Raising agricultural competitiveness requires stronger structural reform

Valuing agriculture and strengthening the foundation is the basis for bringing peace to the people. The Central Rural Work Conference held before New Year's Day accurately grasped the current situation of agriculture and rural work, and made a major deployment to focus on strengthening structural reform on the supply side of agriculture, charting a practical path for enhancing the momentum of innovation, fostering development advantages and raising agricultural competitiveness.

In recent years, China's work on “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” has achieved landmark major changes in agricultural production capacity, farmers' income levels and the social outlook of rural areas, yet the problems it faces cannot be ignored. From the perspective of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” themselves, the momentum and staying power for the sustained and healthy development of the agricultural and rural economy are insufficient; from the perspective of the domestic environment, effective supply has failed to adapt well to changes in demand, resulting in a structural imbalance between supply and demand of agricultural products, and an irrational supply structure has brought great pressure on resources and the environment; from the perspective of the international situation, against the backdrop of global economic integration, China's agriculture is insufficiently competitive, and the prices of bulk agricultural products are comprehensively inverted.

These contradictions and difficult problems are prominently manifested in structural aspects, mainly on the supply side, and the core requirement is to carry out production around people's needs, so that the supply of agricultural products is more sufficient in quantity and better matched to consumer needs in variety and quality, truly forming an effective supply of agricultural products with a more rational structure and stronger guarantees. Therefore, strengthening structural reform on the supply side of agriculture and achieving a leap from a low-level balance between supply and demand to a high-level balance between supply and demand is an important task for agriculture and rural work in the period ahead, and also the fundamental way to raise agricultural competitiveness.

To advance structural reform in agriculture, first, it must be clearly understood what is to be “preserved” and what is to be “changed.” On the one hand, safeguarding national food security is the basic bottom line of agricultural structural reform, and this bottom line must be held. At present, the “food is enough” theory and the “food is a burden” theory have been gaining ground, and we must be clear-headed about this: whether food is a little more or a little less for a time is a technical issue, but food security is a strategic issue, and a technical issue in development must not be allowed to affect strategic decisions. Moreover, China's food producers are millions of farming households, and once a major decline occurs, mobilizing them back would not be so simple. On the other hand, reform exploration must be deepened, and developing moderate-scale agricultural operations in multiple forms is an important force in agricultural structural reform. However, in advancing moderate-scale agricultural operations, some problems have also become prominent: first, land transfer fees are getting higher and higher; second, farmers can share relatively little of the benefits of industrial development; third, there is a trend toward non-agricultural and non-grain use. Therefore, while advancing land transfer, we should actively explore moderate-scale operations in multiple forms, such as land trusteeship and joint cultivation and joint planting, so as to effectively lower land operating costs and achieve cost savings and efficiency gains. At the same time, policy design should pay more attention to letting farmers share the fruits, and in particular should study how to use policy support such as subsidies and insurance to guarantee the basic income of farmers in main producing areas who produce important agricultural products, especially large-scale producers, so as to stabilize production.

Second, it must be clearly distinguished what the market should do and what the government should do. The market mechanism is the most fundamental driving force of agricultural structural reform, and letting the market play a decisive role in the allocation of agricultural resources is a key move in advancing agricultural structural reform. In particular, in improving the price formation mechanism for grain and other important agricultural products and reforming the purchase and storage policy, we must both adhere to the orientation of market-oriented reform and protect farmers' interests and farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain, “implementing policies by variety and adjusting gradually,” and adopt differentiated policies according to the functional sensitivity and degree of market distortion of different varieties; advancing agricultural structural reform cannot be separated from government guidance and support, and efforts must be intensified to guarantee investment in agriculture and rural areas. At present, we must not only find ways in increments but also work on optimizing existing stock, with the focus on integrating agriculture-related projects and innovating investment mechanisms.

Finally, reform must not forget what its fundamental purpose is. The poet Kahlil Gibran warned: “We have gone too far, so far that we have forgotten why we set out.” Increasing farmers' income is the fundamental purpose of agricultural and rural development, and also an important marker for measuring the effectiveness of structural reform. To promote increases in farmers' income, we should walk on “multiple legs”; in addition to finding ways to stabilize the market prices of agricultural products and promote the transfer of farmers to employment, we should also use reform and innovation thinking to promote rural “mass entrepreneurship and innovation,” find a way out in agricultural structural reform, and open up new growth points for increasing farmers' income.

As agriculture enters the stage of structural reform, what lies ahead is inevitably an arduous and painful process of climbing a slope, yet the steeper the slope, the higher the climb. We must not only have the courage and wisdom to break the existing pattern and reconstruct the development mechanism, but also have the reform responsibility and historical patience to “plant trees so that later generations may enjoy the shade,” thinking of progress every day and moving forward step by step, taking comprehensively deepening reform as the guide and going all out to raise China's agricultural competitiveness.