[ad_1]
Chinese President Xi Jinping, also General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and Chairman of the Central Military Commission, attends and speaks at the annual Central Rural Work Conference in Beijing. The conference was held in Beijing from December 23 to 24. Photo: Xinhua
Chinese President Xi Jinping called for increased efforts to strengthen China’s strength in agriculture and do good work in agriculture and rural areas.
Xi said this while attending and addressing the annual Central Rural Work Conference held from Friday to Saturday in Beijing.
Without strong agriculture, there would be no modernized strong country; without agricultural and rural modernization, socialist modernization would be incomplete, Xi said at the meeting.
We must go our own way instead of simply copying foreign models of modern agricultural power, and we must rely on our own strength to provide the people’s rice bowls, Xi said.
Xi said that ensuring a stable and safe supply of food and important agricultural products is always the top priority for building a strong agricultural country, and that it is necessary to carry out a new round of actions to increase grain production by 100 billion jin (50 billion kilograms), and formulate implementation plans. as soon as possible.
We must grasp two key points, namely arable land and seeds, resolutely guard the “red line” of 1.8 billion mu (120 million hectares) of arable land, gradually build all permanent basic agricultural areas into high-standard agricultural land, carry out the revitalization of the seed industry fruitful, and we make sure that the seed sources are under our control, Xi said.
The conference clarifies the goal, mission and path of achieving the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, said Li Guoqiang, a research fellow at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.
“The further deployment of the central government’s grain security and rural revitalization plans during the meeting fully demonstrates the Chinese Communist Party’s (CPC) deep understanding of the international environment and China’s domestic agricultural development situation,” Li told the Global Times on Saturday. .
“Given the increasingly volatile international situation, as well as the increase in extreme weather conditions, food security is among China’s most important interests,” he said. Over the past decade, China has steadily increased its grain production capacity while promoting rural revitalization by consolidating the foundation of agriculture, rural areas, and labor related to farmers.
Faced with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, the impact of extreme weather and rising prices of agricultural materials, China has once again provided its citizens with rice bowls with a bumper grain harvest in 2022, Xinhua News Agency reported on Friday.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics revealed that the country’s cereal production was 686.55 billion kilograms in 2022, up 3.7 billion kilograms from the 2021 figure. This is the eighth consecutive year that China’s grain harvest has exceeded 650 billion kilograms.
As the conference signaled new action to improve grain production, Lee predicted that the country could aim to achieve a grain output of 700-750 billion kilograms.
The 2022 harvest was difficult to obtain as extreme weather presented a significant challenge. A rainy autumn season in northern China in 2021 delayed the planting of one-third of winter wheat, while the hottest summer since 1961, when China began keeping full weather records, put pressure on the 2022 harvest of China’s staple grain.
In order to overcome the difficulties, the Central Committee of the KPK implemented a number of measures, such as the construction of water management infrastructure, increased application and popularization of agricultural technologies, as well as raising public awareness of support for agriculture and food production.
This aerial photo shows workers at Shandong Lvfeng Agriculture Group Co., Ltd. harvesting grass in Wudi County, east China’s Shandong Province, in May 2022. Photo: Xinhua
Improvement of agricultural technology
China is also transforming its agricultural system with a greater focus on providing better quality agricultural products and accelerating innovation in agricultural technology.
Xi said it is necessary to rely on the drive of science and technology and two-wheeled reform to accelerate the construction of a strong agricultural country.
It is necessary to pay attention to the frontiers of the world’s agricultural science and technology, vigorously improve the level of China’s agricultural science and technology, and accelerate the realization of self-reliance and self-improvement for high agricultural science and technology, Xi said.
Guided by the solution of key agricultural technologies and oriented to the urgent needs of the industry, it is necessary to take advantage of the new system to mobilize resources across the country to build an agricultural science and technology innovation system, Xi said.
At the meeting, she reiterated the need to upgrade China’s agricultural technologies and accelerate self-reliance in this regard, reflecting the country’s determination to transform its agricultural system with a greater focus on providing better quality agricultural products and accelerating innovation to ensure that sources of seeds and other critical materials are under our control, Jiao Shanwei, editor-in-chief of industry news website cnrain.com, told the Global Times on Saturday.
Since the 18th CPC National Congress held in 2012, the CPC has been intensifying the application and popularization of agricultural technologies such as improving the construction of water infrastructure.
In April, during an inspection of southern China’s Hainan province, Xi visited a local seed laboratory and approved the province’s efforts in researching an innovative way for agricultural science and technology to support and guarantee national food security.
The achievements are the result of China’s efforts for modern agriculture, with a greater focus on quantity and quality, innovation-driven agriculture, as well as low-carbon sustainable development, observers said.
From 2012 to 2021, the total level of mechanization in plowing, sowing and harvesting crops increased from 57.2 percent to 72 percent, and the contribution of technological progress to the growth of agricultural production increased to over 61 percent, according to Xinhua. News agency on Friday.
Increasing the income of the villagers
Consolidating and expanding achievements in poverty reduction is the basic task for comprehensively promoting China’s rural revitalization.
Xi said that we must resolutely prevent entire villages from falling back into poverty, and insist on raising farmers’ incomes as the central task, and do everything possible to expand the channels for increasing their incomes.
After eight years of hard fighting against poverty, China has lifted 98.99 million impoverished rural residents living below the current poverty line out of absolute poverty and removed 832 poor counties from the country’s poverty list.
To protect farmers’ interests, the country has steadily raised minimum purchase prices for rice and wheat and allocated 40 billion yuan ($5.73 billion) from the central government budget to cushion the impact of higher agricultural costs this year, Xinhua News Agency said on Friday.
Li Shihua, a farmer based in Harbin, northeast China’s Heilongjiang Province, expressed optimism for the development of agriculture as well as rural areas under the leadership of the CPC. Lee contracted over 2,000 mu (133 hectares) of land to plant soybeans and corn.
“There are more favorable policies targeting farmers and rural areas compared to 2009 when I started contracting farmland,” Li Shihua told the Global Times on Saturday, noting that he could receive 100 yuan per mu in subsidies for soybean planting. and the local government also provides technical guidance for farmers.
Farmer Lee expected there to be more supportive policies, for example, insurance to help protect against extreme weather, encouraging farmers to grow crops and develop specialty industries, and attracting young people back to rural areas to boost regional vitality.
[ad_2]
Source link
