Strengthen monitoring and early-warning mechanisms, and establish open and transparent market rules

The Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China pointed out that the core of economic system reform is to handle the relationship between the government and the market well, so that the market plays a decisive role in resource allocation and the government better performs its role. Building a unified, open, competitive and orderly modern market system is the fundamental direction and target task of agricultural market-oriented reform. How can we improve the price formation mechanism for agricultural products, pay attention to giving play to the role of the market in forming prices, and better give play to the role of the government? In our consideration, the key lies in five grasps: first, strengthen information monitoring and early warning, and build the foundation for agricultural marketization; second, accelerate the construction of production-area markets, and connect production and sales that are out of step; third, improve the price formation and regulation mechanism, and correct regulatory distortions; fourth, enhance farmers' marketing capabilities, and solve the problem of inequality among entities; fifth, accelerate agricultural informatization, and provide technical support for innovating production management and improving market efficiency. Below, I will discuss only three points of understanding regarding agricultural information monitoring and early warning.

Information monitoring and early warning are the foundation for improving the agricultural market system

Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate Schultz pointed out that the key to transforming traditional agriculture is to adopt market methods based on economic incentives to encourage producers to adopt modern production factors. In our understanding, the so-called market method is to use changes in production and sales information such as area, output, price, inventory, consumption and trade to guide producers in making scientific decisions. Not only producers' business decisions, but also consumers' free choices and the equal exchange of goods and factors are all based on market information. It can be said that open, transparent and comprehensive information is the data foundation of the modern market system and modern agricultural management. To transform traditional agriculture, the data foundation must be consolidated. At present, economically developed countries are all led by their governments and have established agricultural information monitoring and early-warning systems from collection and analysis to release. In particular, the information monitoring and early warning of the United States Department of Agriculture has become an important tool serving the decision-making of farmers, operators and demanders, and has become a weather vane for changes in the global agricultural product market. Qin Fu, director of the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, summed up its actual effects as the "three rights and one interest", namely dominating the discourse power in the international market, grasping the initiative in supply and demand regulation, holding the dominant power in world trade, and safeguarding the core interests of American agriculture.

There is an obvious gap between China's agricultural information monitoring and early warning work and that of the United States

In recent years, relevant departments in China have all carried out agricultural monitoring and early-warning work, but there is a relatively large gap with the United States in guiding production and domestic and international markets. The reasons can be summarized in four aspects: first, the strategic positioning is oriented upward rather than downward. The main purpose of American agricultural information monitoring and early warning is to serve production and business operators in expanding markets, while in China it is more for serving leadership decision-making. Producers of agriculture-related information "cannot see it, cannot understand it, and cannot use it", and there is no corresponding legislation to guarantee that information is "taken from the people and used by the people". The prices collected by various departments are not transaction prices, and there is a gap with actual market conditions. Second, the systems and mechanisms each speak for themselves. China's agricultural economic operation is managed in segments by different departments, and information on each link is held separately by different departments. The information collection and release standards for the same variety are not unified, and the calibers are inconsistent. In the United States, however, the Department of Agriculture uniformly carries out agricultural statistics, forecasting and release, effectively ensuring the authority of the information. Third, the teams are dispersed and their strength is vastly different. Among the 34 bureaus under the United States Department of Agriculture, 12 are directly related to monitoring and early warning. Each variety team is composed of 4~5 researchers with theoretical foundations in economics and statistics, while although there are quite a few relevant personnel scattered across various departments in China, they have not formed a joint force, and there is a lack of stable full-time information collection, quantitative analysis and industry expert teams. Fourth, the basic supporting technology is backward. Compared with the huge databases and standardized analysis models of the United States, we have not yet established an agricultural information database covering the entire industrial chain or quantitative analysis models suited to national conditions.

Establishing an agricultural information monitoring and early-warning system with Chinese characteristics requires three points of consensus

First, should we learn from the United States? The United States is a "century-old shop" of agricultural marketization. Some people say that the United States has few people and much land and is a major exporter of agricultural products, while China is just the opposite, so it cannot learn from it. But as a market economy, the inherent requirements of handling the relationship between the government and the market well and guiding production and the market through information are consistent. From discussions with relevant departments and industry experts, all parties relatively recognize the American approach, and it should be fully drawn on in light of China's national conditions. Second, what goal should be achieved? In top-level design, the construction of the monitoring and early-warning system should be taken as a national strategy, systematically planned for the whole industry, and laid out as a whole institutionally. The focus should be on establishing a monitoring and statistical system from field to table, strengthening the building of market early-warning teams, strengthening data and model support, and creating an authoritative information release window. The tactical goal is to promote changes in traditional agricultural management methods, reduce traditional path dependence in production management, and establish a market-oriented modern agricultural management system. Third, how should the work be advanced? According to the principle of consistency among business flow, data flow and information flow, the current focus should be on strengthening the collection of field price information, exploring the establishment of a mechanism for sharing agriculture-related information, and forming a whole-industry, comparable basic database; improving working mechanisms, models and methods, and launching the 2014 China Agricultural Outlook event; relying on the official website of the Ministry of Agriculture to establish a national agricultural information public service platform and explore the establishment of a real-time market quotation system; and launching the agricultural information service "entering villages and households" project to open up the "last kilometer". We fully believe that with the implementation of the decisions of the Third Plenary Session, important progress will be made in agricultural market-oriented reform and the transformation of traditional agriculture suited to Chinese characteristics.