Five Major Concepts Drive Rapid Development of Modern Agriculture in China in 2015
The Central Rural Work Conference proposed that during the “13th Five-Year Plan” period, we should firmly establish and effectively implement the development concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing, enhance the momentum for innovation, cultivate development advantages, and actively advance agricultural modernization——
The black soil of Northeast China has long been covered by ice and snow, the wheat of the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain quietly awaits the arrival of spring, and potatoes or vegetables have been planted in the winter fallow fields of the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River. The calendar has turned to 2016, farmers have passed through yet another planting season, and the pace of modern agriculture has never paused; a series of new concepts, new measures and new results are arriving one after another.
New Concepts
⟦NL>Big Agriculture Makes Good Use of the “Classic of Mountains and Seas”
Only by introducing concepts such as the industrial chain and value chain into agriculture, extending the industrial chain, building the supply chain, expanding the value chain, and improving the benefit-linking mechanism, can farmers gain more benefits from the industrial chain
What is agriculture, and for whom does modern agriculture exist? “More grain for the nation, more income for farmers, more green for the people” - the answer of an veteran agriculturalist is hard to forget. The smallholder-economy view of agriculture focuses too much on increasing quantity, taking output as the greatest measure of agriculture, so that “one excellence covers a hundred flaws.” Yet the functions of agriculture are not limited to production; they also include living and ecological functions, and the agricultural economy must not only guarantee supply but also safeguard income and ecology. “The strength of modern agriculture is not only reflected in output, but even more in competitiveness, which means the vision of agricultural development must make more breakthroughs.” said Zhu Lizhi, a researcher at the Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
A broader view of food security. When it comes to potatoes, most northerners think of Di San Xian, while southerners think of hot and sour shredded potatoes. When people hear the news that potatoes are to become a staple food, they may feel puzzled. In fact, potatoes require less water, have low demands on soil quality, and are more balanced in nutrition, making them a food choice conducive to environmentally sustainable development. Behind the strategy of making potatoes a staple food lies the concept of big grain and big food: one must not one-sidedly emphasize the quantity of grain while ignoring the wholeness and coordination of food security. In the future, the space for agricultural development will not be limited to working on cultivated land, but will also face the entire national territory, guiding farmers to make good use of the “Classic of Mountains and Seas” and play the “fruit and vegetable card.”
A more efficient view of industrial development. From planting apples and selling apples to processing apple cider vinegar and attracting tourists to pick apples, the term “sixth industry” has made more farmers' wallets bulge. In the past, agriculture meant only from planting to harvest; now it is from field to table. The lengthened industrial chain is subdivided into infinite links and jobs, creating many new types of agricultural business formats. If agriculture is treated only as a primary industry, its ecological and social benefits may not be realized in a market economy; but if agriculture is upgraded into a “sixth industry,” its multiple benefits may be realized through market mechanisms. People increasingly recognize that only by introducing modern industrial development concepts such as the industrial chain and value chain into agriculture, extending the industrial chain, building the supply chain, expanding the value chain, and improving the benefit-linking mechanism, can farmers gain more benefits from the industrial chain.
A more sustainable view of resource use. Let our water and soil resources “take a breather,” but leave every inch of land for our descendants to cultivate. Facing problems such as the reduction in the quantity of cultivated land, declining quality, over-exploitation of groundwater and worsening agricultural non-point source pollution, in 2015 the state proposed exploring a pilot system of crop rotation and fallow on cultivated land. This is conducive both to allowing cultivated land to recuperate and to the sustainable development of agriculture, and also to balancing the contradiction between grain supply and demand and stabilizing farmers' incomes. In fact, for cultivated land with a high multiple-cropping index, some places have already carried out seasonal fallow. Part of the land is allowed to stop growing grain in a certain farming season, and farmers are encouraged to plant leguminous green manure and other crops in the fallow season to improve soil fertility, with certain subsidies granted.
New Measures
Big Market Navigates Structural Adjustment
Problems such as the reduction in the quantity of cultivated land, declining quality and worsening agricultural non-point source pollution have become prominent, the “tightening band” of resources and the environment is being drawn ever tighter, and agriculture has reached a new stage in which there is an urgent need to accelerate the transformation of its development mode
From machine operators at large agricultural machinery cooperatives in Heilongjiang to tappers in natural rubber forests in Hainan, from cotton farmers in contiguous cotton fields at the foot of the Tianshan Mountains to fishermen in the coastal areas of Jiangsu, all of them feel the intensity of the current adjustment of the agricultural structure through optimized layout, improved varieties and enhanced quality.
The structure of the planting industry has reached a point where it must be adjusted. In 2015, Liaoning was affected by severe drought and grain price adjustments, and in some places both the corn harvest and farmers' incomes were unsatisfactory. By contrast, farmers in pilot counties of “grain-to-feed” conversion, because they planted whole-plant silage corn, miscellaneous grains and miscellaneous beans, actually earned several hundred yuan more per mu. The “Sickle Bend” region is named for its sickle-bend-shaped distribution on China's topographic map, running from the northeast to north China, then to the southwest, then to the northwest. Vice Minister of Agriculture Yu Xinrong said that in the future the focus will be on reducing the corn planting area in the “Sickle Bend” region. By 2020, 50 million mu will be reduced, and the cultivated land thus reduced will be used, according to market demand and local conditions, to develop crops such as silage corn, forage grass, miscellaneous grains and miscellaneous beans.
