Agricultural assessment should abandon the yield-only mentality and insist on giving equal weight to quantity and quality

The just-concluded Central Economic Work Conference proposed accelerating the transformation of the agricultural development model. Stabilizing the output of grain and major agricultural products and increasing farmers' incomes have always been important elements of agriculture, and there has been much emphasis in the past on improving the price formation mechanism for agricultural products, improving the transfer of land management rights, and vocational training. What is relatively new this time is the proposal to transform the agricultural development model, and it was put forward as a general guideline, which will drive a huge shift in future agricultural development: from the one-sided pursuit of quantitative growth in the past to giving equal weight to quantity and quality.

So how should the agricultural development model be transformed? The following points deserve attention.

First, the assessment target of one-sidedly pursuing the quantitative growth of agricultural products should be abandoned. In recent years, after the autumn harvest each year, there has been a round of publicity reporting on how many consecutive increases in grain output there have been. The upside is a bumper grain harvest and gratifying results. But the negative effect is that it easily leads to comparisons over quantity while ignoring the resource costs behind it. In order to make their quantitative targets look good, localities may set output increase targets and press them down level by level. In fact, just as China has adjusted the one-sided GDP assessment indicator, agricultural assessment should also be diverse. Consideration should be given to what price the growth in output quantity was achieved at, how many resources were consumed, and how much pollution it caused.

⟦NL> Second, the method of agricultural subsidies should be adjusted. Over the past decade or so, the amount of agricultural subsidies in China has grown substantially, and most of these subsidies have in fact been stimulating growth in quantity. Future subsidies should change their approach, transitioning from simply stimulating quantitative growth to incentivizing sustainable growth methods. Developed countries long ago abandoned subsidy methods that stimulate quantitative growth in agriculture, and most now subsidize based on household income, that is, subsidizing households whose income falls below the average, in order to narrow the income gap between households. In the future, China's agricultural subsidies should also be adjusted in this direction.

Third, there should be a transition from extensive agriculture to fine agriculture, and constraints should be placed on resource-wasting extensive agriculture. EU countries have many strict regulations on agricultural production. For example, there is a coating requirement: chemical fertilizers and pesticides cannot be applied directly to the soil but must be coated, that is, around the seed, calculating all the nutrients the seed needs from germination to maturity and then wrapping these nutrients around the seed through coating. In this way, after the entire growth period is completed, very little excess nutrient remains at the end. At present, China's agricultural production methods are extremely extensive; for example, irrigation is basically flood irrigation, which wastes water resources seriously.

Fourth, plans should be formulated to tackle non-point source pollution. China's current method of fertilizer application is basically extensive, causing the annual growth rate of fertilizer application to far exceed the growth rate of grain, and the same is true of pesticides. On the one hand, this causes a waste of resources; on the other hand, excessive pesticide and fertilizer residues in the soil also cause a large amount of non-point source pollution. China has now reached the point where it should comprehensively tackle non-point source pollution.

Fifth, the use of antibiotics in the livestock industry should be restricted, and excessive pesticides and fertilizers in crop farming should be limited. Although China does not allow the use of antibiotics, in high-density livestock farming this is in fact an unspoken rule. Europe and the United States have already banned it, because long-term use of this antibiotic-abusing farming method will have negative effects on human health and may also produce superbugs, threatening human survival. China should also issue strict regulations on such use and strictly investigate and punish abusers.

Sixth, vigorously develop sustainable technologies and cultivation methods and pursue a resource-saving, sustainable development model. I remember reading a review on organic agriculture. After summarizing several research reports, the article found that compared with conventional chemical agriculture, organic agriculture's yield reduction is not as exaggerated as some people claim; generally, organic agriculture's yield is equivalent to 50% to 80% of chemical agriculture. In other words, without relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, with good management the yield can reach 80% of conventional output, but its negative impact on water, soil and the like is far, far greater than that of conventional agriculture. So current statistics only recognize yield, but if statistics were comprehensive, integrating yield, inputs, pollution and sustainable resource use, organic agriculture would be far, far better than traditional agriculture.

Under the current inertial thinking, the transformation of the agricultural development model still requires a long process, but it has already begun. I believe that more and more sustainable development methods and technologies will emerge in the future.