What can be done to save traditional agriculture?

The executive meeting of the State Council on July 22, 2015 arranged to speed up the transformation of the mode of agricultural development and take the road of safe, efficient and green development. Li Keqiang pointed out that throughout the development path of agricultural modernization in developed countries, agriculture is generally developed in an industrial way. If agriculture does not develop in the direction of industrialization, agricultural modernization will lose its support; on the contrary, only by fundamentally changing the mode of agricultural development can farmers increase their income and increase efficiency.

At this executive meeting of the State Council, Premier Li Keqiang told a story: more than 10 years ago, he went to Canada to inspect modern agriculture, paying special attention to the fact that when the other party introduced the situation, he never simply said "Agriculture", but always used a complete phrase "Agriculture Industry" (literally translated as "agro-industry").

"I heard it very strange at that time, why is it both agriculture and industry?" The prime minister said, "after they showed me around, I understood: from seed selection, planting, harvesting, warehousing, to processing and marketing, we have developed agriculture in an industrial way and opened up every link of the whole agricultural industry chain. the final products are sold all over the world!"

"to keep the growth of farmers' income in step with the growth of GDP, we must truly change the mode of agricultural development on the premise of ensuring food security." Li Keqiang said, "one of the very important points is to promote appropriate scale operation in various forms on the basis of respecting the wishes of farmers." Promote the transformation of medium-and low-yield fields and increase the effective irrigation area

At the executive meeting of the State Council on July 22, Li Keqiang pointed out that the principles for changing the mode of agricultural development are safety, efficiency and green in turn. "if we want to change the mode of agricultural development on the premise of ensuring security, food security has always been the foundation of ensuring the peace of the world."

The adjustment of agricultural structure should be market-oriented and adapt to the needs of consumers. Li Keqiang said: "when I was working in Henan, I noticed that it was very difficult for farmers to increase their income by selling grain alone, so we took advantage of the local labor-intensive advantage to develop a large number of wheat processing, producing millet flour, quick-frozen dumplings, and so on." to develop a number of grain processing enterprises. " Li Keqiang said: "Agricultural restructuring must further emancipate our minds, be market-oriented, and meet the needs of consumers. Only in this way can we really increase farmers' income and improve their living standards. "

He stressed that it is necessary to encourage the development of large-scale farming, agricultural products processing and rural services, promote the integrated development of production, processing, logistics, and marketing, and extend the value chain.

The premier asked the relevant departments to seriously study the issue of system and mechanism, really allow agricultural subsidies to be distributed to grain farmers, and earnestly mobilize the enthusiasm of grain growers. On the basis of respecting the wishes of farmers, we should not stick to one style and promote various forms of moderate scale operation.

Food security has always been a major strategic issue related to national economic development, social stability and national self-reliance. The CPC Central Committee and the State Council have always attached great importance to food security and insisted on putting it in a prominent position. At present, the overall food security situation in China is very good, the comprehensive grain production capacity has increased steadily, the food supply has become increasingly abundant, and the grain supply and demand are basically balanced.

With the development of industrialization and urbanization, the increase of population and the improvement of people's living standards, the demand for grain consumption is increasing rigidly, while the physical and chemical costs of grain production such as the reduction of cultivated land, the shortage of water resources, climate change and oil are increasing year by year. The constraints on grain production have become increasingly prominent, and the supply and demand of domestic grain will be in a tight balance for a long time, so the challenge of ensuring food security is still severe.

At the same time, there are the "ceiling effect" that the domestic grain price is higher than the international grain price, the "floor effect" of the grain production cost is rising, and the grain collection and storage policy encounters unprecedented contradictions and problems. The grain purchase policy forms the weather vane leading the grain price, the main body of the purchase is single, and the supervision is not strong enough, resulting in high policy grain inventory. Because of its grain quality and price, it is difficult to create a warehouse artificially. The sales channel is not smooth, resulting in unsatisfactory competitive sales.

