Promoting the Development of Leisure Agriculture Requires Properly Handling Five Relationships
Website news: On October 11, the National Leisure Agriculture Experience Exchange Conference was held in Nanjing, Jiangsu. The conference proposed that we must closely focus on the goals of promoting farmers' employment and income growth and meeting residents' leisure consumption needs, taking farming culture as the soul, beautiful countryside as the charm, ecological agriculture as the foundation, innovation and creativity as the path, and ancient villages as the form, integrating leisure agriculture with modern agriculture, beautiful countryside, ecological civilization, and cultural and creative industry development, paying greater attention to standardized management, content enhancement, public services, cultural discovery, and atmosphere creation, and accelerating the construction and improvement of support systems for policy support, public services, publicity and promotion, and capital investment. Through deepening reform, the strong driving force for development and the huge potential of demand should be released, promoting the formation of a development pattern of government supervision according to law, business entities operating lawfully, and urban and rural residents enjoying leisure in a civilized manner.
Yang Shaopin, a member of the Party Leadership Group of the Ministry of Agriculture, pointed out in his speech that the development of leisure agriculture has fully demonstrated its economic function of promoting income growth, its social function of driving employment, its cultural function of protecting and inheriting farming civilization, and its ecological function of beautifying the rural environment, prompting agricultural areas to become scenic areas, farmland to become parks, air to become popularity, labor to become exercise, and agricultural products to become commodities, allowing idle rural land to be utilized, farmers' spare time to be enriched, surplus labor to flow, and traditional culture to become active. It has played an irreplaceable and important role in agricultural and rural economic and social development and has become a strategic emerging industry for upgrading agriculture, beautifying the countryside, and enriching farmers.
Yang Shaopin emphasized that to further promote the development of leisure agriculture, we must follow the overall principles of “putting agriculture first and planning scientifically, adapting measures to local conditions and highlighting characteristics, strengthening services and standardizing management, and government guidance with social participation,” and properly handle the relationship between market determination and government guidance. In accordance with the requirements of “industrialized supply, quality products, informatized marketing, professionalized services, and intelligent management,” we should give play to the decisive role of the market in allocating resources, making leisure agriculture more flexible and diverse in operation and more closely aligned with market demand in services; the government should guide the direction of leisure agriculture development through formulating development plans, promote standardized and orderly development of leisure agriculture through strengthened management, and create an environment for leisure agriculture development through formulating policies and measures and increasing public services. Properly handle the relationship between farmers as the main body and social participation. On the premise of highlighting farmers' principal position, actively explore and establish mechanisms for multi-party participation and mutual benefit and win-win outcomes, both promoting the development of leisure agriculture and maximizing farmers' interests, and never allowing “farmhouse fun” to become merely “boss fun.” Properly handle the relationship between facility improvement and cultivated land protection. Take occupying as little cultivated land as possible or not occupying cultivated land as a major principle issue that must be taken seriously. In selecting development models, do not seek grandiose and foreign-style approaches; instead, adapt to local conditions and give priority to developing types of leisure agriculture that do not occupy cultivated land, guide leisure agriculture to develop on barren hills, barren slopes, barren beaches, and other such land, and make great efforts in conservation and intensive use. Properly handle the relationship between economic benefits and ecological benefits. In accordance with the principle of placing equal emphasis on economic benefits and ecological benefits, and while comprehensively considering the carrying capacity of resources and the environment, take a resource-conserving and environment-friendly development path, and strive to make leisure agriculture a demonstration industry for ecological civilization. Properly handle the relationship between point creation and overall advancement. Through a combination of point innovation, line imitation, and surface promotion, use points to drive lines and promote surfaces, forming a scale effect of “stringing beads into a line and stringing lines into a surface,” and strive to achieve comprehensive, coordinated, and sustainable development of leisure agriculture.