Chapter 35 5. Agriculture should also be in line with modernization

It is difficult to increase the reduced cultivated land, and it is difficult to reduce the increased population. The fundamental way to solve the problem of feeding the large population in our country in the future can only be the technological progress of agriculture. The promotion effect of science and technology on agriculture has been proved by facts.Before the founding of the People's Republic of China, my country's agriculture was basically in the original state of slash-and-burn farming, not only the labor productivity was not high, but also the land output rate was low.In terms of grain production, the yield per mu of grain is relatively low. In 1949, my country's average grain yield per mu was only 85.5 kg, and the total grain output was only 113.18 million tons.After liberation, especially in the past 20 years of reform and opening up, my country's agricultural production has made great achievements. By 1997, the country's total grain output reached 492.5 million tons, which was 4.35 times that of 1949; times.All of this is directly related to the application of a large number of major science and technology.For example, the popularization of hybrid rice cultivation, high-quality rice, rice seedling throwing cultivation technology, etc., has made the rice yield increase linearly in my country.The application of hybrid corn and hybrid corn mulching cultivation technology has improved the yield level of corn. Only the hybrid corn mulching cultivation technology has increased the yield by 168 kg per mu.Relevant experts have calculated that since the founding of the People's Republic of China, major crop varieties have been updated 5 to 7 times, with each update increasing yields by 10% to 30%.The application of plastic film cultivation technology and high-efficiency energy-saving solar greenhouse vegetable cultivation technology in vegetable production has enabled all parts of the country to produce and supply all kinds of fresh vegetables throughout the year. The application of livestock and poultry breeding technology, feed and epidemic prevention technology has increased the total meat output of my country From 2.2 million tons in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China to nearly 50 million tons now, the supply of meat, eggs, and milk is sufficient in the market.

However, we cannot but see that my country's current level of agricultural science and technology is still in a rather backward state, the application rate of new technologies and new varieties is still quite low, and agricultural production in many places continues to follow the tradition unchanged for thousands of years. The farming methods are even at the level of slash-and-burn farming in some places, and production is barely maintained by relying solely on human and animal power.All these have seriously hindered the continued development of China's agricultural production. In 1997, the contribution rate of my country's scientific and technological progress to agriculture increased by 3 percentage points compared with the previous year, reaching 42%. Although it is not far from the goal of 50% contribution rate of agricultural science and technology during the Ninth Five-Year Plan, this does not eliminate our Anxiety about the future of agtech.

Compared with developed countries, the contribution of my country's agricultural scientific and technological progress to the growth of agricultural output value is still very low. Developed countries basically account for more than 70%, while my country has just exceeded 40%, and the gap is still quite large.The reasons are, one is that there are few breakthrough scientific and technological achievements, and the other is that the promotion of agricultural technology is still quite weak. Financial support for agricultural and food scientific research is a policy commonly adopted by many countries, such as providing funds to develop agricultural and food education and scientific research; supporting research and promoting high-yield varieties; helping to resist natural disasters; improving soil and developing resources; strengthening Technology and information services, etc., but because China's current agricultural scientific research and extension system is not smooth, the system is incomplete, and the funds are not implemented, so the pace of agricultural science and technology progress is not fast, and the results are not very significant.Although our country has raised the level of scientific and technological progress to rejuvenate the country, it has included "the growth rate of agricultural investment should be higher than the growth rate of the country's regular revenue", "improving the working environment and treatment of agricultural scientific research, promotion, and education personnel" and so on. "Agricultural Law" and "Agricultural Technology Extension Law", but agricultural technology has not attracted enough attention from relevant leaders, and investment in agricultural technology has not been fully implemented.Due to the basic position of agriculture in our country, the development and progress of agriculture are directly related to social stability and the sustainable development of the national economy. The country's investment in agricultural science and technology should be the main channel. In order to meet the needs of social development, the country should increase the investment in science and technology year by year. intensity.According to experts' calculations, the average annual real growth rate of investment in agricultural scientific research should be maintained at 5%, and the growth rate of agricultural technology promotion should be higher than 5%.At present, my country's investment in agricultural scientific research and agricultural technology extension is far from reaching this level.

From the perspective of investment in agricultural scientific research, insufficient funding not only reduces the output quantity and quality of agricultural scientific and technological achievements, but also makes it unable to push the achievements to the market. Since 1985, the proportion of my country's agricultural scientific research funds in the total agricultural production value has not only not increased, but has declined year by year. In 1996, it fell to 0.36%, less than 1/6 of the average of developed countries, and far lower than the 30 lowest-income countries. The average science and technology investment intensity (0.65%) in the 1980s was 1/2 lower than the simple average of 110 countries.

