Green prevention and control escorts autumn grain production with full effort
Recently, the National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center held the 2014 National Crop Pest Green Prevention and Control On-site Meeting in Jining City, Shandong Province. At the meeting, heads of plant protection systems from various regions visited the green prevention and control demonstration site in Zoucheng City, exchanged progress and experience in crop pest green prevention and control work, learned about farmers' demands and willingness regarding green prevention and control, and carried out the “Do Practical Things for Farmers” activity. The meeting also displayed and demonstrated the development and application of green prevention and control inputs, and deployed green prevention and control work.
Since the concept of “public plant protection and green plant protection” was proposed in 2006, the Ministry of Agriculture has attached great importance to green prevention and control work. The introduction of a series of supportive policies, such as the 2013 National Crop Pest Green Prevention and Control Demonstration Zone Construction Plan and the Bee Pollination and Green Plant Protection Yield Increase Technology Integrated Application Demonstration Plan, has provided solid institutional guarantees for green prevention and control work. This year, the Ministry of Agriculture issued the Pilot Plan for the Integration of Unified Crop Pest Prevention and Control with Green Prevention and Control, established 218 demonstration bases, and took the lead in exploring a low-carbon, environmentally friendly, and sustainable new model for pest prevention and control.
Support through special funds has been further increased. Since 2013, the Ministry of Agriculture has supported the demonstration and display of green prevention and control technologies at 50,000 yuan per demonstration site. The National Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center supports 3 million yuan annually through commissioned business arrangements based on key experimental and demonstration green prevention and control technologies.
With policy and financial support, a number of full-process green prevention and control technology models are being optimized and integrated. Technical models such as ecological control of rice pests, full-process green prevention and control of corn borer mainly using Trichogramma, biodiversity-based disease control in source areas of wheat stripe rust, and food-bait control of Chinese citrus fly to prevent fruit boring have been widely applied, and clear progress has been made in the modeling and standardization of green prevention and control technologies. Green prevention and control technologies have made obvious progress in the direction of being three-dimensional, full-process, and regionalized. With the integration of informatization and green prevention and control technologies, and the integration of unified prevention and control with green prevention and control, the scientific nature, timeliness, and accuracy of green prevention and control technologies have been greatly improved.
In terms of technology extension methods, through the IPM training model, a large number of scientific and technical personnel skilled in using green prevention and control technologies have been cultivated, the popularization rate and application rate of green prevention and control technologies have increased markedly, and technology extension has shifted from government-led to mass participation, and from technology-driven to farmers' voluntary adoption.
According to statistics, in 2013 the area of national green prevention and control demonstration zones exceeded 20 million mu, an increase of 15% over the previous year. The number of crop types and pest types controlled continued to increase, a series of crop-centered technical regulations for green prevention and control of pests and diseases were formulated one after another, the standardization level of green prevention and control was greatly improved, and the benefits of green prevention and control were remarkable. According to surveys, green prevention and control demonstration zones can reduce pesticide applications by 3~6 times and reduce pesticide expenditure by 30~150 yuan per mu.
This year's summer grain harvest was bumper, and green prevention and control played an indispensable role. At present, which is a critical period for autumn grain production and also a period of frequent and high incidence of meteorological disasters and pests and diseases, the meeting required agricultural technology extension departments in all regions to take doing a good job in autumn grain production management as the top priority, organize cadres and technical personnel, go deep into the front lines of production to stay at posts and cover areas, and comprehensively advance green prevention and control work.
The meeting also determined the key tasks for this year: do a good job in building the green prevention and control indicator system and in statistics; do a good job in demonstrating green prevention and control technologies and summarizing work; do a good job in green prevention and control publicity and technical training; do a good job in innovating the promotion mechanism for brand creation and market-driven development of green agricultural products; and advance the integration of green prevention and control with bee protection and unified prevention and control, so as to achieve the national green prevention and control work goals.