How can the ace in grain be polished even brighter?
On July 22, at 3:40 pm, in a meeting room in Xiping County, Zhumadian City, Henan Province.
More than 20 representatives, including large grain growers, cooperative leaders, and village officials, gathered with over a dozen supervising leaders from the provincial, city, and county levels and officials from agriculture-related departments to heatedly discuss the topic of grain.
"This year, the average yield per mu of our county's 1.028 million mu of wheat was 569.2 kilograms..."
"In the project area, the average wheat yield per mu reached 654.3 kilograms, more than 120 kilograms higher than outside the area..."
At the symposium, the phrase the villagers said most was - "This year's harvest is really good!"
Not only Xiping County!
On July 14, the National Bureau of Statistics released data showing that this year Henan's total summer grain output reached 66.776 billion jin, setting a new historical high and continuing to rank first in the country. The average yield per mu was 819.33 jin, breaking through the 800-jin mark for the first time.
With time as the axis and cultivation as the pen, Henan has spent more than 10 years drawing a steadily rising curve of continuous grain output increase.
However, to achieve the goal of building a nationally important core area for stable grain production growth by 2020, this ace in grain production must be polished even brighter.
Easy to know but hard to do, how can the ace be polished even brighter? Governor Xie Fuzhan told reporters that to achieve continued breakthroughs from a high starting point, it is necessary to rely on scientific and technological means for stable and high yields, on transforming medium- and low-yield fields to increase per-unit output, and on innovative mechanisms to mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain.
The "Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands" project builds granaries within granaries
- For grain, the foundation lies in cultivated land
In Dawangzhuang Village, Jiaozhuang Township, Xiping County, large grain grower Liu Shuangyin contracted 1,000 mu of land for grain cultivation, with a transfer price of 1,200 yuan per mu. In nearby Maozhai Village of the same township, another large grain grower whom Liu Shuangyin knows transferred more than 400 mu at 950 yuan per mu.
"When he transferred the land, it was not yet in the project area. My land is in the project area, with good basic conditions and high yields, so it is more expensive." The "project" Liu Shuangyin referred to is the "Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands" high-standard grain field project.
Vice Governor Wang Tie told reporters that as a national core grain production area, Henan has always been considering how to maximize land benefits while ensuring that the area of cultivated land does not decrease. In 2012, then Henan Governor Guo Gengmao clearly proposed building "Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands" high-standard grain fields, ensuring grain output by protecting land and increasing agricultural returns through modern agricultural production methods and large-scale operations.
The "Hundreds, Thousands, Ten Thousands" construction project is an important means and basic measure for ensuring grain output. For this reason, Henan designated 95 major grain-producing counties to create 75 million mu of core grain-producing area cultivated land, planning by 2020 to build 63.69 million mu of high-standard permanent one-ton grain fields within the core area in units of "hundred-mu plots," "thousand-mu plots," and "ten-thousand-mu plots."
"Land does not recognize father or mother; tend it well and it yields more grain." To ensure the quality of grain field construction, Henan took the lead in issuing local standards for high-standard grain field construction and passed high-standard grain field protection regulations, legally designating high-standard grain fields as untouchable specialized cultivated land for grain production, prohibiting non-grain use at any time and under any circumstances.
"Doing a good job in high-standard grain field construction can guarantee a comprehensive grain production capacity of 120 billion jin, ensuring the fulfillment of the 130 billion jin grain production commitment." Zhu Mengzhou, director of the Provincial Department of Agriculture, told reporters that currently the province has cumulatively integrated 22.8 billion yuan in funds from various agriculture-related projects in agriculture, water conservancy, land consolidation, and comprehensive agricultural development. High-standard grain field construction is advancing at a rate of 9 million mu per year, and by the end of this year 35 million mu can be completed.
Large water conservancy and small farmland water works advance together
- For grain, the lifeblood lies in water conservancy
In early August, many places in Henan suffered severe drought. In the fields of Qinghe Township, Fangcheng County, scenes of farmers fighting drought to protect autumn crops could be seen everywhere.
