No relaxation in wheat production, full efforts to ensure absolute security of staple grains
On October 15, the Ministry of Agriculture held a symposium in Hebei on wheat production development in the Huang-Huai-Hai region. Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong stressed that the central leadership attaches great importance to wheat production, which reflects the firm determination to ensure the absolute security of staple grains. Agricultural departments at all levels must, with a high degree of self-awareness, firm confidence and effective measures, do a good job in wheat production without any relaxation, and make new contributions to securely holding the Chinese people's rice bowl and ensuring the absolute security of staple grains.
Yu Xinrong pointed out that wheat is an important staple grain variety and must be based on domestic self-sufficiency; the Huang-Huai-Hai region is a advantageous production area for wheat and must be brave enough to shoulder heavy responsibilities. To promote the stable development of wheat production, it is necessary both to summarize and promote successful experience and to focus on solving problems such as water resource constraints, disaster impacts, low returns, shallower plough layers, excessive seeding rates and a low rate of unified seed supply, and to make every effort to promote sustained and stable increases in wheat production.
Yu Xinrong stressed that in wheat production development, stabilizing the area is an important prerequisite and increasing per-unit yield is the fundamental approach. For a period to come, in accordance with the overall approach of “stabilizing the area, focusing on per-unit yield, improving quality, lowering costs, raising returns, increasing investment and enhancing capacity,” efforts should be made to stabilize the sown area, strengthen policy publicity and information guidance, arrange the planting structure well, guide farmers to plant more wheat and plant good wheat, and strive to keep the wheat area in the 5 provinces stable at around 240 million mu; make efforts to strengthen infrastructure development, build a new batch of high-standard farmland that gives stable yields despite drought or excessive rain, improve cultivated land quality, strengthen agricultural machinery and equipment, and enhance the ability to withstand natural disasters; make efforts to advance scientific and technological innovation, accelerate the breeding of a batch of new varieties that are cold-tolerant, drought-tolerant, disease-resistant and heat-damage-resistant, integrate a batch of regional and standardized high-yield and high-efficiency technical models, and provide technical support for sustained and stable increases in wheat production; make efforts to advance disaster prevention and mitigation, do a good job in the four key links of fine land preparation, appropriate seeding, disease and pest control and “one spraying and three preventions,” and achieve proactive disaster avoidance, scientific disaster resistance and effective reduction of disaster impacts; make efforts to advance large-scale operation, accelerate the cultivation of new types of business entities, build a new type of operation service system, and improve the scale, organization and specialization of wheat production.
At present, it is a critical period for autumn harvest and autumn sowing, with tight farming seasons and heavy tasks. Yu Xinrong required that agricultural departments at all levels place autumn and winter sowing production in the primary position in current agriculture and rural work, organize carefully, increase efforts, and complete the autumn and winter sowing tasks with high standards and high quality; take effective measures, firmly implement the area, firmly grasp sowing quality, firmly grasp pre-winter management, strive to increase the area somewhat compared with the previous year, ensure strong seedlings safely overwinter, and consolidate the foundation for a bumper summer grain harvest next year.