Analysis on the present situation of production and Marketing structure of Agricultural products in China and suggestions for improving problems (part two)

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Not long ago, Hu Zhongyi, the new director of the Agriculture and Food Administration, conducted an exclusive interview through electronic media before taking office, taking Japan as an example to illustrate the importance of farmers in developing the concept of market orientation and planned production. Immediately after taking office, he visited the dragon fruit producing areas in Taichung and exchanged business with the director general of the peasant association on dragon fruit production and marketing. He pointed out that the "Agricultural Strategic Alliance" will be promoted in February next year (108) to plan the supply of agricultural products for the whole year. Industrial restructuring will be carried out to avoid the recurrence of production and marketing imbalances, and the first wave will start with crops such as onions, garlic, bananas and pineapples.

These concepts and measures of Director Hu made people feel refreshing, and the Council of Agriculture began to think synchronously from the aspects of production and marketing to solve the long-term problem of the imbalance between the production and marketing of agricultural products in our country. Although we do not yet know the follow-up actual practice, we may know the outline from the little bit of information revealed by the news, generally through production / shipping registration, production and marketing coordination, production and marketing alliance, strengthening the development of multiple channels and other methods to improve the problem.

To put it harshly, these methods have not been used before. However, perhaps due to the lack of universal implementation, non-implementation of promotion, unsustainable change of personnel, scattered ineffectiveness, disagreements in standards and other reasons, the problem of production and marketing has been unable to be overcome effectively.

So how can we effectively achieve the task in this opportunity for improvement? I personally think that apart from the measures announced by Director Hu above, the active role and positioning of the Council of Agriculture is very important. According to personal cognition, the following puts forward several thinking directions and practices for reference:

I. production: we should be able to effectively grasp and adjust the production situation of agricultural products throughout the country.

If readers only look at the title, they will feel that it is no different from what Director Hu has declared to do. In fact, we all understand this concept, but it has been unable to do so for so many years, but this is the main crux of the problem of production and marketing in our country. if this problem cannot be overcome, will agricultural administrative units always have to do the thankless work of fighting fires?. Bear the blame and never turn around? Therefore, this paper discusses which directions can be laid out to break through this bottleneck.

(1) to determine the reasonable average daily consumption of different agricultural products.

Some countries in the European Union will set the average daily consumption as the basic data for the management of major agricultural products according to their national eating habits. In a number of articles published by farmer Lin Yukun, he simply estimated the average daily / annual consumption of a certain agricultural product to review the relationship between the output and price changes of agricultural products.

There are many methods to investigate the average daily consumption, but the purpose of the survey here is related to the mastery and management of the prices of agricultural products in the wholesale market, so a faster and simple method can be based on the daily price data of the existing national wholesale market. considering festivals and seasons and excluding abnormal values, the reasonable average consumption of agricultural products in different months or different weeks (periods) can be estimated.

The reasonable average consumption here means that the volume of goods arriving in the wholesale market under this demand will ensure that the wholesale price of agricultural products is higher than (or at least even) the total cost of production plus transportation and marketing management costs of the place of origin. However, in order to avoid the burden on the consumer caused by the shortage of goods affecting the high wholesale price, this reasonable average consumption should not be set too low. The national average consumption based on this data as the basis for the production management of subsequent producing areas must be a reasonable interval number with a difference of no more than 5-10%, rather than a single value.

Since the consumption of agricultural products has a certain proportion of substitutability, in addition to determining the average consumption of a single product, several product portfolios should also be identified and the total average consumption of the product portfolio should be used as the basic data for management. In addition, in order to ensure the breadth and flexibility of the future application of reasonable average consumption, the supply outflow through contracts (and self-production and self-sale) should also be included in the statistics.

(2) estimate the reasonable production area of agricultural products and plan the planting area.

With the above basic data, then this configuration planning is convincing. According to this, we can estimate the planting area demand of each agricultural product in each production period (in weeks or months); then, according to the suitable production season and region of each fruit and vegetable crop, the existing soil environment of agricultural land in China and the general use status of farmers (planting habits), consider the risk of possible natural disasters in the future, and make reasonable and appropriate allocation of planting area for all kinds of crops according to land differences or counties and cities.

This work is simple, but even with the content and completeness of the materials currently owned by agricultural departments, it should be further optimized, counted and integrated, and manpower should be expended. Use experience and wisdom to plan a complete and reasonable data for the follow-up coordinated management of production order; this is a more brain-consuming part of the development of this management foundation, but it is also a necessary basis for establishing a good management system in the future.

