How can agricultural industrialization achieve upgrading in the new normal?
Entering the era of Agriculture 4.0, modern technological means and management concepts such as the Internet of Things, cloud computing, and big data are being widely applied in the agricultural sector, becoming a "catalyst" for cultivating "new farmers," accelerating agricultural modernization, and integrating the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in agriculture. Those who "master" these technologies and concepts are the leading enterprises active in the agricultural industrialization chain.
Beijing Dabeinong Group uses "Nongxin Cloud" as a platform to integrate agricultural inputs, seedlings, market information, and other industry chain elements through big data analysis, improving transaction efficiency and giving more profits back to farmers; by establishing a credit model for farmers, it provides credit funds to farmers, reducing their planting and breeding costs.
Today, more and more leading enterprises use information technology as a "sharp tool" to bind various operating entities upstream and downstream of the agricultural industry into a community of shared interests, playing a demonstration and leading role in promoting the integrated development of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in rural areas.
"The integration of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries in agriculture essentially integrates the product chain, service chain, factor chain, and interest chain; and leading enterprises are the most active link in the agricultural industrialization chain and the backbone force driving the integrated development of the three industries," said Chen Xiaohua, Vice Minister of Agriculture.
Leading enterprises bridge the gap, accelerating farmers' income growth in the integration of the three industries
The core of the integration of the three industries is to increase farmers' returns in value appreciation. Leading enterprises can benefit farmers through traditional forms such as guaranteed minimum purchase, premium purchase, and secondary profit sharing.
They can also use forms such as shareholding cooperative systems to allow farmers to invest land management rights and assets as shares, forming a close interest linkage relationship of "you within me, I within you, mutual benefit and win-win," allowing farmers to share more of the value-added benefits brought by the integration of the three industries.
In recent years, risks such as environmental protection pressure in the breeding industry and sharp market fluctuations have posed severe challenges to small and scattered farming households. Guangdong Wens Group adopts the form of signing commissioned breeding contracts to ensure farmers obtain stable returns. Through technical guidance, loan guarantees, and renovation of breeding bases, they enhance farmers' self-development capacity, cultivating a group of small-scale farming households into family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and other new types of agricultural operating entities.
"Technicians from Wens come every few days to teach us how to raise chickens. We can operate feeding, lighting control, and curtain rolling through a mobile app. My wife alone can handle all this work. Even though last year's market was bad, the company guaranteed I could still earn two yuan per chicken," said Wen Jikai, a chicken farmer in Xinxing County, Guangdong.
Currently, Wens Group has cultivated more than 2,300 family farms in Xinxing County, Guangdong, accounting for more than 1/3 of the total number of cooperative farmers. The average breeding scale of family farms has increased from 7,500 birds per batch to 15,000 birds per batch, more than doubling the production scale, with farmers' breeding income significantly increased.
Today, more and more leading enterprises are playing a pivotal role in leading China's standardized agricultural production.
From variety selection and breeding, agricultural input distribution, epidemic prevention and disinfection, to product sales, standardized management is achieved in all links; enterprises help farmers establish data files, achieving synchronization and consistency of logistics, capital flow, and data flow; enterprises strengthen industry-university-research connections with research institutions and universities, conducting product research and development around market demand, and feeding back to farmers for on-demand production, reducing farmers' market risks.
"Practice has fully proven that leading enterprises are the leaders in the integration and co-existence of new types of agricultural operating entities. They push the center of gravity of value chain distribution toward the upstream, building all entities in the industry chain, including farmers, into a community of shared risks and shared benefits," said Chen Xiaohua.
Leading enterprises innovate business formats, leading structural adjustment in the integration of the three industries
After the rain, the fields are lush and green. In the grape planting base of Hansen Wine Group Co., Ltd. in Wuhai City, Inner Mongolia, grapes covering the vines are gradually entering maturity, and the air is filled with an intoxicating fruity aroma.
When the grape industry in many places was still at the stage of selling after planting, Hansen Wine Group had already led farmers to not only grow grapes but also establish a wine-themed cultural industrial park. They launched a circular economy model of "combining forest, grass, and agriculture," developing sandy land grapes into an ecological and cultural composite industry integrating planting, winemaking, and tourism culture. Currently, the park receives 150,000 tourists annually and drives an annual income of 6 million yuan for farmers and herdsmen.
From growing grapes to eating grapes, and then to brewing wine, a complete industry chain that "squeezes every last drop" from grapes is perfectly presented. Among this, the role played by leading enterprises is indispensable.
Jiang Changyun, Deputy Director of the Institute of Industrial Economy and Technical Economy under the National Development and Reform Commission, said: "The integrated production-processing-sales and trade-industry-agriculture one-stop operation model promoted by agricultural industrialization is itself the integration of different industrial links. Leading enterprises, out of consideration for ensuring raw material quality and improving product quality, continuously innovate business formats, provide technical guidance to farmers, and demonstrate to them the combination of farming and animal husbandry, agriculture and forestry, agriculture and fishery, agriculture and tourism... thereby continuously strengthening the dominant position of leading enterprises in the integration of the three industries."
