The picture of modern agriculture in China's "new normal"

Modern agriculture not only provides a guarantee for the production of hundreds of millions of farmers, but also provides a development opportunity for new operators to engage in agriculture. It has also ushered in a new opportunity in the transformation and quality improvement of non-agricultural traditional industries from the perspective of gathering resource elements.

At present, China has entered a new normal of economic development. As a country with a large population, China is still in the stage of rapid industrialization and urbanization, and the rigid growth of demand for agricultural products will not change fundamentally in the short term. It is estimated that only because of the increase of meat, eggs and milk in the dietary structure, for every transfer of rural population, the amount of feed grain will be increased by 75 kg. At present, the country's annual demand for grain, meat and vegetable oil has increased by 4 million tons, 800000 tons and 500000 tons respectively. The strong demand for agricultural products provides new prospects for the production and trade of agricultural products.

New situation of modern agricultural development

There are two key indicators to judge the development situation of modern agriculture, one is agricultural production, the other is farmers' income. Judging from the situation in 2014, the agricultural situation in China presents a new bright spot:

Grain output has reached the level of 1.2 trillion jin for two years in a row, achieving an increase of 11 consecutive years. In 2014, China's grain output was 1.2142 trillion jin, with per capita exceeding 440kg, about 100kg higher than the world average. In the first three quarters of 2014, the total output value of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fishery was 6.4934 trillion yuan, an increase of 6.4 per cent over the same period last year.

The growth rate of farmers' income is expected to be higher than that of urban residents for five consecutive years, and the income gap between urban and rural residents is expected to return below 3:1. The per capita cash income of farmers in the first three quarters of 2014 was 8527 yuan, an increase of 9.7 percent in real terms over the same period last year, 2.8 percentage points higher than the per capita disposable income of urban residents. The income ratio between urban and rural residents was 3.03 in 2013, and the income gap between urban and rural residents is expected to return below 3:1 in 2014 for the first time since 2002.

New challenges in the Development of Modern Agriculture

Under the current new normal background, China's agricultural development is facing two new challenges: the slowdown of domestic economic growth and the intensification of competition in the international agricultural product market.

The national economy has entered a new normal of development, changing from high-speed growth to medium-to-high-speed growth, and the macro environment of modern agricultural development is facing a tightening trend. In the double slowdown of economic growth and fiscal revenue growth, how to improve the labor output rate and resource allocation efficiency of agriculture as soon as possible is a major challenge for the development of modern agriculture.

Under the background of global agricultural integration, the price of international agricultural products continues to be low, the cost advantage is obvious, the problem of upside-down prices of agricultural products at home and abroad has become increasingly prominent, and the international competition facing the development of modern agriculture is more fierce.

According to the General Administration of Customs, from January to November 2014, the country imported a total of 62.87 million tons of soybeans, an increase of 12.3 percent over the same period last year, and imported 17.14 million tons of cereals and cereal flour, an increase of 17.5 percent over the 14.58 million tons imported for the whole of 2013, accounting for 3.07 percent of the domestic grain output in 2014. What is more noteworthy is that the cost advantage of international agricultural products is obvious, and the after-tax price of resource agricultural products is lower than the wholesale price of domestic agricultural products or the arrival price of domestic agricultural products, and the price continues to decline, which has a great impact on China's agricultural products.

According to the data of the Marketing Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, in July 2014, the arrival or wholesale prices of rice, wheat and corn per kilogram in China were 0.14 yuan, 0.4 yuan and 0.68 yuan higher than those after import tax, respectively. The average price of soybeans in Hong Kong was 12% higher than that after import tax, and the average market price of pork, beef and mutton was 49% higher than the average price after import tax. From November 17 to 23, 2014, international prices of wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton, sugar and rice fell by 16%, 12%, 21%, 18%, 8% and 5% respectively compared with domestic agricultural products.

New opportunities for the development of modern agriculture

From the perspective of the policy environment, the central government has always attached importance to the development of modern agriculture and made a series of new arrangements and new arrangements, and the development of modern agriculture is faced with good policy opportunities.

In early November, General Secretary Xi Jinping stressed during his inspection tour of Fujian that we should not lose the rural side of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way, and put forward the "five new" requirements on how to do a good job of "the rural end": strive to tap new potential in improving grain production capacity, open up new ways to optimize agricultural structure, seek new breakthroughs in changing the mode of agricultural development, and achieve new results in increasing farmers' income. New steps have been taken in building a new countryside. The requirement of the "five new" is a major goal of the work of agriculture, rural areas and farmers in the new period.

The 2014 Central Economic work Conference regarded speeding up the transformation of the mode of agricultural development as one of the main tasks of economic work in 2015, emphasizing that solving the problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers has always been the top priority of the whole party's work. it will more effectively mobilize the enthusiasm of hundreds of millions of farmers in the production of agricultural products, especially grain production, will also stimulate the enthusiasm of all kinds of new business entities to engage in agriculture, and inject new and powerful driving forces into the development of modern agriculture.