Pursuit of leapfrog modernization of agriculture

The report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China calls for accelerating the building of China into a powerful country in agriculture.

To make the country strong in agriculture means ensuring food security and the supply of important agricultural products, and improving the quality and strength of relevant industries, and the global competitiveness of the country's agricultural companies.

In the past, the term "agricultural modernization" was used to describe the goal of agricultural development, referring to the process of transforming traditional agriculture into modern agriculture. Yet a strong agricultural country stresses more on competitiveness that enables the country to not only meet the needs of its own people, but also lead global agricultural development.

China is a large agricultural country, mainly referring to its large industrial scale, which is reflected in the output of agricultural products, its number of agricultural workers, and agricultural value added that all rank first in the world.

But China is not yet a strong agricultural country, as its agricultural products can still become better, the union of its agriculture and husbandry industries is comparatively loose, its factor circulation is not free, and technical support is insufficient. There is still a big gap between China and the main agricultural powers in the world, which have markedly higher labor productivity, land production rate and resource utilization rate.

China must achieve comprehensive leapfrog development that transforms its agricultural focus from scale to efficiency, from quantity to quality, from scientific and technological equipment to support capacity, and from management systems to industrial resilience by improving the quality of agricultural development and the strength of the major industrial players.

The country must pursue its independence in agricultural technology. It should concentrate national resources on key agricultural research and the popularization of agricultural technologies so as to integrate the development of agriculture, technology and the economy.

China needs to develop competitive agricultural enterprises and form its own brands so that it can have a bigger say in the global agricultural market and industry. As major market entities, these enterprises should take the lead to modernize the agricultural industry.

Last but not least, individual farmers should have channels to participate in and be the immediate beneficiaries of the drive to build China into a strong agricultural country.