Looking at the trend of Agriculture from the Perspective of "four advances and four retreats"

With the development of science and technology, the refinement of social division of labor, the acceleration of population mobility, the change of consumer demand and many other factors, China's agriculture is undergoing multi-faceted and multi-level structural changes, such as differentiation, fission, aggregation and reconstruction. the shock effect is affecting the whole agricultural system more and more profoundly. Paying close attention to this phenomenon is of great significance to grasp the agricultural trend and adjust the strategy at the right time.

I. performance

1. Cultivated land agriculture advances, grassland agriculture retreats. For a long time, under the influence of the concept of taking grain as the key link, cultivated land agriculture is very popular. Agricultural production depends heavily on food production, and grain is the main body of food. In China, grain accounts for more than half of food consumption, compared with 28% in the United States and 27% in Australia. At the same time, meat is dominated by grain-consuming pork, supplemented by herbivorous beef and mutton. The ratio of beef, mutton and pork production in China is about 1:5, while that in the United States is about 6 ∶ 5. Because of the special economic structure and consumption habits, our country has formed a profound "grain and pig agriculture". As a result of grain and pig agriculture, too many pigs are raised, a large amount of food is consumed by feed, pig food occupies human food, and grain production is naturally overwhelmed. At the same time, grain and pig agriculture has cut off the natural relationship between grass and livestock. In developed countries such as Australia and New Zealand, more than 90% of livestock products are transformed from grass, while only 6% of livestock products are transformed from grass in our country. This mode of feeding mainly based on grain or synthetic feed has many livestock diseases, high feeding costs and low product quality. Such a production system should also pursue high quality and high returns. It will inevitably lead to crazy behavior like adding melamine to milk.

In contrast, grassland agriculture has been declining. China is the second largest grassland resource country in the world, with 400 million hectares of natural grassland, second only to Australia. Since the founding of the people's Republic of China, the area and quality of grassland have been decreasing, overgrazing is common, and the problems of grassland degradation, desertification and salinization are serious. In the early 1980s, the area of degraded grassland accounted for 1 of the total grassland area in China. In the mid-1990s, half of the grassland area of 12 provinces in the north was degraded. At the end of the 1990s, 90% of the grasslands in the western and Qinghai-Tibet Plateau traditional animal husbandry areas were degraded in varying degrees, of which more than half of the moderately degraded grassland area. At present, the degradation of grassland is increasing at the rate of 2 million hectares per year, and the situation of grassland ecological environment is very severe. The hungry and scared "food complex" has disrupted the two major agricultural systems of "grass" and "ploughing".

two。 When livestock and poultry feed is imported, human rations are returned. In recent years, China's feed grain consumption has been showing a rapid growth trend, consumption of feed grain is more, mainly pigs, poultry breeding, as well as aquatic products and some herbivorous livestock breeding. It is estimated that from 1978 to 2010, China's feed grain consumption grew at an average annual rate of 5.8%. The speed has accelerated in recent years, and the annual consumption of feed grain is as high as more than 300 million tons. In terms of consumption varieties, corn accounts for about 60% of the total feed grain consumption, soybean meal consumption accounts for 17.7%, rice accounts for about 8.6%, wheat accounts for about 7.4%, and potatoes and other miscellaneous grains account for 6.1%. In terms of the proportion, corn, soybeans, rice, wheat and potatoes accounted for 69.1%, 238.4%, 9.6%, 13% and 29.2% of the respective output in 2010, respectively. With the improvement of people's income level and dietary structure, the demand for animal products such as meat, eggs and milk will continue to grow, and the demand for feed grain will remain exuberant. Inappropriate breeding methods have also artificially increased the demand for feed grain. In some areas of our country, dairy cows are generally raised as pigs, do not take forage and crop straw as staple food, and rely heavily on concentrate feed to maintain the level of milk production. Some rely on concentrate feed as high as 80%, breeding costs can not be reduced, and the incidence of dairy cows is abnormally high. Experts believe that if the current concentrate ratio of 6 ∶ 4 to 3 ∶ 7 is adjusted, the life cycle and fertility of dairy cows will be greatly improved. The lack of high-quality roughage is a bottleneck problem restricting dairy cow breeding. The rapid growth of feed grain has become one of the main factors in the rigid growth of grain demand. On the contrary, since the mid-1990s, the food rations consumption of urban and rural residents in China has been showing a downward trend. In 1994, the demand for food rations in China reached an all-time high of 280.64 million tons. In 2010, the demand for food rations has dropped to 206.97 million tons, with an average annual decline of 2.6 percent. The "ecological food chain" arranged by nature is being broken by man, and the phenomenon of herbivores competing with people for food is becoming more and more intense.

