Adhere to storing grain in the land, and let farmland rest and recuperate

Fallowing is not about letting the land lie waste, but about adopting protective measures to fundamentally raise the level of our country's cultivated land fertility, strengthen the protection of cultivated land quality, and promote the sustainable development of agriculture

Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the Central Agricultural Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Land and Resources and other departments, issued the "Pilot Program for Exploring the Implementation of a Cultivated Land Rotation and Fallow System," proposing to explore pilot implementation of a cultivated land rotation and fallow system in some regions, and striving to use 3-5 years to initially establish the organizational methods and policy system for cultivated land rotation and fallowing. This is a major reform task set by the central government, and also an important measure for our country to proactively respond to the pressure on ecological resources, transform the mode of agricultural development, and promote sustainable development.

In recent years, our country's grain output has increased year after year and agriculture has developed steadily, but the long-term extensive mode of agricultural development has also left our country facing multiple challenges in resources and the environment. A series of problems brought about by excessive development of agricultural resources, excessive use of agricultural inputs, over-exploitation of groundwater, and the superposition of internal and external pollution in agriculture have become increasingly prominent, making ecological restoration and governance an inevitable choice for the sustainable development of agriculture.

Agriculture stands on soil. For the ecological restoration of agriculture, cultivated land protection is the most critical part. Because of the large population and limited land, and insufficient resource endowments, our country's long-term over-intensive use of cultivated land, water and other resource factors has greatly depleted the vitality of cultivated land. At present, grain production in most parts of our country has two harvests a year, and many places in the south have three harvests a year, with the land operating under high load for a long time, which has affected sustained and stable high grain yields. In addition, the degradation and pollution of cultivated land have also expanded year by year, the "hidden loss" of cultivated land in the Northeast Plain has intensified, and the black soil layer originally rich in organic matter has become increasingly thin. Letting the overburdened cultivated land rest and recuperate, combining land use with land nurturing, and advancing cultivated land fallowing and rotation in some regions is imperative.

At present, the timing for advancing cultivated land rotation and fallowing is relatively mature. At this stage, domestic and international market grain supply is ample, domestic grain storage is becoming increasingly tight, and the fiscal pressure of grain purchase and storage is increasing. Using this opportunity to advance cultivated land rotation and fallowing can not only protect cultivated land resources, consolidate and enhance grain production capacity, and promote the sustainable development of agriculture, but also help balance the contradiction between grain supply and demand, stabilize farmers' incomes, and ease fiscal pressure.

Technically speaking, our country has a long tradition of rotation planting. The earliest agricultural book, "Qimin Yaoshu," already mentioned the necessity of crop rotation. Rotation is a choice that conforms to the laws of nature and can regulate the physical and chemical properties of the soil and improve soil ecology; fallowing, by combining land use with land nurturing, can protect and enhance soil fertility and strengthen the staying power of grain and agricultural development, thereby truly realizing "storing grain in the land." In addition, cultivated land rotation and fallowing are also conducive to our country's advancement of supply-side structural reform in agriculture, adjusting and optimizing the planting structure, increasing the supply of scarce agricultural products, meeting diversified consumer demand, and comprehensively improving the quality and efficiency of the agricultural supply system.

However, advancing cultivated land rotation and fallowing concerns the food issue of more than 1.3 billion people and must be treated prudently. How can the pilot be kept true to its purpose and a good policy design truly be put into effect? To correctly understand cultivated land rotation and fallowing, several principles need to be clarified. The first principle is to "consolidate and enhance production capacity and ensure food security." In carrying out this pilot, the premise must be ensuring national food security and not affecting farmers' incomes. Fallowing must not reduce cultivated land, lead to non-agricultural use, or weaken comprehensive agricultural production capacity, and must ensure that grain can be produced and supplied when urgently needed. Fallowing is not about letting the land lie waste, but about adopting protective measures. We must hold the red line for cultivated land protection, enhance cultivated land quality, and ensure basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of staple food.

Second, farmers' wishes must be fully respected, and farmers' interests must not be harmed. In this pilot, policy support has been strengthened, and a benefit compensation mechanism has been established, giving necessary subsidies to farmers who undertake rotation and fallowing tasks, ensuring that the incomes of pilot farmers are not affected. At the same time, farmers are encouraged to take the market as their guide, adjust and optimize the planting structure, and broaden channels for employment and income growth. According to the actual conditions of each region, farmers' initiative should be brought into play, and coercive orders and one-size-fits-all approaches should not be used.

In advancing cultivated land rotation and fallowing, in addition to the more than 6000 wan mu of cultivated land in the pilot, our gaze should also be cast over broader fields. Only by fundamentally raising the level of our country's cultivated land fertility, strengthening the protection of cultivated land quality, accelerating the construction of high-standard farmland, and truly implementing the strategy of "storing grain in the land" and "storing grain in technology" can we promote the sustainable development of agriculture.