The supply-side reform of agricultural inputs must endure a bone-chilling winter before the plum blossoms can fill the air with fragrance.

On May 26, the China Agricultural Means of Production Circulation Association released the "Guiding Opinions on Advancing the Supply-Side Structural Reform of Agricultural Inputs," sounding the clarion call for the optimization and upgrading of the supply and demand structure of the agricultural inputs industry, which finds itself in dire straits. Either be reborn through transformation or perish while waiting - the only way for the agricultural inputs industry to usher in its next spring is to actively brave the harsh winter.

Standing at the historical juncture of reform, the problems currently facing the agricultural inputs industry are glaringly obvious. After more than 60 years of development, the agricultural inputs industry has gone from severe shortage to today's overcapacity. In addition, prominent problems such as low-end products, high inventory, insufficient innovation, and uneven quality mean that the industry exhibits almost every problem item that necessitates supply-side structural reform. As the material guarantee and an important node of agricultural production, the reform of the agricultural inputs industry is an unavoidable stop that cannot be bypassed for the supply-side structural reform of agriculture. Therefore, whether viewed from the objective need for the agricultural inputs industry to adapt to the transformation of agricultural development modes, or from the internal impetus to advance the industry's own transformation and upgrading, the supply-side reform of the agricultural inputs industry is already an arrow on the bowstring and must be launched.

Of course, the difficulties facing the agricultural inputs industry must also be viewed objectively. From within the industry, China's agricultural inputs industry grew after the reform and opening up with support from national policies and alongside consecutive years of grain output increases - going from severe shortage to supply surplus in just over a decade. This is like a person who is extremely hungry: when good food is available, they will certainly eat desperately, and it is very hard to stop before eating to the point of being stuffed. And asking someone who has just eaten their fill to go on a diet is extremely difficult. No wonder many agricultural inputs enterprises still harbor a mentality of dependence on industry policy subsidies, still cling to their old operational inertia, overlook transformation opportunities, and lack a proactive awareness of innovation. From the external environment, factors such as tightening resource and environmental constraints, weakening exports, declining grain prices, and adjustments to planting structures have made things even worse for the agricultural inputs industry.

"Rome was not built in a day." The current problems of the agricultural inputs industry are caused by a combination of multiple factors. This is the manifestation in the agricultural inputs industry of systemic problems accumulated from the entire national economy's rapid growth since reform and opening up. Like the supply-side structural reform of other industries, it is impossible to get out of the woods in the short term. Yang Jianping, Party Leadership Group member of the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives and Deputy Director of its Board of Directors, predicts: "The agricultural inputs industry will be very difficult in the next 3 to 5 years. The days of making big money and fast money will not come again. You must start learning to make small money and slow money, and you must be prepared for a protracted battle."

From the very beginning, as providers of agricultural inputs, the agricultural inputs industry has been inextricably linked with agriculture, an industry with extremely strong policy orientation. Many enterprises have long been accustomed to living off policies. Now they must truly undergo the baptism of the market and complete the reshuffling process of survival of the fittest. It is indeed cruel, even brutal. Of course, there is no need for excessive pessimism either. As long as agriculture as an industry exists and farmers farm the land, the agricultural inputs industry will continue to exist and develop. Moreover, changing the habitual excessive dependence on industry policies does not mean saying a complete goodbye to agricultural policy. Rather, it means following the pace of policy adjustments even more closely and proactively using policy subsidies to innovate. For example, the central government is vigorously promoting the reform of the "three subsidies" for agriculture. The agricultural support and protection subsidies will be more targeted, precise, and effective. These are all clear positive developments for the agricultural inputs industry and point the way forward for its reform.

On the one hand, it is necessary to closely keep pace with the growth of modern agriculture and develop precision agricultural inputs. China's modern agricultural development has shifted from the past field agriculture aimed merely at solving food and clothing needs to multiple forms such as intensive agriculture, organic agriculture, facility agriculture, and agritourism. Agricultural inputs enterprises must transform from bulk agricultural inputs suppliers into efficient and precise agrochemical service providers. For example, developing full-process solutions for a certain crop in a certain region.

On the other hand, it is necessary to actively participate in appropriately scaled agricultural operations and provide farming services. When capital goes to the countryside, large agricultural inputs enterprises are the most qualified, because they understand agriculture and farmers, and they have capital and channels. Through land trusteeship and land transfer, agricultural inputs enterprises can establish service-oriented farmer cooperatives or professional service teams for agricultural machinery and plant protection, and by adopting methods such as cooperative operation, order-based services, and contract leasing, carry out a series of farming services across the links of plowing, sowing, management, harvesting, drying, processing, storage, and sales, participate in the overall layout of the agricultural industry chain, and advance the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas.

In fact, when people face a huge difficulty, looking at it from another angle, opportunities often outweigh challenges. From the perspective of the healthy development of the entire industry, this winter period for the agricultural inputs industry has come at just the right time. It contains both the unfavorable predicament of the traditional development model, with the enormous pressure of transformation and the unfavorable side of challenges, and also the favorable conditions for achieving the optimization and upgrading of the supply and demand structure and the transformation of development modes through proactively choosing supply-side structural reform. The 170,000 agricultural inputs enterprises formed on the basis of the dispersed operation model of smallholder farmers - in the new period of steadily advancing appropriately scaled agricultural operations - after the survival-of-the-fittest elimination of backward enterprises and backward production capacity, those that remain will surely be the strong ones capable of representing China's entire agricultural inputs industry in contending for a place on the international stage. "Without going through a bone-chilling winter, how can the plum blossoms fill the air with fragrance?" Only by enduring the biting cold of winter can the agricultural inputs industry usher in a more brilliant spring.