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State Watering Seeds of Change on Farming
Massive efforts to reshuffle China's agricultural landscape have so far failed to substantially improve crop quality or crop mix.
Vice-Minister of Agriculture Wan Baorui said Friday that immediate solutions to some of the most pressing concerns are now needed.
In response to growing grain stockpiles, falling product prices and the sluggish increase in the incomes of Chinese farmers, the central government sees readjusting the structure of agriculture as a strategic task.
Last year, China cut acreage for low-grade early rice by 220,000 hectares. It also reduced inferior strains of wheat by 333,300 hectares in South China and 200,000 hectares in northern regions, Wan told a news conference yesterday in Beijing.
"Farmland reserved for high-quality early rice increased by 566,600 hectares from the previous year, and the country also grew an additional 600,000 hectares of top-grade oil-seed rape in 1999," he said.
This year, China has further cut its summer maturing crop acreage by 5 per cent, with the wheat growing acreage cut by 6 per cent to give space for more marketable crops, ministry sources said.
Wan said that in some regions, agricultural restructuring was restricted to adjusting the proportion of grain to cash crops.
In some other regions, farmers used technology to cultivate more marketable crops. However, they lacked market information and quality seeds to help them reach their goals, according to the vice-minister.
"The ministry will highlight policy publicity, information services and technical dissemination to push agricultural restructuring," he said.
The ministry has praised the success of some provinces in tuning their agricultural production to market demands, counting on science and technology to develop rural brandnames in animal husbandry and fisheries, and adding to purses of the farmers by expanding township enterprises.
These experiences have been included in a book "Practice of Agricultural Restructuring in the New Era," which was published Friday.
More than 30,000 copies of the book will be presented to rural cadres and farmers, Wan said.
He said his ministry would help farmers explore the farm produce market by fostering rural circulation organizations and rectifying the market order.
Financial support may also be available to help farmers adopt fine crop varieties, seeds and animal breeds and to augment the agriculture product processing industry, Wan said.
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