(3) to establish a binding production order management system.

The government gives farmers a lot of freedom to grow. As long as they think that their soil and climate conditions are suitable, and they have enough technology and manpower, they can basically grow whatever they want, and they will not and cannot restrict what they can and cannot grow; at best, they can only warn farmers that there may be the risk of overproduction and price collapse. Therefore, China's agricultural wholesale market often occurs due to overproduction, production and marketing imbalance caused by price ups and downs, the need for agricultural departments to constantly come forward to deal with, extinguish the fire and bear the blame.

It has been observed that successive rulers have never thought of facing and solving this problem, and have adopted some methods, but all of them have come to nothing or failed to achieve good results. The reason can not be commented on by individuals, but the conclusion is that the effective management of domestic agricultural production order has not been achieved. Is there any way to establish a management system that not only gives farmers the freedom to plant but also binds the production order of farmers?

The idea put forward later in this article is actually very simple and straightforward, and some agricultural experts must have thought about or tried to implement it before; that is, "the planting activities of farmers, according to the identity of farmers combined with planting land to carry out (compulsory) registration system" but may lack good supporting measures or implementation basis so that it can not be effectively promoted. In this regard, this paper puts forward the following implementation methods and auxiliary measures to provide reference:

A. establish a complete database of farmers and farmland by region or county or city.

B. when farmers engage in any planting activities, they are required to register the planting in the central database through designated agricultural administrative units or farmers' organizations. Before planting registration, farmers can inquire in the information system about the vegetable and fruit crops they want to plant, and whether their scheduled harvest time and scheduled yield have exceeded the previous reasonable allocation in the production order management of the area and the production period. If it exceeds, farmers can inquire and select other fruit and vegetable crops from the system or with the assistance of farmers' organizations, or decide not to change the original planting items.

C. Agricultural administrative units shall take appropriate measures to support and encourage farmers who follow the production order or let the farmers who do not follow the production order bear the production risks on their own. Examples of practices that can be implemented are as follows:

When the overall production of vegetables and fruits in a region or county or city maintains a reasonable total amount control distributed in that region (or the whole country), the government shall give the vegetables and fruits crops produced by farmers in that area, the purchase price in the vegetable and fruit producing area is guaranteed to be above the production cost. Whether the safeguard measures are started or not and the timing of the start-up should establish a system, and the safeguard mechanism should not only be a "differential subsidy", but also need to design a variety of measures (such as the regulation of transportation and marketing pipelines, etc.) to facilitate flexible application.

When the estimated total production of vegetables and fruits in a region or county or city exceeds the reasonable total quantity control, if it is necessary to activate the purchase price guarantee mechanism for farmers in that area, the current production of priority registered farmers shall be guaranteed in full or in a high proportion, but the agricultural products produced by farmers who have exceeded the control quota at the time of production registration shall not be protected or only given a low proportion of protection.

When the producing area meets the government's subsidy for agricultural damage due to natural disasters, all or a high proportion of the production capacity shall be granted to the farmers who are registered and meet the total quantity control production, however, there shall be no subsidy or low proportion subsidy guarantee for the farmers who exceed the production control at the time of registration; the amount of subsidy shall take into account the growth age (length, etc.) of the product at that time.

D. for this management system to be effective, there are several key measures that must be considered, promoted and maintained, including:

Consider enabling farmers to comply with the requirements of compulsory registration through legislation or administrative orders.

Set up a complete registration and guidance mechanism for farmers' groups.

Establish a complete farmer identity and land database, develop an appropriate information system so that users and managers can quickly complete query, registration, production and forecast data management, statistical analysis activities.

Develop well-developed, diversified and fair production safeguard measures and immediate and effective control of the purchase price of the place of origin.

It is true to check whether farmers are planted according to the contents of registration, so as to avoid the speculative behavior of fake farmers or fake production in order to obtain subsidies, or the out-of-order behavior of production not in accordance with the registered types. If any farmer fails to plant according to the contents of the registration, he or she shall give up the production share occupied by the original registration and update the contents of the registration materials.

If the above system can overcome the difficulties and carry out smoothly, it is expected that after a period of time, farmers will realize that the planting behavior of following the production order management will have a better guarantee for their production profits. Therefore, it will gradually stabilize in the choice of planting crops, and it is also expected that on this basis, it can further promote the development of farmers' production technology and more large-scale and competitive production organizations.