Henan is a province with severe water shortages, with per capita water resources of only 445 cubic meters. The strange cycle of "drought relief every year, drought every year" has long been difficult to completely escape.
In order to change from emergency drought relief and flood control to systemic disaster prevention and mitigation, Henan firmly seized the great opportunity of the state increasing water-saving and water-supply projects and Huai River basin governance, accelerated planning for large and medium-sized flood control and irrigation and drainage projects such as Chushandian Reservoir and Qianping Reservoir, increased construction of water resource allocation projects focusing on Yellow River diversion, and made full use of Yellow River water resources.
At present, the main project construction of the middle route of the South-to-North Water Diversion Project in Henan Province has been successfully completed, and the expected goal of relocating 165,000 people from the Danjiangkou Reservoir area under the "four-year task, completed in two years" has also been smoothly achieved.
With large water conservancy solidly carried out, small farmland water works must also keep up. In the "Henan Grain Production Core Area Construction Plan," accelerating water conservancy facility construction and enhancing grain production's ability to resist floods and droughts was listed as the first major construction task. In the high-standard grain field construction last winter and this spring, Henan completed 29.027 billion yuan in farmland water conservancy construction investment, ranking second in the country in both investment amount and engineering volume. At present, among the 95 major grain-producing counties in the core area, 77 have implemented key county construction for small farmland water works, with a coverage rate of 81%.
In the high-standard grain fields of Chencao Township, Xuchang County, key demonstration and promotion farmland water-saving technologies such as integrated water and fertilizer, soil moisture monitoring irrigation, rainwater harvesting supplementary irrigation, and water storage and moisture conservation showed their prowess in a year of severe drought. Fan Limin, secretary of the township party committee, introduced that this year's autumn grain crops, benefiting from water-saving irrigation, will not only avoid reduced yields but may continue to increase them.
Nearly a thousand agricultural technology extension regional stations are all "general practitioners"
- For grain, the way out lies in science and technology
"Now when growing grain, whatever the agricultural technician says, that's what we do. No matter what problem we encounter, we just go ask." This place that large grain grower Chen Baolin of Penyao Township, Xiping County, can reach by just "going" is precisely the agricultural technology extension regional station built in the high-standard grain fields.
Cai Xinting, director of the Xiping County Agriculture Bureau, told reporters that on the basis of the original agricultural technology extension system, according to the actual needs of the high-standard farmland project area, the focus is on building agricultural technology extension regional stations to practically solve the "last kilometer" problem.
Today, the agricultural technology extension regional stations that have "zero-distance contact" with farmers are located within the ten-thousand-mu plots of high-standard grain fields, generally built in units of 100,000 mu, with county-level agricultural technology extension personnel directly stationed there, concentrating on agricultural technology extension and experimental demonstration functions. "The agricultural technicians at the agricultural technology service centers are like doctors at village health stations, knowledgeable in all fields, and any problem farmers encounter can be directly solved." Wei Mengguan, deputy director of the Provincial Department of Agriculture, made a vivid analogy.
In the 100,000-mu high-standard grain field of Erlang Township, Xiping County, the agricultural technology service center occupies a small area but is "small yet complete." Reporters saw that the large screen hanging outside the office was displaying the most needed agricultural technology at the moment, and on the blackboard in the training classroom were notes on agricultural technology left by experts during lectures.
Agricultural technology service centers identical to the one in Erlang Township are planned to number 970 across Henan Province, and 776 have already been built.
With agricultural technology service centers as the carrier, Henan's agricultural informatization has been greatly accelerated. "Farming depends on the sky, and the thing farmers care about most is the weather. We seized this point, took meteorology serving agriculture as the entry point, connected soil moisture, pest and disease situations, and guidance measures with meteorological information, and provided them to farmers in a centralized way on the agricultural information query machines at agricultural technology service centers." Duan Yanjie, deputy county magistrate of Xiping County, said.
