified pest and disease control for major crops such as wheat, rice and corn in China has reached 30%, an increase of 5 percentage points over the previous year.
In recent years, the Ministry of Agriculture has organized agricultural departments in various regions to carry out in-depth “hundreds, thousands and tens of thousands” demonstration actions for specialized unified pest and disease control of crops, supporting the development of specialized and socialized service organizations, providing farmers with unified pest and disease control services for crops, effectively solving the problems of poor control effectiveness and low pesticide utilization rates caused by the lack of labor for disease and pest control in millions of farming households, inconsistent control timing and unscientific pesticide application methods. This has become an important pathway and effective method for developing agricultural socialized services, is deeply welcomed by the broad masses of grain-farming farmers, and has also expanded employment space for the local transfer of surplus rural labor, promoting the establishment and improvement of rural specialized and socialized service systems.
High-efficiency equipment totals increased, operational capacity rapidly improved.The central government finances, in conjunction with projects such as agricultural machinery purchase subsidies and unified control of major crop pests and diseases, have increased subsidies for the purchase of high-efficiency equipment. Provinces such as Shandong, Henan and Hunan have already included agricultural aviation plant protection machinery in the scope of provincial-level agricultural machinery purchase subsidies. Driven by project support, plant protection equipment has gradually achieved upgrading and replacement, and the control method has shifted from individual household “machine on the back” to specialized and socialized control. According to statistics, in 2014, the national ownership of large and medium-sized plant protection machinery with a daily operational capacity of over 60 mu reached 227,000 units, a year-on-year increase of 13.7%; the daily operational capacity reached 79.33 million mu, a year-on-year increase of 4.5%.
The practitioner workforce has continued to grow, and service capacity has steadily improved.The Ministry of Agriculture organized and implemented the “Scientific Pesticide Use Training Action for Tens of Thousands of Farmer Backbones in a Hundred Counties”, carrying out training on scientific pesticide use, plant protection machinery use and maintenance in 100 counties (cities and districts), training 20,000 technical backbones of new-type business entities such as specialized large-scale farmers, farmer cooperatives and agricultural enterprises, and radiating to drive 100,000 farmer households. In 2014, the number of standardized control service organizations filed with agricultural departments reached 36,000, a year-on-year increase of 3,926; after technical training by agricultural departments, the number of certified personnel reached more than 520,000, a year-on-year increase of more than 35,000.
Control models have accelerated innovation, and the technical level has effectively improved.The Ministry of Agriculture established 538 demonstration zones for the integrated advancement of specialized unified control and green prevention and control. With the help of the unified control service platform, relying on new-type agricultural production and operation entities and specialized pest and disease control organizations, it advanced green prevention and control and integrated management, effectively improving the organizational degree and scientific level of pest and disease control. Survey results show that in general integrated demonstration zones, yield per mu increased by more than 8%, costs were saved and efficiency increased by more than 150 yuan, and chemical pesticide usage decreased by 20%-30%. In addition, Henan and Hebei actively explored wide-narrow row planting of wheat, achieving high-efficiency machinery operations throughout the entire growth period of wheat without reducing seeding rate or the number of ears per mu.
The scale of operations has expanded year by year, and profitability has continued to improve.In the “Prevent Disease and Control Pests to Win a Bumper Harvest” action, the central government finances implemented subsidy policies for wheat “one spray, three preventions” and rice “one promotion, two preventions”, supporting specialized pest and disease control organizations and new-type agricultural production and operation entities in unified operations. Through project support and guidance, the cumulative implementation area of specialized unified control reached 1.31 billion mu-times, double that of 2010. While accelerating large-scale unified control operations, the Ministry of Agriculture held the “Top 100 Specialized Unified Control Organizations Partnering with a Hundred Enterprises” activity, building a platform for information exchange and production-sales matching, and expanding the profit space of unified control.