3. The demand for non-staple food increases, while the demand for staple food retreats. With the development of urban and rural economy, the living standards of urban and rural residents continue to improve, and the food consumption structure continues to upgrade. The demand for food rations is gradually declining, and we are pursuing more nutrition, health and diversification of food. The consumption of meat, eggs, milk, melons, fruits and vegetables and other non-staple foods has gradually increased, forming a substitute for rations. Relevant surveys show that the consumption ratio of grain, vegetables and meat has changed from 8 ∶ 1 ∶ 1 in the past to 4 ∶ 3 ∶ 3 now. In terms of meat, eggs and milk, from 2002 to 2012, the total aquatic product of meat, eggs and milk in China increased from 140 million tons to 210 million tons, an increase of 48.6 percent, with an average annual growth rate of 4 percent, of which the total output of meat was 82.21 million tons, an increase of 32 percent, an increase of 28.61 million tons of poultry eggs, an increase of 16 percent, an increase of 37.44 million tons of milk, an increase of 188 percent, an increase of 59.06 million tons of aquatic products, an increase of 49 percent. In terms of the production composition of meat, eggs and milk aquatic products, meat decreased from 45% to 40%, poultry eggs from 18% to 14%, milk from 9% to 18%, and aquatic products remained unchanged at 28%. In 2013, China consumed 61.5 kg of meat, 27 kg of dairy products and 26 kg of aquatic products per capita. In the traditional sense, the concept of staple and non-staple food is developing towards the trend of "giving priority to customers and reversing principal and secondary food".

4. The consumer group enters, the production group withdraws. With the acceleration of urbanization, a large number of farmers have transferred to cities. By the end of 2014, China has 749 million urban resident population and 630 million rural resident population, and the urban population has exceeded the rural population, breaking the traditional population structure of China for thousands of years. At present, 260 million farmers across the country go to work in cities. By 2020, China's urbanization rate will reach 60%, and more than 10 million rural people will be transferred every year.

After farmers went to the cities, they changed from grain producers to food consumers, and their way of life also changed greatly. the consumption of food rations decreased, but the consumption of meat, eggs, milk and aquatic products increased significantly. Farmers need to eat in the countryside, and they also need to eat when they go to the city, but the way of eating is different. If you can grow vegetables and raise chickens at home, on the edge of the village, in front of the house and behind the house, you can basically solve the food problem. You will not have these when you enter the city, and you must buy them all. In the process of buying, the consumption structure is on a par with the city. In terms of food rations consumption, urban residents are lower than farmers. The per capita consumption of finished grain by farmers is about 120 kg, while that of urban residents is about 80 kg. But other agricultural products, urban residents are significantly higher than farmers. Fresh vegetables are 28% higher, edible vegetable oil 24% higher, meat including pig, beef and mutton combined, urban residents are 56% higher than farmers, poultry are 136% higher, poultry eggs are 87% higher, and aquatic products are more than twice higher. All these require food production and transformation, which indirectly increases food consumption. For every one percentage point increase in urbanization, the consumption demand for grain will increase by more than 10 billion jin, and the cultivated land will be reduced by about 6.5 million mu. Those who grow grain become those who eat grain, and those who eat grain become those who eat meat, which brings severe challenges to agricultural production.

Second, influence

1. The destruction of the ecological environment. The popularity of cultivated land agriculture has caused the deterioration of the ecological environment. The long-term unreasonable development and utilization of grasslands in some places has led to the continuous degradation of grasslands and the intensification of sandstorms, desertification, soil erosion and so on. Since the 1950s, about 20 million hectares of grasslands have been reclaimed in China, of which nearly 50% have been abandoned as bare land or sandy land. The area of soil erosion in the country is 3.57 million square kilometers, accounting for 37.2% of the total land area. The total amount of soil erosion is about 4.52 billion tons every year, accounting for 1/5 of the global total, mainly in the Yangtze River and Yellow River basins, with an average of more than 3400 tons per square kilometer. The Loess Plateau is the region with the worst soil erosion in China, with more than 30, 000 tons. The accelerated rate of land desertification in the source area of the Yangtze River and the Yellow River has become one of the prominent ecological problems in the source area, which is mainly manifested as land desertification, salinization and secondary bare soil. The area of desertified land in the source area has reached 19000 square kilometers, which is expanding at the rate of 130000 hectares per year. Climate change has increased the contradiction between supply and demand of water resources in China. In recent years, the amount of water resources in northern China has decreased significantly, with the Yellow River, Huaihe, Haihe and Liaohe areas being the most significant, with the total amount of water resources reduced by 12%, of which the surface water resources in Haihe area decreased by 41% and the total water resources decreased by 25%. Although the southern region is relatively rich in water resources, the river runoff and the total amount of water resources have increased in recent years, but due to the abnormal changes of rainfall rules and high temperature, there has also been a regional water shortage in recent years.

two。 Agricultural structural imbalance. The consumption of feed grain in China has reached more than 300 million tons, and more than half of the total grain output of 600 million tons is eaten by animals, and it is still growing at a rate of about 10% every year. The rapid growth of feed grain demand has posed a major challenge to the traditional agricultural model. It is impossible to rely solely on traditional grain production to meet the rigid growth demand of feed grain. The key is to save feed grain and vigorously develop non-grain feed, that is, to make full use of agricultural by-products such as crop straw and forage resources in agricultural production to reduce the demand pressure of feed grain for livestock breeding. For herbivorous livestock, most of them are plant nutrients rather than grains. The development of non-grain feed can meet the development needs of herbivorous livestock. If the transformation of food consumption structure can be realized and a large amount of non-rations consumption can be saved, it will be a great contribution to the balance of grain supply and demand in China.