Ecological agriculture may be the best way out for comprehensive utilization of straw.

According to data from the National Development and Reform Commission, in 2015, the amount of straw that could be collected was close to 900 million tons, and the utilization rate was about 720 million tons, with a comprehensive utilization rate of 80.11 percent, an increase of 11.41 percent over 2008. Even so, with the busy summer and autumn harvest every year, straw has become a headache for cadres and masses, cadres are squatting in the fields, farmers are "waiting for opportunities", and "guerrilla wars" are constantly staged. Obviously, blocking is not a good way, so it should be sparse. In this regard, Sinorama interviewed Jiang Gaoming, a researcher at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Environmental economy: recently, with a random search on the Internet, reports about the prohibition of straw burning everywhere abound, straw is not a new thing, why has it become a problem in recent years?

Jiang Gaoming: there are no more than two reasons. One is that the energy structure in rural areas has changed. Clean energy sources such as gas and electricity have entered the countryside. In the past, straw was a necessity for farmers, but now it is no longer needed. Although many rural households have built biogas digesters, they are easy to build and difficult to maintain, and they can still play a role in the first year or two, and then they will be abandoned, because most of the people left behind in rural areas are elderly people who do not have the ability to maintain them. "biogas digesters" should be changed from "building biogas digesters" to "building large biogas digesters", which should be maintained by professional companies. As more straw is no longer used as firewood and biogas energy, so there is one less way out for straw.

Second, growing food does not make money, high-quality labor goes to the city to work, and the elderly who stay behind do not have the ability to deal with straw. At present, the price of grain is more than one yuan per jin, and two crops are planted on one mu of land. in the bumper year, the high-yield fields produce more than 2,000 jin of grain, usually between 1600 and 2000 jin, with an income of less than 2,000 yuan, minus half of the cost. on the basis of an average of 5 mu of land per household, the annual income is no more than 4,000 to 5,000 yuan. Can this attract farmers to grow grain? Working in cities is their main source of income, agriculture has become a sideline, since it is a sideline, naturally will not invest in the labor force, so the mode of operation is relatively extensive. In this way, if the grain is not properly planted, will it still "serve" the straw? Therefore, a fire is the easiest but also the most extensive way.

Burning will certainly not work, because it pollutes the environment, but the farmers are also forced to do so. If it is not burned, it will affect the cultivation of the next crop, or it will be sown artificially and dig the hole a little deeper, but this will increase the labor force and increase the cost of 80 million yuan per mu of land. Who will pay for this money? This is a very real problem, and farmers can do accounts.

Environmental economy: articles 76 and 77 of the New atmosphere Law stipulate that local governments should do a good job in banning straw burning and encourage and support the comprehensive utilization of straw. How's the place doing now?

Jiang Gaoming: at the local level, I think the "blocking" is relatively strict, but the "sparse" is not in place. In this season, township leaders sat by the roadside watching the farmers with a horse, and leaders at all levels drove their cars on patrol, and when they found the fire, they rushed to block it, spending a lot of manpower, material and financial resources, but the effect was not satisfactory. The reason why township leaders attach so much importance to it is that it is linked to political achievements, so it is more strictly controlled.

Since the peasants are not allowed to burn it, we must find a way out. In my opinion, the best way out is to return straw to the field as fodder and fertilizer. Straw is a photosynthetic product, after returning to the field, it can net absorb carbon dioxide emitted by industry. We have done such an experiment, and the effect is more obvious. It was chemical agriculture in the past, but ecological agriculture is to be developed now and in the future. The former is net emission and the latter is net absorption, which is reversed from net emission to net retention. The combination of the two can reduce 11.5 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per hectare per year. The results are very encouraging.

Next, we need to develop ecological agriculture, and ecological agriculture needs a lot of high-quality straw, especially photosynthate, even if it is litter, or rotten vegetable leaves, these are treasures. Straw can achieve at least two alternatives: as feed, it can be fed to sheep and cattle, instead of grain; straw fermentation can replace chemical fertilizer, which technology has been very mature. Now there are many people engaged in ecological agriculture in China, but one of the difficulties encountered is the lack of organic fertilizer, because of the use of chemical fertilizer, the taste of food is not good, consumers do not buy it. Straw feed and fertilizer is a good way to digest straw. The state can support a number of enterprises and do some pilot projects, such as building a large-scale breeding farm and straw treatment plant in a village. As long as it is profitable, someone will do it.

Among them, returning straw to the field through belly is an important way. The straw is fed to sheep and cattle and excreted by livestock. Part of the straw is turned into meat, part into energy (methane), and part is returned to the field as organic fertilizer. At present, the pollution of soil and cultivated land is serious, and the content of organic matter has dropped seriously, with an average of less than 1%. Straw can effectively supplement the lack of carbon in the soil, and some microorganisms in the soil also need carbon salts. In this way, if the content of organic matter can be increased to 2%-5%, our grain production potential is very great.

Now we have fallen into a vicious circle, we cannot produce food without chemical fertilizers, and in the long run, the quality of cultivated land becomes worse and worse. Many people have been led into misunderstanding, making straw into processed products such as wood, but straw is only a small part of it, which is auxiliary materials, while the main materials are some chemicals, and straw is used, chemical products are not underused, and straw doors, no matter how good they are, are not as good as wood.