At the Erlang Township agricultural technology service center, reporters saw many farmers gathered around the agricultural information query machine, "pointing and clicking." Yang Guang, a farmer from Zhangyao Village, told reporters that on this machine, with just two easy taps of the finger, one can see the weather forecast for the coming days, and with a few more taps, what diseases to prevent and what pesticides to spray all appear.
With agricultural technology in place, agricultural machinery is equally advanced. Every summer, when the wheat harvest begins in Zhumadian, hundreds of thousands of combine harvesters gather here. The army of "iron wheat harvesters" sets out from here, heading north all the way, harvesting across the country.
Qi Cunjie, member of the Standing Committee of the Zhumadian Municipal Party Committee and vice mayor, introduced that at present Zhumadian's total agricultural machinery power has reached 13.6 million kilowatts, with nearly a thousand professional agricultural machinery cooperatives, and the comprehensive agricultural mechanization rate has reached 82%, all ranking among the top in the province.
At present, Henan Province's comprehensive mechanization rate has reached 75%, and wheat production has basically achieved full mechanization. In addition, Henan is also a pilot province for national subsidies for drone-based one-spray three-prevention.
Good children have good mothers; good seeds yield more grain. Among Henan's main grain crops, wheat and corn varieties each have two shining stars, winning four national first prizes for scientific and technological progress for Henan as a major seed industry province.
The new wheat variety "Aikang 85" bred by Henan Institute of Science and Technology solved four major technical problems including lodging of high-yield large populations in wheat; the new strong-gluten high-quality wheat variety "Zhengmai 9023" bred by the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences ranks first among China's current high-quality wheat varieties in planting area.
Corn improved variety breeding is equally outstanding. "Zhengdan 958" bred by the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences is the corn variety with the largest cumulative planting area since the founding of the People's Republic of China; "Jundan 20" bred by the Hebi Academy of Agricultural Sciences set the record for the highest yield of domestic contiguous planting in a ten-thousand-mu core area and the highest yield for summer corn of the same area nationwide, ranking second in the country in planting area.
Mechanism innovation is key to stabilizing grain and increasing output
- For grain, the driving force lies in policy
Han Weiyu, a large grain grower from Maozhai Village, Jiaozhuang Township, Xiping County, is 36 years old this year. A few years ago he worked in Shanghai. Now, he has returned to his hometown to contract land for grain cultivation for 3 years. "I signed a 20-year contract with the farmers, transferred more than 400 mu of land, and had the township land transfer service center notarize it." Han Weiyu has committed his life to growing grain.
In the past two years, in order to standardize and promote land transfer, Xiping County established land transfer service centers (stations) at the county, township, and village levels to provide services for new business entities like Han Weiyu.
More importantly, Henan explored granting farmers' professional cooperative organizations, family farms, and specialized large households the status of applicants for agriculture-related projects, and attempted to transfer project assets supported by fiscal funds for agricultural production to them for use and maintenance, promoting the development of new agricultural business entities.
At present, Henan Province has 92,000 farmers' professional cooperatives, with member households and driven households accounting for more than 17% of the total number of rural households; large grain growers operating more than 50 mu of cultivated land number 39,000, and there are 16,000 family farms. Forms of large-scale and intensive operation such as cooperative operation and trusteeship and agency management have emerged.
To solve the funding problems of new business entities, since last year Henan has established a modern agriculture investment guarantee company, securing a total credit line of 30 billion yuan over 3 years, alleviating to a considerable extent the difficulty for new business entities of "wanting to grow grain but having no money to transfer land."
This also makes it easy to understand that Henan's current rural contracted land transfer area has reached 33.93 million mu, accounting for 34.8% of household contracted cultivated land area, about 7 percentage points higher than the national average. One should know that this is especially not easy in a major grain province that has always cherished land for grain cultivation.
In order to leverage policy to pry up productivity, Henan also focused on establishing and improving 11 mechanisms, including investment for stable grain production growth, reward and subsidy, scientific and technological innovation, modern agricultural operation, rural land transfer, and rural human resource development, drawing a policy blueprint full of hope for Henan's farmers.