How to make farming a promising and enviable profession

The just-concluded National "Internet Plus" Modern Agriculture Work Conference was a nationwide meeting of overall and forward-looking significance in the agricultural field. Implementing the spirit of this conference is of great significance for us in using internet thinking and methods to advance modern agriculture, promote the supply-side structural reform of agriculture, drive farmers' employment and income growth through innovative agricultural growth models, and promote the development of "Internet Plus" agriculture and the cultivation of new farmers, making farming a promising and enviable profession.

With its interconnected nature and boundless reach, the internet is giving wings to the development of modern agriculture and providing a rare opportunity for the cultivation of new farmers. Farmers have moved from the arduous toil of "a drop of sweat falling in eight pieces" to the elegant completion of tasks with a gentle click of the mouse; from "peddling through the streets to earn a living" to building a sales empire on the internet; from "carrying cash home for the Spring Festival" to securing agricultural loans with a single stop at their doorstep. Along with the continuous improvement of agricultural modernization, the ongoing development of urban-rural integration in the process of "synchronization of the four modernizations," agriculture is increasingly showing new vitality and vigor, and rural areas are increasingly becoming an enviable land of joy. We see that the "farmers" of yesterday, who faced the yellow earth with their backs to the sky, will eventually complete the transformation from an "identity" to a "profession," becoming a promising and enviable profession.

Rural areas are the birthplace of Chinese culture. Farming culture has a deep foundation in our country and has become an indelible cultural gene in the blood of the Chinese people. Throughout history, countless literati and poets left beautiful verses of rural idyllic life in Tang and Song poetry. Today, under the tide of urbanization and industrialization, the innate desire for nature and closeness to the land in the hearts of those living in the "jungle" of steel and concrete is often awakened. The spiritual return to rural areas has also become a choice from the heart for more and more urban dwellers. Things are precious when they are rare. When urbanization reaches a certain level, cities will no longer be a scarce resource, and the fresh air, good ecological environment and slow pace of life in the countryside will be favored by more and more people. Farming is a return to human nature. Since the birth of humanity, the vast majority of its long history has been spent engaged in agriculture, communicating with living things. Therefore, we believe that the most ideal profession in the future is farming, and farmers will become a promising and enviable profession.

Farmers will become a promising and enviable profession because the power of science and technology and mechanization is liberating farmers from "physical labor" and "hard, tiring and dirty" work. China's comprehensive mechanization level for the cultivation and harvesting of major crops has now exceeded 61%, and the comprehensive contribution rate of agricultural science and technology has exceeded 56%. From pre-production, mid-production to post-production, from sowing and management to harvesting, agricultural machinery is playing an increasingly important role in agricultural production. "Replacing people with machines" is gradually becoming a reality, and more and more farmers, once marked by "muddy legs," will live a life where "ten fingers never touch mud."

Farmers will become a promising and enviable profession because the beautiful countryside initiative is building rural areas into beautiful homes where people can live and work in peace and contentment. At present, 30% of villages nationwide have carried out pilot planning and construction, strengthening infrastructure such as water, electricity, roads, gas, housing and internet, and a number of new rural areas with smooth roads, bright lights, clear water, clean ponds and tidy village appearances have emerged. From the blue bricks and black tiles of Jiangnan water towns to the ancient courtyards of the northern plains, more and more rural areas are enhancing their "appearance" while also creating happy lives with harmonious relatives and friends and colorful living.

For this reason, we are delighted to see that more and more migrant workers, college and vocational school graduates, and veterans, and even business elites and overseas returnees, are returning to their hometowns to engage in agricultural entrepreneurship and innovation, becoming new farmers. They bring advanced science and technology, management and business concepts, as well as modern information technology including internet technology. They use social media such as WeChat and Weibo and various e-commerce platforms to innovatively sell specialty agricultural products and introduce cultural creativity into the agricultural industry. "Farmer" has returned from an identity label to a professional title, increasingly becoming a respectable and dignified profession.

At the same time, we should also recognize that the problems of lagging economic and social development in rural areas and the relatively low returns of traditional agriculture still exist. Who will farm the land and how to farm it remain important issues we face. On the journey of agricultural modernization, to enable farmers to achieve prosperity through developing agriculture and to truly make farming a promising and enviable profession, comprehensive measures are still needed.

We must continuously strengthen support for agriculture and tap income growth potential with the power of science and technology. We must vigorously support new types of business entities such as family farms, specialized large-scale farmers, farmers' cooperatives and industrialization leading enterprises. We must accelerate the development of "smart agriculture," help farmers build a batch of IoT experimental and demonstration bases for field planting, protected horticulture and large-scale breeding, promote a batch of cost-saving and efficiency-enhancing agricultural IoT application models, and take the lead in establishing a batch of experimental and demonstration bases in national modern agriculture demonstration zones to achieve breakthroughs.

We must continuously advance information skills training for farmers and help more new farmers board the "Internet Plus" information express. We must carry out large-scale skills training such as mobile phone applications for farmers, so that as many farmers as possible can get online and know how to get online. We must make accelerating the cultivation of new types of agricultural business entities a major strategy, focusing on attracting young people to farm and cultivating professional farmers, and strive to establish dedicated policy mechanisms to provide a solid human foundation and guarantee for agricultural modernization and the sustainable and healthy development of agriculture. We must promote migrant workers, college students and retired soldiers to return to their hometowns to start businesses and develop modern agriculture, forming an upsurge of mass entrepreneurship and innovation among new farmers. We must integrate entrepreneurial resources and expand entrepreneurial space through "Internet Plus."

We must continuously strengthen the improvement of rural infrastructure and public services and build rural areas into a land of joy for entrepreneurship, innovation and wealth growth. We must advance the construction of comprehensive information service platforms, strengthen the "three services" of production technology, policies and regulations, and market information, strengthen the collection, development and utilization of big data on agriculture and rural areas, and help farmers use information means to develop production and increase income and prosperity. We must also advance agricultural e-commerce, vigorously develop direct community distribution of agricultural products, the delivery of safe agricultural materials to rural areas, and online marketing of leisure agriculture, so that the good products produced by farmers engaged in agriculture can be sold at good prices.

The proportion of agricultural output value is declining, but its foundational status will not waver, and agriculture is unfolding an even more splendid story. The agricultural population is shrinking, but the quality of practitioners will continue to improve, and farmers will become a promising and enviable profession. Rural areas will never be as prosperous as cities, but the genes of farming civilization in our blood will ultimately lead our bodies and minds back to a green spiritual homeland. This is precisely where the hope and charm of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" in the new era lie.