Environmental economy: this year, the Ministry of Finance has increased its budget by 1 billion yuan through integration and adjustment, together with the Ministry of Agriculture to speed up the construction of key areas around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei ecological integration barrier. Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and other 10 provinces with prominent crop straw burning problems were selected to carry out pilot projects on crop straw burning and comprehensive utilization. Among them, the central finance pilot funds adopt the method of "replacing compensation with awards". How is this different from that in the past?

Jiang Gaoming: there are now several subsidies: first, straw power generation, the state subsidizes electricity price; second, straw is crushed locally, and the state subsidizes machines; third, straw is used as feed, and the state subsidizes large-scale silage ponds for raising livestock.

Among the three subsidies, straw power generation subsidies account for a relatively high proportion, but we have calculated that enterprises hire workers to collect straw and remove freight and labor costs, which is a loss, which does not count as oil money. If farmers are asked to spontaneously transport straw to enterprises, it is even more difficult. "Don't carry grass for a hundred miles, don't carry grain for a thousand miles." not to mention a hundred miles, now the farmers don't do it for ten miles.

So the question is, no one is willing to transport straw, what does a power plant rely on to generate electricity? Our survey found that most power plants mixed with coal to generate electricity, earning state subsidies, this is certainly wrong, but there is not enough straw, so we have to burn coal, because the power plant can not be stopped. Some power plants can not collect the straw, so they pile it there as a model, and whoever comes to visit will tell where the straw is. Counterfeiting in power plants is a common occurrence.

The term "substituting awards for compensation" is correct. In the past, whoever pollutes and benefits, destroys and supports whom, just like the degradation of grasslands, degraded grasslands have funds for governance, and those who do well do not give money. isn't this a disguised form of encouragement and destruction?

Now agricultural subsidies have also fallen into a misunderstanding. The more the state subsidizes pesticides, the cheaper the prices of pesticides are, the more they are used. Who will use organic fertilizers? It's not only troublesome, but also smelly. Grain is the same, the price is cheap, everyone does not cherish food, table waste is enough for 200 million people to eat, if the price of grain 10 yuan a jin, who is willing to waste? Now we are all vicious competition, just fighting for quantity rather than quality, do not calculate environmental costs, do not calculate health costs, otherwise there are so many patients in the hospital? I suggest that the state should reduce or even abolish subsidies for chemical fertilizers and pesticides and directly subsidize farmers or enterprises engaged in ecological agriculture.

Environmental economy: you mentioned that the comprehensive utilization of straw should be combined with ecological agriculture, so what problems will be faced in practice? Do you have any suggestions for this?

Jiang Gaoming: it is mainly the problem of market mechanism. To put it bluntly, it's just a good idea. Who's going to do it? Our grain is too cheap. last year, the protective price of corn was 1.05 yuan. This year, we don't even have a protective price. Some time ago, the price was lower than 85 cents. Recently, it has rebounded somewhat, but it has not yet returned to the level of one piece. This phenomenon has seriously dealt a blow to the enthusiasm of farmers in farming.

Now that our urbanization rate has reached 55%, some people say that we should continue to do so. If the urbanization rate reaches 98% as in the United States, many people in China will starve to death. Why would you say that? The United States has 2.9 billion mu of arable land, and although we have 1.8 billion mu of arable land, the population of the United States is only a fraction of ours.

Therefore, we often say that grain should not be treated strictly according to commodities, which is a strategic material. Unlike American agriculture, we have a shortage of arable land, and only by planting two crops can we ensure food security. If the grain we produce is still one kilo at a time, it will not attract farmers to return to their hometown for farming. I suggest that the state should separate the food eaten by people and animals with high quality and good prices. Otherwise, buying food from the United States will pose a great threat to national security. Statistics show that about 230 million tons of grain can be purchased on the international market, and China has already bought nearly half of it.

I have a preliminary idea that, for example, the three eastern provinces, which produce straw on a large scale, are suitable for producing some fodder and food for animals, and intensive cultivation for people to produce food in areas with a long history of small farming areas. moreover, the grain produced for people is three or five times higher than the market price for animals, and this price is acceptable to consumers. Therefore, if the state wants to subsidize, it should subsidize those enterprises that really do things and subsidize ecological agriculture. At present, the entire agricultural GDP is 6 trillion yuan, if half of the 6 trillion yuan is ecological agriculture, and 10% of consumers will consume in the future, then the purchasing power of the city will be released, not only protecting consumers' own health, but also spending money to help the country protect the ecological environment, straw is not burned, and there is a way out, chemical fertilizers and pesticides are less, which forms a virtuous circle.

Next, we suggest that the country purchase ecological services. For example, straw does not burn, become organic fertilizer, this is ecological services, who do this, who should benefit, the state should support. It must be difficult for this matter to blossom in an all-round way. you might as well take a county as a demonstration, instead of setting up hundreds of demonstration zones in the past, and even one village cannot be done well, can one province do a good job? In this way, the policy has been guided, and the money has been spent on ideas, not only the Ministry of Agriculture has good ecological projects, but also the Ministry of Environmental Protection, the Ministry of Science and Technology, and the National Development and Reform Commission.

Finally, we would like to emphasize that do not talk about straw, straw is not only an environmental protection issue, but also an agricultural issue, or a social issue, but also a national strategy (food security) issue. I think straw is a good starting point, through it can develop ecological agriculture, high quality and high price can also release the purchasing power of the city, this will be a national project, benefit the people project.