II. Transportation and marketing: strengthening the relationship between the producing area prices of agricultural products and wholesale prices, and establishing and perfecting the backup mechanism for cold chain warehousing regulation.

There are many different ways of transporting agricultural products from producing areas to wholesale markets; the main modes of transportation adopted by different crops and different producing areas will also be different. However, no matter which mode of transportation is adopted, the participating roles can only include farmers, peasant groups, suppliers and traffickers according to the definition of the Agricultural Market Trading Act; if folk terms are added, there are also origin trader, storage and transportation operator, pure transporter and mouth trader in the wholesale market (some of the above nouns are different but the same category of people).

According to the history of the transportation and marketing of agricultural products in Taiwan, the large peasant organizations in China mainly include four systems: peasant association system, peasant association system, green fruit cooperative system and national federation system. These four systems basically assist its members and members in the joint transportation and marketing of agricultural products (including the necessary grading, simple processing / pre-storage, packaging, etc.), and send agricultural products to various auction markets.

Referring to Table 2-1-2 on page 162 of the history of transportation and marketing of agricultural products in Taiwan and the statistical annual report of fruit and vegetable transportation and marketing of Taipei Agricultural products Transportation and Marketing Company in 103 years, 345000 metric tons (about 70%) of the 489800 metric tons of vegetables of the Taipei Agricultural Transportation and Marketing Company were sent to the Taipei auction market through the joint transportation and marketing system to complete the transaction. 129700 metric tons (about 60%) of the 210900 metric tons of fruit were sent to the Taipei auction market through the common transportation and marketing system to complete the transaction. Therefore, as far as the Taipei fruit and vegetable auction market is concerned, 30% of vegetables and 40% of fruits are transported to this auction market through the channels of traffickers (or others) to complete the transaction.

It is reasonable to assume that the cost of storage, transportation and handling of agricultural products from the origin to the wholesale market is relatively stable. However, looking at the information of the wholesale market price and the origin price, we often find that the purchase price of the origin of agricultural products and the transaction price of the wholesale market are not within a fixed price range. The phenomenon shown in the trading market; especially when the price of agricultural products rises, the gap between the purchase price of the place of origin and the wholesale market price will widen; is this the result of the increase in processing costs in the transportation and marketing chain when the volume of agricultural products is insufficient? I don't think so; this is what columnist Jiao Jun said about the decoupling between the purchase price of origin and the wholesale market price. This is also the reason why farmers often complain that the benefit of the price difference has not reasonably returned to the producers.

On the contrary, when the wholesale price of agricultural products falls, the gap between the land price and the wholesale market price often gets a clear message: the wholesale market price cannot be compared with the purchase price of the place of origin, because there will be certain product wear and tear and transportation and marketing and management costs in the process. From this, it can also be inferred that the risk of loss when the price of agricultural products falls does not (necessarily) occur to the operators who play the role of transportation and marketing.

Intuitively, this price difference problem should be more likely to occur at the channel end of the trafficker or trader, rather than at the channel end of the joint transportation and marketing system. However, according to the phenomenon revealed by an excerpt from a book in June this year (if farmers can do so), there are still quite a number of farmers who do not trust the access of the common transportation and marketing system, but rather trust the market merchants who know it. Why?

In order to solve this problem, it is necessary to review and reshape the relationship between farmers and peasant groups, traffickers, manufacturers or suppliers, and identify the problem points through big data's records and analysis; adjusting the production and marketing structure in this link is an important issue to improve farmers' production and income. The basic approach can be made in the following directions:

To improve the bargaining power of farmers on the purchase prices of their agricultural products.

Increase the responsibility of farmers' groups, traffickers, producers or suppliers to share the risks of farmers' production

Aggravate the development of traffickers, tradesmen or suppliers to the role of "service provider"

How to do it? The following methods are proposed for reference:

(1) to promote long-term and stable relationships between farmers and traffickers, origin sellers or suppliers

At present, ordinary farmers who do not participate in the common transportation and marketing system should also have local merchants they are familiar with, but they may be in an unequal position; farmers may be regarded as a vassal of disk merchants (other traders are not allowed to rob their producers) and do not feel it.

Therefore, the government should help farmers improve this relationship and establish an equal cooperative relationship similar to "contract production" between farmers and traders. it is best if the relationship can be written down in black and white. The contents and conditions of cooperation can include the following modes:

The purchase price of the production period is guaranteed to be purchased with reference to the percentage of the average wholesale price of the products in a certain period of time in a wholesale market at that time on the basis of certain quality; if farmers cannot resell the products to other traders without good reason.

