The focal point of promoting agricultural supply-side reform

Agricultural supply-side structural reform is a major development strategy in the field of agriculture mentioned in the No. 1 document of the Central Committee this year. How to promote this reform? The author believes that, from the perspective of better provision of basic public services for agricultural production, we should focus on solving the following problems.

First, adjust the structure and improve quality to solve the problem of low quality and low efficiency of agricultural production. China's agriculture has had a bumper harvest for many years, and the total amount of agricultural products is sufficient, but the structural contradiction between the quantity and quality of agricultural products has become increasingly prominent. On the one hand, the overcapacity of some agricultural products, the phenomenon of "low price and difficult to sell" has frustrated farmers' enthusiasm for production; on the other hand, consumers' demand for high-quality agricultural products is difficult to meet. In addition, domestic agricultural production is facing new challenges such as capping the price of agricultural products, raising the "floor" of production costs, and intensifying the "hard constraints" of resources and environment. As a result, some agricultural products, such as wheat, corn, cotton, and soybeans, have long been dependent on imports, and the average domestic prices are 20% to 100% higher than international prices, so they do not have a comparative advantage in the international arena. This leads to the high level of grain inventory collected and stored in the market in China, showing the phenomenon of "three simultaneous increases" in production, import and inventory. Therefore, optimizing the structure of agricultural products, improving the quality and effective supply of agricultural products, achieving the balance between supply and demand of agricultural products, and enhancing the efficiency of market allocation of agricultural resources will become an important task of agricultural supply-side structural reform in the future. The focus of the reform is to improve the international competitiveness of agriculture while increasing the supply of green, organic and safe agricultural products and realizing the transformation from "giving priority to quantity to paying equal attention to quantity and quality".

The second is to communicate information and re-guide to solve the problem that the agricultural information service system lags behind. The lag of agricultural information construction has seriously affected the development of agriculture, directly leading to large fluctuations in the planting area, output and price of agricultural products, resulting in a bumper harvest of agricultural products, and dealing a blow to the production enthusiasm of farmers and the purchasing confidence of consumers. it is also not conducive to national security, economic development and social stability. For example, the spread of false information such as "strawberry agricultural residue exceeding the standard causing cancer" in 2015 has caused unsalable sales in many major strawberry producing areas and hurt the interests of farmers. At present, it is urgent to solve the problems of smooth and transparent flow of agricultural information, standardized collection, authoritative release and so on. It is necessary to speed up the establishment of agricultural information monitoring and early warning system, speed up the construction of information service system, improve institutional norms and policy guidance, cultivate and support new agricultural socialized service institutions, strengthen government-led public welfare agricultural services, reduce agricultural production costs, and improve agricultural efficiency.

The third is to promote integration, tap potential, and solve the problem of a single mode of agricultural development. Measured by the standards of modern agriculture, China's agricultural infrastructure is weak, industrial development lags behind, and the current situation of low industrialization, low marketization and low intensification of agriculture has not fundamentally changed. to a certain extent, it is still the development mode of striving for resources, environment and blindly pursuing output and income, ignoring agricultural technological innovation and sustainable development, which can easily lead to agricultural source pollution and food safety crisis. And weaken the ability of agriculture to deal with natural and market risks. On the surface, promoting agricultural supply-side reform is a matter for agriculture itself, but in essence, it is the requirement of optimizing the structure of social and economic development. If we develop agriculture with regard to agriculture and do not bring agricultural modernization into the system of new industrialization and urbanization as a whole, it will be difficult to make a substantial change in the mode of agricultural development. For this reason, we must deeply explore the various functions of agriculture, actively expand the breadth and depth of agriculture, and get rid of the thinking inertia and working mode of "individual soldier promotion" in agriculture.

The fourth is to make up for the shortcomings and improve the environment to solve the problems of green and safe development of agriculture. In the process of agricultural modernization in China, "green development" and "safe development" are outstanding shortcomings. In the past, agricultural development blindly pursued to increase production, excessive consumption of soil fertility and underground fresh water resources, abuse of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and feed additives, which easily caused problems such as soil consolidation, soil fertility decline, environmental pollution and pesticide residues, and the losses outweighed the gains and were not sustainable. This year, the No. 1 document of the Central Committee specially proposed the food safety strategy of "strengthening environmental protection and source control in producing areas and implementing strict management of agricultural inputs", emphasizing the improvement of the supervision system of agricultural product quality and food safety in the whole process of "from farmland to table". Strengthen seamless docking with food and drug departments, and jointly create a technical platform for supervision, traceability and information sharing in the whole process from production to consumption. Further improve the risk monitoring and evaluation and inspection and testing system.

Fifth, pay attention to management, promote efficiency, and solve the problem of lagging behind in agricultural management and assessment mechanism. At present, China's agricultural management and assessment system, which emphasizes quantity over quality, planting and breeding over marketing, and scale over efficiency, leads to high agricultural input costs, but it is difficult to give full play to the overall benefits. In particular, in recent years, large-scale land management in China has become increasingly prosperous, with the emergence of a large number of family farms, large growers and farmers' cooperatives. However, the production cost remains high, and some new agricultural operators passively fall into the situation of large scale and low efficiency. A new type of professional farmers who understand management and technology has become a new talent bottleneck in agricultural development. For this reason, it is necessary to strengthen the training of talents and cultivate a new type of agricultural operators who not only understand the market but also know how to farm scientifically, with economic relations such as contract system, cooperative system or joint-stock cooperative system, connect the market subjects of production, processing, sales, management and other links, closely link the new professional farmers, farmers, enterprises and the market, and establish a scientific performance appraisal system. In the aspect of agricultural assessment, we should pay attention to the diversity of agricultural assessment, comprehensively consider the cost of the increase of output, resource consumption, environmental pollution and other factors, and measure the economic, social and ecological benefits from multiple angles to form a scientific agricultural assessment and evaluation mechanism.