The proportion (investment intensity) of my country's agricultural technology extension expenses in agricultural GDP dropped from 0.3% in 1987 to 0.23% in 1995, which was less than 1/3 to 1/4 of that of developing and developed countries. The per capita annual expenses for promotion activities dropped from 1167 yuan in 1986 to 894 yuan in 1995, an average annual decrease of 0.6%. Due to the large population and the lack of arable land, China's agricultural production is doomed to only take the path of increasing the output per unit area. To increase the output per unit area, under the premise of a certain investment, the application of science and technology plays a decisive role.Relevant experts have calculated that the potential for increasing the production of agricultural products in the future in my country will basically be concentrated in agricultural technology.For example, there is still 6 million mu of hybrid rice promotion potential across the country. Calculated by increasing the yield by 75 kg per mu, it can increase the production of 4.5 billion kg of rice; the average yield of high-quality rice is 500 kg. If it develops to 200 million mu by 2000, the potential for increasing production is huge; The area of ​​crops suitable for mulching cultivation technology in my country is about 350 million mu. The area where this technology has been promoted is less than 1/3, and the potential for further promotion is quite large.If the national multi-cropping index increases by 1 percentage point, it is equivalent to expanding the sown area of ​​more than 1.5 million hectares.

The transformation from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, from extensive management to intensive management, will inevitably require a major development of agricultural science and technology.The Third Plenary Session of the Fifteenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China raised this to the height of "a new revolution in agricultural science and technology must be carried out", which puts forward many new propositions for agricultural science and technology, such as breeding of animal and plant varieties, efficient use of agricultural resources, modern intensive Breakthroughs should be made in areas such as chemical planting and breeding technology, prevention and control of agricultural biological disasters, storage and transportation of agricultural products, and processing technology for agricultural products; grain crops should increase per unit yield, improve varieties, and eliminate unmarketable varieties; economic crops should improve quality and rationally adjust regional layout; vigorously promote advanced Practical technology and dry farming water-saving agricultural technology, etc.In a nutshell, future agricultural development will largely depend on the development of agricultural science and technology, and the development and application of agricultural science and technology will play a decisive role in whether the Chinese can feed the Chinese.

In China at present, in order to vigorously increase the contribution rate of science and technology to agricultural production, in addition to strengthening agricultural scientific research, the more important thing is to promote the results of agricultural scientific research.At present, there are three main channels for the promotion of agricultural science and technology in my country: one is agricultural administrative promotion agencies, including the promotion system of the National Rural Extension System; the other is the promotion channels of agricultural colleges and universities; the third is the promotion channels of agricultural scientific research units.Among the three, the construction of agricultural administrative extension organization system is the most critical.

First of all, it is necessary to gradually improve the national agricultural technology extension station as the commander, the provincial (city) agricultural technology extension station as the "leader", the county agricultural technology extension center as the backbone, the township (town) agricultural extension station as the foundation, and the village service organization as the "leader". Promotion outlets, technology demonstration households as the example of the agricultural technology promotion network, support the development of various private professional technical organizations, and form an agricultural technology promotion service system in which the state, collectives and various private technical organizations cooperate and complement each other.At the same time, in order to actively promote the promotion of agricultural technology in our country, the county station is required to proceed from its own situation, in line with the principle of serving the county-level economy and developing grain production, while earnestly strengthening its own construction, make full use of its favorable position, and widely Carry out business alliances with scientific research departments and colleges and universities, obtain new or applicable scientific and technological achievements in a timely manner, and conduct experiments, demonstrations, and promotions under their guidance.

Secondly, strengthen township (town) and village-level technology promotion institutions to solve the problem of scientific and technological faults.The township (town) and village science and technology promotion organization goes up to the county-level station and goes down to the farmers.Therefore, it is a hub for technology promotion.Since the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, this level of promotion agencies has been weakened, forming a "fault" in science and technology promotion.Therefore, in order to build a scientific and technological bridge between county-level stations and farmers, it is required to establish a new management system in townships (towns) and villages that can coordinate decision-making, management, operation, service, etc. Rural science and technology work, organizing technology introduction, demonstration and popularization, strengthening scientific and technological information and doing a good job in technical training.

Third, expand the agricultural science and technology promotion team.The agricultural science and technology extension team is an important force to accelerate the transformation of scientific and technological achievements into productivity.To expand the agricultural science and technology extension team, one is to implement current policies, improve working and living conditions, and help them solve practical difficulties in life.The second is to formulate a reward policy for grassroots agricultural technology extension, to reward and commend agricultural technology extension units and individuals who have made great contributions and achieved remarkable results, and fully mobilize their enthusiasm.The third is to continuously enrich the national grass-roots agricultural technology extension institutions and technical forces, formulate preferential policies for grass-roots agricultural technology extension personnel, encourage scientific and technological personnel to promote technology at the grass-roots level, extensively carry out vocational and technical training for farmers, and improve farmers' ability to accept and apply new agricultural technologies. ability, implement the "green certificate", cultivate a large number of grain planting experts, combine agricultural scientific research, education, and promotion, and jointly serve the development of grain production.

