Promoting Agricultural Modernization with Reform and Innovation

The 2014 China Food and Food Security Strategy Summit opened in Beijing. Li Wei, director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, said at the meeting that to meet the new challenges facing food security issues, the fundamental way out is to promote China's agricultural modernization through reform and innovation. The Third Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee made a decision on comprehensive reform, and the Fourth Plenary Session made a decision on governing the country according to law. We should continue to improve our food security capacity and step up efforts to ensure food security by law.

Innovate the agricultural production system and actively develop various forms of scale management. To keep pace with the urbanization process and the scale of rural labor transfer, with the progress of agricultural science and technology and the improvement of production methods, and with the improvement of the service level of agricultural socialization, we should take family farms and cooperatives as the leading role and actively develop various forms of moderate scale agricultural management.

We should deepen the rural land reform system, speed up the pace of land contract confirmation, registration and certification, implement the three-power package system, and guide the land circulation management rights settled in cities. This paragraph is a bit understandable to China, and a bit tongue twister to foreign friends. There are too many concepts in it, but they have not been developed in your country's concepts, but they have deep connotations for two or three words in us. In addition, the land issue surrounding rural reform is the most difficult bastion to attack.

We should improve the diversified agricultural service system and provide comprehensive services such as information, technology, purchase and sale, finance and agricultural machinery for large-scale operators.

The following is the full text of the speech:

Li Wei: Dear Luo Bin, Ladies and Gentlemen, Good morning!

It is a pleasure to meet you again at Diaoyutai and to meet many new friends. A year ago, we conducted in-depth discussions on major issues in the field of food security, focusing on establishing efficient, open and sustainable food security. The results of the conference have attracted great attention from all sectors of society, including, of course, the international community.

it has played an active and important role in the formulation and formation of china's agricultural and grain policies. Today, we continue to have in-depth discussions on the theme of continuously improving food and food security through reform and innovation.

On behalf of the Development Research Center of the State Council, I would like to express my warm welcome and heartfelt thanks to all the distinguished guests.

At the Central Economic Work Conference held at the end of last year, General Secretary Xi Jinping put the effective guarantee of national food security at the top of all economic work, and clearly put forward the national food security strategy based on China, ensuring production capacity, moderate import and scientific and technological support. Not long ago, Premier Li Keqiang pointed out in his speech delivered at the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that food for the people is the most important thing for the people, which has long been pursued by the Chinese people. We will always adhere to the principle of achieving basic food self-sufficiency based on domestic conditions, which fully demonstrates that Chinese leaders attach great importance to ensuring food security and supply in governing the country. As a developing country with a large population, we have made painstaking efforts to ensure that all citizens have enough to eat and rest assured, and have achieved remarkable results. Of course, there are many problems.

From 1978 to 2013, China's grain output increased by 98%, almost doubling, oil production increased nearly 6 times, fruit output increased 37 times, and aquatic product output increased more than 12 times. From 1996 to 2013, China's meat production increased by 86%, egg production increased by 46%, and milk production increased by 4 times. At present, China's urban and rural markets are a variety of products, consumer choice greatly increased.

China's reform and opening-up in the past few decades has completely changed the characteristics of the socialist economy before the Cold War era, not only in the field of grain supply, but also in other commodity supply fields. At present, we are characterized by weakness in the supply of many commodities, including grain and agricultural products, and supply exceeds demand in many aspects.

Consumers have much more choice, and we are working to improve food safety while ensuring sufficient quantity and variety. In recent years, the quality pass rate of agricultural products in China has generally remained above 95%, close to 97% in 2013 and 97.3% in the first three quarters of this year, and the overall pass rate of food safety supervision and spot check has also remained above 90%.

Not only those present here, but after this figure was announced to the public, some people raised some doubts. Do you believe it? I believe it anyway. Because product quality has a mark problem, the recognition of standards at home and abroad may not be completely consistent. Of course, some people will also put forward some opinions on the identification of this standard, its spot check or the representative covered by the inspection sample. But the data I started with is valid.

The achievements are not easy to come by, but we must clearly see that there is still a huge gap in the level and ability of food and food safety guarantee. How to guarantee the new requirements of urban and rural residents in food consumption quantity and quality will be a long-term and challenging arduous task.

