It is becoming more and more difficult to increase the production of science and technology.

The National Bureau of Statistics announced on December 4 that the country's total grain output reached 607.099 million tons in 2014, an increase of 5.16 million tons over 2013. China's total grain output has achieved "eleven consecutive increases".

It would have been a good thing to increase grain production again. However, as soon as the news came out, it aroused a lot of questions. If the drought is serious this year, can grain production be increased? Some scholars even point out that there is a problem of falsification of China's grain production data.

Xu Zun, a lecturer at the School of Economics at Renmin University of China, is one of the skeptics. Not long ago, he and his collaborators published an article questioning the "ten consecutive increases" of China's grain. With regard to today's "National Day increase", his attitude is the same.

One of the evidence provided by Xu Zun is China's increasing grain imports. From 2000 to 2012, China's imports of grains and soybeans increased from 16 million tons to 72 million tons. He said the rise in imports revealed that it was difficult for China's grain production to keep up with the growth in demand, and that China's actual grain production was much lower than the official level.

So, under the "11th consecutive increase", what is the growth of China's grain? Where will China's grain production go in the future?

The debate between increasing or not increasing

In Xu Zun's view, the output of a country's grain should be about the same as its total use. The data from 1981 to 2007 is a case in point. Xu Zun estimated the total grain production and total use in these years, with a difference of only 1.3%. However, this figure has changed a lot since 2008.

In his calculation, official grain production continued to exceed the estimated total grain use from 2008 to 2012, and the gap gradually widened from 10.1% to 22.2%, but in his view, the problem did not arise in terms of total use.

"the'11 consecutive growth'is a rare situation in history. In general, grain production fluctuates, and it is abnormal that the fluctuation has disappeared." Xu Zun's view was echoed by Jiang Gaoming, a researcher at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jiang Gaoming said that agriculture is characterized by "one abundance and one deficiency" within four years. In recent years, cultivated land has been decreasing, farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain is not high, and abandonment is widespread. Coupled with serious natural disasters, one cannot help but doubt the authenticity behind the data.

However, in the view of other experts, the inference of Xu Zun and others is not tenable.

As for the increase in imports, Yin Haiqing, a researcher at the Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that the increase in imports is more determined by price factors. Last year, China imported 2.24 million tons of rice, hitting the domestic rice market because of its low price.

In addition, Song Hongyuan, director of the Rural Economic Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture, points out that crop substitution, such as using high-yield rice and corn instead of soybeans, can also boost yields, and investment in science and technology in recent years is a sharp weapon for increasing grain production.

Professor Wang Zhenlin, vice president of Shandong Agricultural University, said that the potential of science and technology to promote growth is still great. Take Shandong Province as an example. In the field of high-yield wheat science and technology this year, Shandong has set a national record of 817 kg per mu of winter wheat. At present, the general yield of wheat is only about 400 kg per mu.

It is becoming more and more difficult for science and technology to increase production.

From the point of view of the industry, the essential problem of exploring the "11 consecutive growth" is not the increase in disputes or not, but to see that the growth rate of grain is slowing down.

Since 2011, grain production has increased by 4.5%, 3.2%, 2.1% and 0.9%, respectively. Compared with the means of increasing the area of grain grown in previous years, Zhang Weijian, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, said that in recent years, the pressure of science and technology to increase grain production is increasing. "it's like a high jump. It's easy to jump when you're short, but it gets harder and harder when you're high." Wang Zhenlin said.

The difficulty of variety breeding is a prominent manifestation. It is the consensus of the industry that 40% of the increase in grain production comes from varieties. However, it has become more and more difficult to find breeds with breakthroughs in recent years.

Yin Haiqing, a researcher at Henan Academy of Agricultural Sciences who has been engaged in rice breeding, knows very well that it is not easy. There is pressure from climatic conditions and changes in the mode of production.

"the new varieties should not only have high and stable yields, but also resist natural disasters." Yin Haiqing said that there are more and more requirements for varieties to increase production, but there are not many breakthrough varieties.

In addition, now people are more and more inclined to simplify cultivation, for example, changing transplanting seedlings to direct seeding, which is a very common phenomenon.

"the mode of production of ordinary people tends to be simplified and done by experience." Zhang Weijian said: if we do not support certain farming and cultivation techniques, fertilization techniques, and new varieties according to the common people's choice of the mode of production, grain production will certainly be reduced.

Coordinate efforts to tackle key problems and stabilize grain production

In spite of this, the existing record of high-yield experiments still makes people have great expectations for science and technology.

However, Wang Zhenlin said that many of these high-yield records and high-yield models are premised on higher investment in resources, such as higher investment in water, fertilizer, medicine and manpower, low economic benefits, and difficulties in large-scale promotion and application in production.

Based on this, Wang Zhenlin said that the existing scientific and technological topics must be more in line with the urgent needs of production, both high yield and high efficiency. For example, how to achieve the set target yield to match the amount of fertilizer and water, the application time of fertilizer and water to match the needs of crop growth, how planting management technology is more simple and efficient and more suitable for mechanized operations, and so on.

Of course, only by concentrating limited resources on tackling key problems and reducing repetitive work can greater breakthroughs be made in the realization of these goals.

"at present, scientific research projects are scattered, and many scientific research institutions and breeding units do their own work, while agricultural basic scientific research needs to achieve the sharing of resources and innovation and utilization on this basis." Yin Haiqing said.

However, at present, China has been exploring the use of subject groups, agricultural industrial technology system, grain high-yield science and technology engineering, grain high-yield creation and other platforms to carry out sustained, stable and scientific and technological collaborative research on grain production.

In addition, in Wang Zhenlin's view, in order to increase grain production, in addition to science and technology, it is necessary to establish a set of perfect modern agricultural management system, that is, on the one hand, to explore technologies with high yield and high efficiency, so that good varieties can be matched with good technologies, and can be properly implemented in suitable plots. On the other hand, it is necessary to change to an intensive, large-scale and specialized agricultural management system. "only on a large scale can we standardize and achieve high yield, high quality and high efficiency."