The purchase price during the production period is guaranteed to be purchased above the lowest price of XX; farmers cannot resell their products to other traders without good reason.

Do not guarantee the acquisition, but agree to ship the products to a wholesale market for sale at XX cost

Other

In order to facilitate the establishment of such a long-term and stable relationship between the two sides, the wholesale market can provide relevant incentives, for example, the provision of exclusive unloading sites for traffickers and suppliers who have established specific cooperative relations with farmers, preferential auction rights or preferential transaction management fees (which can be extended in accordance with Article 23 of the Agricultural products Trading Law). After all, the source of money for traffickers is products produced by farmers. if traffickers want to make profits or opportunity profits by the price difference between the transportation and sale of agricultural products, they should share the risks of farmers or give farmers the benefits they deserve. Can not be similar to exploitation (buy low and sell high) to deliberately depress the income of farmers or do not share the risks of farmers' production but let the government bear the consequences of farmers' production alone.

In addition, if the good management of the first production order mentioned above can be established and maintained, it can not only reduce the sharp rise and fall of agricultural products caused by the imbalance in production and marketing, and reduce the operating space for middlemen to earn profits from this opportunity, farmers' relatively stable choice of production crops is also conducive to the promotion and establishment of long-term relations between the two sides.

(2) Real-time transaction information between farmers and peasant groups, traffickers, origin traders or suppliers

Point (1) the establishment of a long-term stable relationship basically requires this mechanism and allows the competent agricultural authorities to make appropriate audits and constraints.

The spirit of formulating the agricultural products trading law is that providing a market open trading system and quickly revealing detailed trading information is an important environmental basis for maintaining a reasonable market price of agricultural products. Therefore, an open and immediate "origin purchase transaction price" should also be an important environmental basis for maintaining farmers' rights and interests in origin price; however, this transaction information does not need to be made public to the market, only to the competent government authorities, so as to serve as a reference basis for management, audit and the above-mentioned farmers' production safeguard measures.

According to Article 18 of the Agricultural products Trading Law: "suppliers from paragraphs 2 to 6 shall keep transaction data; if necessary, the competent authorities of municipalities and counties (cities) directly under the Central Government may consult them (in practice, there should be very few acts of real inspection). This program can be implemented in accordance with this article; it is to develop a real-time login system for transaction data between farmers and vendors in the central competent authority (different from the current "Agricultural products production and Marketing supply chain Integration Service platform" or upgrade it).

The government may require traffickers, origin sellers or suppliers to conduct transactions in the wholesale market only after the transaction information has been logged into the system. In this way, the government can obtain real-time information on the trading end of farmers in the wholesale market. After the competent authority obtains the transaction data of the wholesale market end (including the port area in the future) from the wholesale market, it will check and compare the data on both sides to find out the unreasonable reasons and then conduct an in-depth investigation as the basis for eliminating malpractices and adjusting policies or management measures.

For the collection of farmers' transaction data, it is necessary to consider the correctness of the data and have anti-fraud measures to avoid misjudgment in follow-up policies and management, and to prevent those who are interested in getting improper benefits from the future safeguard measures.

(3) to establish a perfect backup mechanism for cold chain storage and supply regulation.

Climate conditions play a major role in the production of agricultural products, which may lead to bumper harvests and often lead to poor harvests as a result of disasters. Therefore, the pre-storage and temporary storage of agricultural products by cold chain storage is not only an important means to adjust the supply of agricultural products in the wholesale market, but also a backup measure for the management of production order.

The importance of cold chain warehousing has been valued by the agricultural departments of the government, but in addition to building their own cold chain warehousing facilities in the wholesale market, the competent government authorities should also consider, integrate and plan to promote the establishment of private franchise companies. estimate the due demand for cold chain warehousing in the country To establish a standard database system for cold chain franchise storage capacity of agricultural products and to grasp the information of immediately available space, storage location and quantity of stored products. For the forecast data of the production period of major agricultural products, prepare the response adjustment measures as soon as possible according to the pre-established supply regulation mechanism of all kinds of products. In this way, the price changes of agricultural products can be effectively controlled and managed under the free market mechanism.

The above suggestions are put forward in this paper to improve the current situation and problems of China's production and marketing structure, and it is expected that this proposal will contribute to the physical improvement of China's agricultural product production and marketing structure.

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