This challenge can be seen in the following ways:

Quantity demand, the peak of the whole society's demand for food has not yet arrived. Total population, urbanization and residents 'income are the three major factors affecting the total grain demand. In the future, China's total population, urbanization level and income level of urban and rural residents will continue to grow. the total consumption of grain and other major agricultural products will undoubtedly continue to increase.

There are indeed differences in the prediction results of China's population peak in academic circles, but take a middle number, which is between 1.4 billion and 1.5 billion, and 1.5 billion is the highest peak of China's population. At the end of 2013, there were 1.36 billion people. According to this calculation, China's total population will increase by at least 40 million to 140 million in the next 20 years. According to 1.4 billion, 1.36 billion will increase by 40 million, and 1.5 billion will increase by 140 million. One more person means one more mouth and one more stomach. There is no doubt about the food demand.

Based on the current total annual per capita food consumption of 400 kg, population growth will lead to an increase in total food demand of 16 billion to 56 billion kg, which is a bit larger, and the upper limit of 56 billion kg is a small figure.

Urbanization in China accounts for 36%, and most of the 70% to 80% levels still have a lot of room. Research shows that although urban residents consume less rations than rural residents, they consume far more livestock products than farmers. The direct and indirect consumption of grain by urban residents is much higher than that of farmers. Population moving from rural areas to cities will increase the total consumption of cities. With the continuous development of China's economy, the income of urban and rural residents will continue to increase. After the problem of food and clothing is basically solved, the income level will increase before the food consumption structure is adjusted, which will lead to the reduction of direct ration consumption. The corresponding increase in consumption of animal products is undoubtedly an increasing trend in the overall consumption of food.

South Korea, Japan and China's grain consumption is generally the same, of course, there are relatively large differences now. According to the growth law of their food consumption, the transformation and upgrading of food consumption structure will be basically in place when the per capita GDP reaches 20,000 US dollars. Of course, this is not only the concept of per capita GDP of 20,000 US dollars. With the growth of per capita GDP, international exchanges and the expansion of human activities on a large scale, in fact, the consumption structure of things is becoming more and more convergent, and there are more things in common. I am afraid this will be the case in the future.

From this point of view, we are still far from the income level. In short, China's total population will continue to increase in the coming period, and it will be in a rapid development stage with urbanization rate from about 50% to 70%. At the stage of development from middle-income countries to high-income countries, this period will be a period of continuous transformation of China's food consumption structure. There is still much room for growth in the consumption of animal foods such as meat, poultry, eggs and fish. The demand for total grain must also continue to increase. In terms of quality demand, urban and rural residents have higher and higher quality and safety of food. With the improvement of income and living standard of urban and rural residents, their health awareness has been continuously improved. The demand for food consumption has been raised to a higher level. People are not satisfied with eating, and then demand quality improvement, especially concerned about quality safety.

However, our country's production mode is relatively backward, coupled with the lack of some market participants and integrity, as well as the imperfect supervision mechanism of our market legal system and the lack of government supervision to a certain extent. If we take a neutral view of China's food safety foundation, I say that this foundation is not yet consolidated, and the focus is that many environmental problems are quite prominent.

Our country has a large population and little land, so we need to develop intensive agriculture and use chemical fertilizer to improve production. However, improper use will also produce more chemical residues. There are more than 200 million farmers, more than 400,000 food production enterprises, more than 3 million food business entities and countless small workshops and vendors in China. Food technology is professional, safe and concealed. It is difficult to achieve complete information symmetry among supervision departments, production and operation departments and consumers.

From the field to the dining table, from the ground to the tongue, there are so many links, and we cover so many people. If there is a problem in any link, there may be a lot of safety incidents.

We are now living in the era of big data and informatization. A local problem and personality case may spread rapidly and have a greater negative social impact. In recent years, food safety has become one of the hot issues in society, and it is also a headache. It is a long-term and arduous task to ensure food safety by strengthening the supervision of the whole process. In addition, from the perspective of production costs, the comparative advantage of food production in our country may continue to weaken. With the deepening development of industrialization and urbanization, the cost of grain production in China has increased rapidly in recent years. From 2004 to 2012, the average annual growth rate of land cost of rice, wheat and corn has reached 15.7%, which is twice as high as our current GDP growth. The average annual growth rate of labor cost is 10.4%, and the average annual growth rate of material and service expenses is 8.7%, which is higher than the growth rate of 7.3% in the production price of the three staple grains in the same period, and the price increases by 7.3%, or even more than double digits.