Where are the focal points for advancing agricultural supply-side reform?

Agricultural supply-side structural reform is a major development strategy for the agricultural sector mentioned in this year's No. 1 Central Document. How should this reform be advanced? In my view, from the perspective of better providing basic public services for agricultural production, the following issues should be addressed as priorities.

First, adjust the structure and improve quality to solve the problem of low quality and low efficiency in agricultural production. China's agriculture has enjoyed consecutive bumper harvests for many years, with an ample total supply of agricultural products, but the structural contradiction between the quantity and quality of agricultural products has become increasingly prominent. On the one hand, some agricultural products suffer from overcapacity, and the phenomenon of "low prices and difficulty selling" has dampened farmers' enthusiasm for production; on the other hand, consumers' demand for high-quality agricultural products is difficult to satisfy. In addition, domestic agricultural production is facing new challenges such as the "ceiling" of agricultural product prices, the "floor" of rising production costs, and intensifying "hard constraints" on resources and the environment, causing some agricultural products such as wheat, corn, cotton and soybeans to rely on imports for a long time, with domestic average prices 20% to 100% higher than international prices, leaving them without comparative advantage internationally. This has led to persistently high levels of grain stockpiles purchased and stored under China's price support policy, presenting the phenomenon of "three simultaneous increases" in production, imports and stockpiles. Therefore, optimizing the structure of agricultural products, improving the quality and effective supply of agricultural products, achieving a balance between supply and demand of agricultural products, and enhancing the efficiency of market allocation of agricultural resources will become important tasks of future agricultural supply-side structural reform. The focus of reform is to increase the supply of green, organic and safe agricultural products and achieve the shift "from focusing mainly on quantity to placing equal emphasis on quantity and quality," while enhancing the international competitiveness of agriculture.

Second, open up information channels and strengthen guidance to solve the problem of a lagging agricultural information service system. The lag in agricultural informatization construction has seriously affected agricultural development, directly causing large fluctuations in the planting area, output and prices of agricultural products, resulting in bumper harvests without increased income for farmers, dampening farmers' enthusiasm for production and consumers' purchasing confidence, and undermining national security, economic development and social stability. For example, in 2015, the spread of false information such as "strawberries with excessive pesticide residues cause cancer" led to unsalable produce in several major strawberry-producing areas, harming farmers' interests. At present, there is an urgent need to address issues such as smooth and transparent agricultural information, standardized collection and authoritative release; it is necessary to accelerate the establishment of an agricultural information monitoring and early warning system, speed up the pace of building an informatization service system, improve institutional norms and policy guidance, cultivate and support new types of agricultural socialized service organizations, strengthen government-led public welfare agricultural services, reduce agricultural production costs and improve agricultural efficiency.

Third, promote integration and tap potential to solve the problem of a single development mode in agriculture. Measured by the standards of modern agriculture, China's agricultural infrastructure is weak and industrial development is lagging; the current situation of low industrialization, low marketization and low intensification in agriculture has not fundamentally changed, and to a certain extent it still follows a development mode of exhausting resources, straining the environment and single-mindedly pursuing output and income, neglecting agricultural technological innovation and sustainable development, which easily triggers agricultural source pollution and food safety crises and weakens agriculture's ability to cope with natural and market risks. Advancing agricultural supply-side reform appears on the surface to be a matter for agriculture itself, but in essence it is a requirement for optimizing the entire socioeconomic development structure. If agriculture is developed for agriculture's sake alone, without incorporating agricultural modernization into the systems of new industrialization and new urbanization for coordinated planning, it will be difficult to achieve substantive transformation of the agricultural development mode. To this end, it is necessary to deeply tap the multiple functions of agriculture, actively expand the breadth and depth of agriculture, and break free from the inertial thinking and working model of "advancing agriculture single-handedly."

Fourth, shore up weak links and optimize the environment to solve the problems of green development and safe development in agriculture. In the process of China's agricultural modernization, "green development" and "safe development" are prominent weak links. In the past, agricultural development blindly pursued increased output, excessively consumed soil fertility and underground freshwater resources, and abused chemical fertilizers, pesticides and feed additives, easily causing problems such as soil compaction, declining soil fertility, environmental pollution and pesticide residues, which costs more than it gains and is unsustainable. This year's No. 1 Central Document specifically proposes a food safety strategy of "strengthening environmental protection of production areas and source control, and implementing strict management of agricultural inputs," emphasizing the improvement of a whole-process supervision system for the quality and safety of agricultural products and food "from farm to table," strengthening seamless coordination with food and drug departments, jointly building a technical platform for full-process supervision, traceability and interconnected information sharing from production to consumption, and further improving the risk monitoring and assessment and inspection and testing systems.

Fifth, strengthen management and promote efficiency to solve the problem of lagging agricultural management and assessment mechanisms. At present, China's agricultural management and assessment system, which emphasizes quantity over quality, farming over marketing, and scale over efficiency, leads to high agricultural input costs while overall efficiency is difficult to fully realize. In particular, in recent years, large-scale land management in China has increasingly flourished, with a large number of family farms, large-scale growers and farmer cooperatives emerging. However, production costs remain high, and some new types of agricultural operating entities have been passively caught in a situation of large scale but low efficiency. New-type professional farmers who understand management and technology have become a new talent bottleneck in agricultural development. To this end, it is necessary to increase talent cultivation efforts, cultivate new types of agricultural operating entities that both understand the market and know how to farm scientifically, connect market entities in all links of production, processing, sales and management through economic relationships such as the contract system, cooperative system or joint-stock cooperative system, closely link new-type professional farmers, farming households, enterprises and the market, and establish a scientific performance assessment system. In agricultural assessment, attention should be paid to the diversity of assessment, comprehensively considering factors such as the cost of output and quantity growth, resource consumption and environmental pollution, and measuring economic, social and ecological benefits from multiple angles to form a scientific agricultural assessment and evaluation mechanism.