What dampens the enthusiasm of farmers to produce high-quality agricultural products

Oil and other commodity prices have fallen sharply since 2014, global economic growth has been sluggish, and agricultural products have fallen hard in a depressed commodity price environment. The output of major agricultural products such as cotton, oil, meat, poultry eggs, aquatic products, vegetables and fruits has reached record highs one after another, which has aggravated the dilemma of "low prices and difficult to sell" of agricultural products in many places. When all parties offer suggestions for the promotion of agricultural products, the superior products in agricultural products do not seem to be affected by the price drop, and there is no obvious price drop in high-end agricultural products in shopping malls, restaurants, supermarkets, as well as high-end import and export agricultural products. This phenomenon shows that China's agricultural supply is not sensitive to changes in demand, the supply quality of agricultural products is out of balance, and the supply of general varieties is large, but there are few high-quality and special varieties. Contrary to the scarcity of high-quality agricultural products on the market, farmers' willingness to produce high-quality agricultural products is not high. Through investigation, the author found that there are mainly the following reasons.

Reason 1: the production of high-quality agricultural products is not necessarily higher than the main road goods. Due to the poor connection between production and marketing and the lack of a win-win interest connection mechanism, most agricultural products are still the traditional circulation mode for farmers to produce, brokers to purchase, and enterprises to supply the market after reprocessing, with many intermediate links and cumulative transaction costs. as a result, the division of the "cake" of each link is unreasonable, the benefits of planting and breeding links are obviously on the low side, and the enthusiasm of upstream production is frustrated. Take Henan wheat as an example, high-gluten varieties have always been local tight products, but the price is only 5% higher than that of medium-gluten wheat, but due to the relatively low yield, high requirements for pest management, high production risk and weak willingness of farmers to grow high-gluten wheat, the development of large-scale production of local high-gluten wheat is facing bottlenecks.

The second reason is that the labor input of high-quality agricultural products is large and the technical level is high. High-quality agricultural products have corresponding standards and requirements for varieties, production environment and operating standards, and their cost input is higher than that of ordinary agricultural products. Taking apple production as an example, high-quality apple production requires high technical requirements, such as pre-bagging medicine, optimal bagging time, timely irrigation and topdressing, coloring period and so on. Due to the accuracy of the above management measures, the labor price is high during the implementation of each key technology, which increases the production cost. Under the condition of the general shortage of labor force in rural areas and the average age of agricultural labor force, farmers do not have the ability to produce more high-quality agricultural products.

The third reason is that there are misunderstandings in consumers' understanding of "quality". Fruit and vegetable products with uniform specifications and bright colors on the market can usually be sold at a good price. Consumers pay too much attention to the appearance of products and lack common sense in identifying different varieties of agricultural products. Consumers should pay more attention to the sensory indicators, production standards, management norms, varieties and production environment of agricultural products. At the same time, due to the inconsistency between domestic and international standards in the residues of harmful substances, prevention and quarantine of animal and plant diseases, and the determination of the quality grade of agricultural products, consumers' trust in green and organic agricultural products has decreased. In the case of asymmetric information, consumers are unable to distinguish between good and bad agricultural products, and the phenomenon of "Bad money drives out good" occurs from time to time. Enterprises would rather make great efforts to improve packaging and open up marketing channels, rather than establish high-quality raw materials purchase channels or production bases.

Reason 4: the structure of agricultural industry chain is not perfect. The structure of agricultural industry chain is not perfect, which restricts the improvement of agricultural comprehensive benefit. The linkage mechanism of production and marketing is out of balance, and the degree of industrial organization is not high, resulting in frequent industrial fluctuations and high chances of damage to the interests of farmers. The industrial chain is incomplete, the breeding, breeding and promotion of high-quality agricultural products are disjointed, and the production, processing and sales are separated, which restricts the differential market competition. As a result, the quality of some high-quality products with geographical and variety advantages vary greatly between years and regions, and mixed collection, mixed storage and mixed sales occur from time to time. The quality of market products is mixed, the market pattern of high quality and high price has not been formed, and farmers can not get corresponding price compensation to increase the cost of producing high-quality products, which dampens the enthusiasm of farmers to produce high-quality agricultural products.

Reason 5: the deep integration of agricultural industry is not enough. The deep integration of industry is not enough, planting, aquaculture and ecology have not been organically integrated, and the lack of close combination of planting and aquaculture results in poor circulation, decline of soil fertility and lack of effective utilization of fecal pollution in aquaculture. The construction of fresh product industry chain is not perfect, and the cold chain logistics system is not perfect. There are many kinds of fresh products such as fruits, vegetables, poultry meat and eggs, and the substitution effect among varieties is obvious. Some fruit, vegetable and egg products with health, culture, origin and brand characteristics still remain at the level of low value-added sales and do not form an obvious competitive advantage with similar agricultural products. In the corresponding production field, the production layout, scale and industrial linkage of special varieties matching with deep processing and derivatives development have not been formed, resulting in prominent structural contradictions in supply and insufficient development of added value of products.

Food is the most important thing for the people, so that more farmers are willing to produce high-quality agricultural products, which is not only of great practical significance for the development of modern agriculture, but also conducive to increasing farmers' income and promoting food safety of agricultural products at the same time. In the future, we should further straighten out the interest relationship between the production and sale of high-quality agricultural products, achieve high quality and high price in agriculture, and improve quality and efficiency.