Today, under the increasingly powerful "big hand" of agricultural industrialization, the interfaces connecting the secondary and tertiary industries with the primary industry are gradually increasing, resource circulation is smoother, and integration forms are becoming more diverse. Based on the current analysis of the characteristics of leading enterprises promoting the integrated development of the three industries, the Agricultural Industrialization Office of the Ministry of Agriculture summarizes them into the following six types:
Cluster-leading type. Leading enterprises, relying on strong capabilities, attract upstream and downstream operating entities to gather and develop, and drive the development of related industries such as finance, information, and logistics, forming growth poles of the regional economy; Interest-sharing type. In leading farmers to common prosperity, leading enterprises, on the basis of traditional order-driven methods, explore share cooperation, secondary profit sharing, industrial poverty alleviation, and other interest linkage mechanisms more closely connected with farmers; Entity-linkage type. Leading enterprises drive cooperatives, family farms, etc. to form agricultural industrialization alliances, providing farmers with loan guarantees, insurance, and other services, promoting ordinary farmers to lead the establishment of family farms, etc., and improving the degree of farmers' organization; Extension-value-added type. Leading enterprises improve the value-added transformation capacity of agricultural products through scientific research, innovate products according to market consumption demand, and enhance local and farmers' brand awareness through brand building; Business format innovation type. Leading enterprises apply "Internet+" and other technologies, expand e-commerce marketing channels, change traditional agricultural production methods, create new models such as creative agriculture and sightseeing agriculture, and drive farmers to participate in the expansion of agricultural functions; Structural adjustment type. Leading enterprises conform to the supply-side structural reform of agriculture, drive farmers to adjust planting and breeding structures, transform from ordinary low-efficiency production to high-quality and high-efficiency production, vigorously develop ecological circular planting and breeding, and improve the quality of agricultural products.
Leading enterprises "connect all sides from the center," creating core value in the integration of the three industries
In Qi County, Henan, the chicken farming industry is one of the local pillar industries. Once upon a time, scattered farming by households led to small scale, low efficiency, and high market risks. What ultimately changed this situation was the arrival of leading enterprises.
Henan Qi County Yongda Food Co., Ltd., on the basis of developing commercial chicken breeding and slaughtering processing, built a "dual-chain" industrialization cluster model of vertical and horizontal industry chain cross-integration. On one hand, it extends upstream to links such as broiler breeding and feed production, while also expanding downstream to cooked product production and refrigerated distribution; on the other hand, through equity participation and other means, it horizontally drives the development of related supporting industries such as carton production, color printing and packaging, and building boards.
The former small, scattered, and disorderly chicken farming industry has been replaced by today's intensive and industrialized production. The demonstration and leadership of leading enterprises have made enterprises the core of creating industrial value. Today, under the leadership of Yongda, the Hebi Yongda livestock and poultry industrialization cluster and the Anyang Yongda broiler industrialization cluster have been successfully incubated, keeping more value-added benefits local and with farmers.
Looking across the country, the integration of the three industries is bursting with unprecedented vitality in various places: the "production-processing-sales, trade-industry-agriculture" one-stop industry chain is thickening and lengthening, the "eat, stay, play" leisure farm service chain is innovating, and the "Internet + agriculture" model is in the ascendant... It is precisely under the leadership of leading enterprises that various new business formats have accelerated the transformation of agriculture and farmers from "production-oriented" to "consumption-oriented," thereby giving birth to "new business formats" and transforming into "new farmers."
In order to enhance the core competitiveness of enterprises and strengthen the ability to drive the regional economy, agricultural industrialization departments at all levels encourage enterprise cluster development. In 2015 alone, the Ministry of Agriculture guided various localities to create 60 national agricultural industrialization demonstration bases, gathering 2,289 leading enterprises of various types and driving 5.02 million farmer households.
"Leading enterprises integrate advanced rural factors and are representatives of advanced rural productivity. They should actively play a leading and demonstrative role to better promote the integrated development of the three industries," said Zhang Hongyu, Director of the Department of Rural Economic System and Management of the Ministry of Agriculture. To further play a leading role in the integrated development of the three industries, leading enterprises need to achieve their own leap in links such as extending the industry chain, upgrading the value chain, and sharing the interest chain.
The "13th Five-Year Plan Outline" proposed to build a group of leading enterprises in rural industry integration. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture, together with the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Commerce, the People's Bank of China, the State Administration of Taxation, the China Securities Regulatory Commission, the All China Federation of Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, and other eight departments of the National Agricultural Industrialization Joint Conference, jointly selected and recommended a group of leading enterprises with a leading role in the integration of the three industries, to lead the better and faster development of China's integration of the three industries by setting up models and summarizing experience.