The key to storing grain in technology lies in improving quality and efficiency

To achieve "storing grain in technology," improving quality, efficiency and competitiveness must be taken as the core goal. Corresponding science and technology support policies should focus on how to raise the comprehensive agricultural production capacity and how to achieve sustainable development, strive to solve the problems constraining cost saving, efficiency improvement, safety, quality improvement and circular development, and effectively enhance industrial competitiveness

The wheat harvest has just ended, and it is another bumper year. News of yield measurements from research and trial fields in various places has also kept coming, and records for wheat yield per unit area are constantly being broken. Faced with yield-per-unit-area records, some people feel that this is only high-yield research on a small scale and has little practical value. In my view, high-yield research has irreplaceable value, but agricultural science and technology in the new era cannot be satisfied with yield improvement. In the future, the focus should shift from excessive pursuit of yield to greater emphasis on quality, efficiency and competitiveness.

It should be recognized that a large difference between the expert yields from trial research and the actual harvests in farmers' fields is a normal phenomenon. Expert yields are the maximum yields achieved by varieties under the best supporting conditions such as good methods and good fields, and they also reflect the realistic yield potential that can be reached under field conditions, so they have irreplaceable value. Grain increase is a systematic project, and there is still a long way to go from the research team's trial fields to farmers' contracted land. Good varieties, good methods, good fields and capable people must be combined, and the three major links of agricultural research, agricultural technology extension and farmer training need to be connected.

At present, the contribution rate of China's agricultural science and technology progress reaches 56%, the level of agricultural mechanization for major crops reaches 63%, and the contribution rate of varieties to yield-per-unit-area improvement reaches 43%. It can be said that China's agricultural science and technology development has achieved remarkable results, among which land output rate has risen significantly, but the situation of resource use efficiency and labor productivity is not entirely satisfactory.

The yield per unit area of China's major crops is close to or even exceeds the world's advanced level, but agricultural labor productivity is far below the world's advanced level, appearing to be "long in one leg and short in the other." Data show that the yield per unit area of rice and wheat in China has reached the level of developed countries, and the yield per unit area of corn has reached the level of moderately developed countries, but China's agricultural labor productivity is only 47% of the world average. In recent years, it is precisely imports of varieties with low labor productivity, such as cotton, soybeans and sugar crops, that have continued to increase.

At the same time, resource use efficiency needs to be improved. China's cultivated land area is less than one tenth of the world's, yet it uses nearly four tenths of the world's chemical fertilizers; the amount of pesticides used per unit area is 2.5 times the world average; although agricultural film has increased yield per unit area, half of it remains in the soil, causing "white pollution." If inputs such as pesticides, chemical fertilizers and agricultural film continue to increase, the rural environment will be difficult to bear, and the safety of agricultural products will also be difficult to guarantee.

Both of the above aspects have put forward new requirements for agricultural science and technology development. However, the overall layout of China's agricultural science and technology is still unbalanced and difficult to adapt to the new requirements. From the perspective of agricultural research investment, there is more scientific and technological strength in aspects involving crop yield, such as breeding of new agricultural varieties and pest and disease prevention and control, but less investment in science and technology for efficient planting and breeding, resources and environment, agricultural product processing, and quality and safety. The latter is precisely the key to improving agricultural quality and efficiency. From the perspective of transformation of scientific and technological achievements, agricultural research and extension are two separate skins, science and technology are disconnected from industrial development, and there is a lack of an integrated connecting mechanism in between. The goal of many researchers is to complete projects and pass variety approval, without considering whether the varieties can be suitable for extension.

Looking at countries around the world, the initial goal of agricultural science and technology was to pursue yield, and then it gradually moved toward placing equal emphasis on production development and ecological protection. For China, in the historical stage when total grain output was relatively low and the main task was solving the problem of food and clothing, the "yield" indicator was the most important. In recent years, the indicators of "good quality and high efficiency" have become increasingly important. What farmers care about is not the highest experimental harvest under ideal conditions, but the average harvest under ordinary conditions. They hope that after adopting new technologies, not only will yields be high and taste good, but labor will also be saved, and more importantly, it must be economically worthwhile.

"Storing grain in technology" is an important aspect of the national food security strategy. In the future, improving quality, efficiency and competitiveness must be taken as the core goal, and corresponding science and technology support policies should focus on how to raise the comprehensive agricultural production capacity and how to achieve sustainable development. Efforts should be made to solve the problems constraining cost saving, efficiency improvement, safety, quality improvement and circular development, and to effectively enhance industrial competitiveness. Only in this way can scientific and technological research and development, agricultural technology extension and farmer training be connected, can the yields in laboratories be more smoothly transformed into farmers' yields, and can the seemingly "uneconomical" small-scale demonstration fields transition to the possibly "more economical" field production.