Although the domestic grain price is higher than the international grain price, the seemingly high grain price, due to too many intermediate links and the instability of grain consumption by downstream enterprises, in fact, the income of grain farmers is very low, coupled with the extremely low level of grain industrialization, farmers can not get value-added benefits in the processing and transformation of grain and other agricultural products.

The policy support for the development of grain industrialization is not strong. It does not put forward scientific and systematic policies and measures to promote agricultural industrialization from the point of view of big agriculture and big grain, especially at the legislative level. When formulating policies and supporting measures to promote grain industrialization, preferential policies and measures should be provided in the aspects of taxation, funds, project construction planning and land use to support the development of grain industrialization.

Mobilize the enthusiasm of local governments and farmers to attach importance to agriculture and ensure grain safety. The main grain producing areas are important bases for providing commodity food sources and ensuring food security. The implementation of special protection policies for major grain producing areas is related to the national economy and people's livelihood and is conducive to the long-term stability of the country.

The implementation of the compensation policy of protecting grain cultivated land and supporting grain production in major grain producing areas is in line with the principles of social fairness and justice. To meet the requirements of the main functional areas of grain, increase the intensity of financial transfer payments. The central finance should continue to improve the incentive and restraint mechanism in major grain producing areas, increase rewards and subsidies, guide and help local governments to establish a basic financial security system for grass-roots governments, and enhance the ability of grass-roots governments in major grain producing areas to implement public management, provide basic public services and implement policies on people's livelihood.

In the calculation of the standard fiscal expenditure of balanced transfer payment, the central finance should consider the main grain producing areas, ecological protection expenditure projects and nature reserve expenditure projects that fall within the scope of local expenditure responsibility, and increase the balanced transfer payment to the key grain and ecological functional areas, especially the "Seven Zone 23 Belt" functional areas by significantly increasing the transfer payment coefficient.

Bringing the main grain producing areas into the scope of ecological compensation policy, or adopting basically the same compensation policy as the forbidden development zone is the due meaning of the supporting policies of the national main functional areas. it is also the ecological concern for grain cultivated land in the main producing areas and the humanistic concern for "food and clothing parents".

Develop grain industrialization. The fundamental way to ensure food security and promote the development of grass-roots grain economy lies in grain industrialization. Establish and cultivate regional leading industries. Give full play to local advantages, according to market demand, select varieties with high output, large market capacity and good economic benefits to carry out key development, establish a production base of high-quality grain commodities with regional characteristics, and carry out specialized and regional production, and integrate product production, processing, storage, transportation and sales.

Support the construction of leading grain enterprises. Focus on supporting the processing technology and new product development of grain and oil and their by-products. Improve the technical level of enterprises and the ability of multi-level deep processing, and enhance the radiation driving ability of leading grain and oil enterprises. Improve the grain market network. We will continue to speed up the construction of the grain market system, promote the formation of a diversified market structure, vigorously cultivate professional associations, economic associations, and other intermediary organizations such as agricultural cooperatives, help farmers enter the market, guide them to open up the market, and increase their market share.

As Premier Li Keqiang said, with regard to China's large population, agriculture and food problems, food security comes first, followed by high efficiency and greenness, and it is very important to grasp grain production in major grain producing areas, especially in major grain producing areas at the county level. relying on policy incentives and the implementation of the provincial governor responsibility system for food security, it is a top priority to boost the enthusiasm of heavy farmers to ensure grain security.

Under the premise of farmers' willingness, we should appropriately carry out large-scale operation of agricultural grain, concentrate cultivated land to large grain growers, use intermediary economic organizations or leading grain industrialization enterprises to collect, store and process, and build the whole industry chain of planting, raising and marketing-- from the field to the dining table. at the same time, we should pay attention to allowing farmers to share the "secondary dividend" of value-added processing, so that farmers can increase their income through multiple channels.

We will speed up the construction of a social service system. Strengthen the construction of the grain service system, improve the multi-level social service network of counties, townships, and villages, explore the formation of effective forms of economic cooperation such as grain and feed cooperatives, and form county (city, district) service companies as the leader, townships as the main body, village-based service system, on the basis of prenatal and mid-production services, focus on post-natal services.