How to Develop Agriculture with the Concept of Ecological Civilization

At present, China's agriculture has reached a new historical starting point. The production capacity of grain and other major agricultural products has jumped to a new level, agriculture is accelerating its transformation toward modernization, and the country has entered the ranks of middle-income countries. At the same time, it is also a period of concentrated outbreak of various intricate and complex contradictions, among which the intensifying constraints of resources and environment on agricultural development are one of the important contradictions.

In response to this prominent problem of agricultural resources and environment, in recent years, especially since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China put forward the overall layout of the "Five-Sphere Integrated Plan," workers on China's agricultural front have boldly explored, dared to innovate, and achieved remarkable results in breaking the bottleneck of agricultural resources and environment and promoting sustainable agricultural development. The typical experiences provided here are representatives among them, and they are worth analyzing with a scientific spirit and the concept of ecological civilization, summarizing experience, and exploring a path of sustainable agricultural development suited to China's national conditions.

Inspiration one: The intensity of development and utilization of China's agricultural resources is high, but the scale and methods of utilization are extensive. According to 2010 data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, the United States, the top country in arable land resources, used 2.96 billion mu to produce 363 million tons of grain, while China's 1.83 billion mu of arable land had a grain production capacity of 510 million tons. The grain production capacity per unit of arable land was 2.2 times that of the United States, but the utilization rates of water resources and chemical fertilizers were far lower than those of the United States. For another example, China's precipitation resource utilization rate and arable land irrigation rate are both more than 1 times the world average, and crop water use efficiency has reached the world's advanced level, but the national average utilization efficiency is far lower than the international advanced level. It can be seen that against the background of China's agricultural resources being scarce in land and water, severely uneven in temporal and spatial distribution, and generally low in quality, agricultural growth mainly relies on high-intensity development of resources and large amounts of material input, resulting in resource depletion, decline in resource quality, low input utilization efficiency, high production costs, and large external environmental risks and other resource and environmental problems. Therefore, transforming the mode of resource utilization from extensive to intensive and paying more attention to the quality of resources is a feasible path under China's existing national conditions.

Inspiration two: The recycling and efficient use of agricultural resources is the only way to break resource shortages and reduce external environmental risks. Intensive cultivation, combining planting and breeding, and resource recycling are the essence of China's traditional farming civilization and have played a foundational role in the long river of 7,000 years of agricultural development. Of course, the traditional agricultural civilization dominated by a smallholder economy also shows its limitations when integrated with large-scale modern agriculture. How to integrate the essence of traditional farming civilization into the modern agricultural system is a major issue that China's agriculture needs to actively explore. Fortunately, Zhejiang's ecological circular agriculture and Jiangsu's resource utilization of straw and livestock and poultry manure follow the ecological concept of recycling and efficient use, not only realizing resource recycling but also greatly reducing the risk of environmental pollution from agricultural organic waste such as livestock and poultry manure and straw. They take into account both production and the ecological environment and have preliminarily explored a path of modern ecological circular agriculture.

Inspiration three: Scientific and technological progress is the main driving force for breaking the bottleneck of agricultural resources and environment. Science and technology have become the primary productive force in agricultural development and will certainly become the primary productive force in solving agricultural resource and environmental problems. For many years, in the exploration of breaking the bottleneck of agricultural resources and environment, through model innovation, product creation, technical system construction and other scientific and technological innovation and technology application, the comprehensive agricultural production capacity has been greatly improved. Of course, it should also be noted that any technology has limitations in itself and in the period of its application. For example, while plastic film increases ground temperature and preserves soil moisture, thereby greatly increasing grain yields, improper use has also caused pollution. While strengthening the recovery and treatment of plastic film, accelerating the research and development and production application of fully degradable plastic film is the key to the rebirth of plastic film technology. At present, these technologies are in the darkness before dawn, but after all, the light is ahead.

Inspiration four: Transforming the mode of agricultural development requires continuously improving the theoretical guidance and development concepts for agricultural development. Therefore, in terms of theoretical guidance, on the basis of being guided by the basic industry theory and following the three levels of thought of the theory of factor contribution, the theory of industrial checks and balances, and the theory of natural attributes, greater attention should be paid to the theory of agriculture as a weak-quality industry and the theory of multifunctionality. In terms of path selection, on the basis of attaching importance to industrialization paths such as large-scale, intensive, and high-efficiency development, greater attention should be paid to the self-repairing function of agricultural ecosystems, and model innovation combining moderate-scale planting and breeding should be actively carried out to combine production with environmental protection. In terms of following the laws of natural reproduction, on the basis of following market laws, it is necessary to follow even more the characteristics and laws of agriculture as public-interest, social, and foundational, and to effectively give play to the role of the government's visible hand and the market's invisible hand.

In a word, to do a good job in the utilization of agricultural resources and environmental protection, it is necessary to integrate the concept of ecological civilization into agricultural development, consciously respect nature, comply with nature, and protect nature, establish a productivity layout compatible with resource carrying capacity and matched with environmental capacity, build a list of clean agricultural production technologies, and boldly explore, courageously practice, and drive innovation in soil heavy metal treatment, prevention and control of non-point source pollution, comprehensive recycling of straw, treatment of residual film pollution, protection of biological resources, prevention and control of invasive alien species, and creation of ecological agriculture models. In this way, a path of sustainable agricultural development with Chinese characteristics will surely be found.