Tentative ideas on the Development of High-efficiency Ecological Agriculture in China

It is estimated that by 2050, the world's population will increase to 9 billion, which will pose a great challenge to the world's agricultural development. Whether enough food can be produced and whether food security can be guaranteed will be an issue of common concern to people all over the world. Over the past few decades, with their diligence and wisdom, the Chinese people have basically realized the miracle of "raising 21% of the world's population with 7% of the arable land". At the same time, China's agriculture is also facing many serious problems, and China's food security is still not optimistic.

The necessity of developing Ecological Agriculture in China

"A large population and little land" is the basic national condition of China. And in recent years, the area of cultivated land in China is declining year by year, from 1.831 billion mu in 2005 to 1.826 billion mu in 2010, and is expected to decrease to 1.798 billion mu in 2015 and 1.769 billion mu in 2020. About 1.8 billion mu of arable land produces more than 1.3 billion mouths of food, which is the most difficult in any country in the world. Moreover, according to the results of the investigation and Evaluation of the quality of cultivated Land in China released by the Ministry of Land and Resources, only 32.6% of cultivated land, 50.6% of medium land and 16.7% of low-yield land are cultivated in China. The average quality of cultivated land in the central and western regions and northeast China is relatively low. The above results are derived from the combination of natural conditions, farming system, infrastructure, agricultural production technology and investment, and are relatively scientific. It can be seen that the area of low-yield fields in China is about 600 million mu.

At present, China's grain output is at the cost of large chemical fertilizers, pesticides and large consumption of groundwater, the agricultural environment is seriously polluted, and there are serious hidden dangers in the long run. China's total arable land accounts for 9% of the world's total, but the total amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides consumed accounts for 35% and 20% of the world's total, respectively. The average amount of chemical pesticides per unit area is 2.5 to 5 times higher than the world level, and the area of crops polluted by residual pesticides reaches 1.2 billion mu every year. it has led to serious environmental problems such as water pollution, land loss, river siltation, marine pollution, ecological changes and diseases, and caused a lot of economic losses. Although the application of chemical fertilizers and pesticides has doubled the crop yield in the past 40 years, it has been found in the past 20 years that with the increasing use of chemical fertilizers, crop yields have shown a declining trend. the reason is that synthetic chemicals such as fertilizers and pesticides lead to the death of nitrogen-fixing bacteria and other organic organisms in soil and the decline of symbiosis between them and plants, which leads to the decline of soil fertility.

The reason why human beings can continue to reproduce and invent is precisely because human beings have mastered the technology and methods of producing food and the law of crop growth all the year round, which is the invention of agriculture. Animal husbandry is the direct use of animals by human beings, and crops can obtain food only under reasonable conditions of water, fertilizer, air, heat, light and temperature, in which pests and weeds compete with human beings for resources. Agriculture is an ancient and eternal topic. Without agriculture, human society will certainly be unsustainable. Five thousand years of Chinese civilization, coupled with prehistoric civilization, mankind has a history of dealing with crops for eight to nine thousand years, and Chinese agriculture is the most advanced in the world. It is a miracle that China's cultivated land has not been degraded for thousands of years. However, it is a pity that since the end of the 1970s, we have abandoned the traditional agricultural technology and introduced the fruits of the so-called first green revolution. Even with a large number of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and agricultural film, the farming method of "farmers hoeing hard at noon" has been replaced by machines, people have become lazy, the land has become greedy, and the farmland is full of pollutants. In just a few decades, the fertility of cultivated land has declined significantly, with an average of less than 1% of soil organic matter in the country, and non-degradable agricultural film is gathered in farmland every year. Industrialized agriculture has greatly shaken the foundation of our agriculture.

From the perspective of sustainable development, China's future agriculture can only adopt the ecological agriculture of "land use and land cultivation", "intensive cultivation" and certain modern equipment and ecological technology. Therefore, in order to solve the problem of food security, we must at least return to circular ecological agriculture. Such agricultural methods should involve both animals and plants, and pest control should be solved in physical and biological ways, with little or no chemical methods, and animal manure should become organic fertilizer for grain growth. establish a complete agricultural cycle biological chain. In the future, a lot of space for China's agriculture is to make a fuss on straw and soil, that is, to develop efficient ecological circular agriculture.