Although the incident of dead pigs floating in the Huangpu River happened long ago, people's attention to the safety of livestock products has not diminished. The water-network region of southern China has many rivers and lakes, heavy precipitation, a sensitive water environment, high pig breeding density and large amounts of manure, making the task of coordinating pig production and environmental protection especially arduous. In addition, the construction of comprehensive manure utilization facilities at large-scale pig farms lagged behind, and the comprehensive manure utilization rate was only 40%, 10 percentage points lower than the national level, becoming the root cause of pig breeding pollution. The Ministry of Agriculture proposed optimizing the layout of pig breeding in key water-network areas of southern China. Many places have taken controlling the total amount and optimizing the structure as their development direction, and have redrawn prohibited and restricted breeding zones. In prohibited breeding zones, raising livestock and poultry is strictly forbidden, all farms are shut down, and the total number of livestock and poultry in breeding areas is strictly controlled.
“If you drain the pond to catch fish, will you not get them? But there will be no fish next year.” Driven by economic interests, various forms of “net of extinction” are still being used in specific waters in some places, and the use of prohibited fishing gear for illegal fishing is still fairly common. To ensure the sustainable use of fishery resources, fishery departments require all places to reasonably reduce the density of cage aquaculture in lakes, reservoirs and offshore waters, encourage the development of large-water-surface aquaculture and offshore aquaculture, and gradually reduce offshore and inland fishing capacity. Since the “12th Five-Year Plan,” central and local governments have increased investment in stock enhancement and release; nationwide, nearly 4 billion yuan has been invested cumulatively, and more than 120 billion fry of various species have been released, with stock enhancement and release activities developing from regional and small-scale efforts into a nationwide, large-scale resource conservation action.
New Look
Big Technology Depicts Smart Agriculture
In 2015, a new situation was opened up in transforming the agricultural development mode and adjusting the structure; the fertilizer and pesticide utilization rates of the three major staple grain crops rose by 2.2 and 1.6 percentage points respectively compared with 2013, and pilot projects for grain-to-feed conversion and grain-bean rotation were launched in an all-round way
When the way of thinking changes, the world becomes broad; when the method changes, the results become evident. Modern agriculture is an industry that never declines and can be built into a “century-old shop.” Since 2015, at a time when national investment growth has fallen back and investment in the secondary and tertiary industries has remained sluggish, investment momentum in the primary industry has been strong. According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, in the first three quarters of 2015, agricultural investment across society grew by 38.7%. The latest data show that China's contribution rate of agricultural scientific and technological progress is expected to exceed 56%, the comprehensive mechanization level of crop cultivation and harvesting has reached 63%, and the proportion of effectively irrigated farmland is expected to exceed 52%.
New production methods. “In the past no one wanted organic fertilizer, now people scramble to buy it.” The feeling of large grain-growing households in Anhui is that organic fertilizer has replaced part of chemical fertilizer, and the nutritional package for grain growth is more balanced. The province focuses on advancing the zero-growth action for chemical fertilizer use in corn, vegetables and fruits, promoting new technologies such as simultaneous seeding and fertilizing, integrated water and fertilizer management, and timely fertilization, and advancing replacement measures such as returning straw to the field, applying commercial organic fertilizer and planting green manure. Data from the Ministry of Agriculture show that the fertilizer and pesticide utilization rates of the three major staple grain crops rose by 2.2 and 1.6 percentage points respectively compared with 2013, and the scale-up rate of livestock and poultry breeding rose to 39.6%.
New industrial models. People eat the fruits of plants, animals eat roots, stems and leaves, and human and livestock manure is returned to the field as crop fertilizer; this is the law of the food chain arranged by nature. Combining agriculture and animal husbandry and creating a cycle between planting and breeding, to maximize the use of by-products and waste from the planting industry, is the proper meaning of circular agriculture. In 2015, the central government arranged 300 million yuan to select 30 counties in the Three-North region, arid and semi-arid areas and agro-pastoral ecotones to carry out pilot demonstrations of herbivorous animal husbandry. The pilot counties opened up a channel for the coordinated development of planting and breeding, promoting the transformation of waste into treasure and circular utilization, solving both the feed problem of livestock “input” and the manure and urine problem of “output.” A breeding expert said that coarse feed such as crop straw is a daily necessity for cattle and sheep, generally 2.5% of their own body weight; a beef cow marketed after two years consumes 5 tons of straw, and a sheep marketed within the year consumes 500 kg of straw. Therefore, herbivorous animal husbandry has broad prospects.
New marketing methods. “Grain also needs to build brands, so that prices are good and benefits are good.” Today, taking the brand-building path has become the consensus of the grain industry. Heilongjiang Province, a major grain-producing area, is changing the situation of having quality and quantity but no brand. Wuchang in Heilongjiang has built the regional public brand of Wuchang rice; besides traditional marketing methods, the local Dongfang Group has also established an omni-channel e-commerce system including a B2C platform, a WeChat distribution platform and third-party platforms. Consumers place orders through the e-commerce platform, and green organic Wuchang rice is delivered directly from the place of origin to consumers' hands. By advancing brand cultivation and integration, regional economic development and farmers' income growth have been driven. (Economic Daily reporter Qiao Jinliang)