Now, the Third Plenary Session of the 15th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China has formulated a series of policies to support and support agricultural development. Agricultural investment is gradually becoming the focus of the government and the hot spot of society. Whether China's agriculture can take off again depends on agriculture. The development and application of technology. If a child from the city writes that he wants to be a farmer in the composition of "My Ideal", nine out of ten will be regarded as a fool; and if a child from the countryside takes being a farmer as his ideal, nine out of ten will be scolded : Good for nothing!Even in our newspapers and on TV, it is often advertised that a certain farmer is "promising" and has become a cadre in the city after self-taught; Under the guidance of this kind of public opinion, even rural children set the goal of studying to jump out of the "farm gate".Therefore, in China, there is an embarrassing phenomenon that "those with knowledge do not farm, and those without knowledge do not grow well". The quality of the labor force of my country's agricultural population is poor, which has become a major hidden danger restricting the development of agriculture.There are more than 6,000 agricultural scientific and technological achievements published in my country every year, but only 30-40% of them are converted into actual productivity, which is far from the 70-80% conversion rate of foreign countries, and less than 20% of them have actually formed a scale.The main reason is that the quality of farmers themselves is low and their ability to absorb high technology is weak.About 90% of farmers in our country have low cultural quality. Although the overall quality of farmers has been greatly improved, the number of young people with more education is decreasing. This is in line with the need for farmers in many agricultural developed countries to have a certain degree of cultural Far away. According to the survey conducted by the Central Policy Research Office, 13.8% of household heads or decision makers are illiterate, and 41.5% have primary school education; in addition, 11.5% of households have technical expertise, and only 3.9% of households have received vocational education and training. %, while illiterate and semi-literate accounted for 16%.According to statistics from the National Bureau of Statistics, only 38.6% of rural farmers in my country have a junior high school education, only 9.3% have a high school and technical secondary school education, and only 0.2% have a college education or above. In the minds of some people, agricultural production is the simplest labor. Therefore, if you go to work as a farmer after studying in college, most people will think it is abnormal.In fact, modern agriculture, like modern industry or modern national defense, also requires high-quality talents.In many developed countries, it is very common to become a farmer after graduating from college.For example, 32.2% of agricultural workers in the United States have a college education, 21.2% in Japan, 19.3% in Canada, 21.2% in Australia, 2.5% in India, 2.9% in Thailand, and 3.6% in Turkey.However, the illiteracy and semi-literacy among agricultural workers has been almost eliminated in developed countries, with only 0.5% in the United States and 2.2% in Europe. The cultural quality is not high, coupled with the influence of the old system of the traditional product economy and the planned economy, quite a few farmers face the market economy with conservative thinking, narrow vision, do not know how to arrange production and business activities according to market demand, and at the same time, cannot accept and master modern Agricultural science and technology, thereby affecting the development of agricultural production.According to estimates by economists, primary school graduates can increase labor productivity by 43%, middle school graduates can increase by 108%, and university graduates can increase by 300%. From the statistical survey, we can also find that the cultural quality of the labor force is significantly related to the level of per capita net income.According to surveys conducted by relevant departments, in areas where the per capita annual net income is more than 2,000 yuan, the rate of illiteracy and semi-illiteracy is 9.6%, while in areas where the per capita annual net income is less than 800 yuan, it is 29.9%; Those with a technical secondary school accounted for 11%, while in areas with less than 800 yuan, only 61.5% of farmers had primary and junior high school education, and only 8.5% had high school and technical secondary school education.Among the 13 central and western provinces with a national per capita net income of less than 800 yuan, the education level of the rural labor force is as follows: 56% are illiterate and semi-literate; less than 10% have a high school education or above.Now it is difficult for us to distinguish whether it is because of poverty and low cultural quality, or because of low cultural quality and poverty, but what we know is that the two can cause and effect each other, a vicious circle. In addition, there is another trend worthy of our attention, that is, a large number of rural laborers who flow into cities are not only young and middle-aged, who are the pillars of the countryside, but most of them are farmers with certain cultural knowledge.This means that a group of relatively high-educated farmers have left among the low-educated farmers, and those left behind to farm in rural areas will have a poorer cultural quality structure. The poor cultural quality of peasants has aroused the great attention of the Party Central Committee.The Third Plenary Session of the Fifteenth Central Committee of the Party decided that while strengthening rural education, we should “attach great importance to rural adult education” and “intensively integrate production practices and organize farmers to learn advanced and practical techniques for planting, breeding and processing agricultural products. Through various Ways to guide farmers to learn and master the knowledge of commodity production, marketing and management.” The ultimate goal is to cultivate “a new type of farmers with ideals, morality, culture, and discipline.” Without modern farmers, there would be no modern agriculture, and at the same time there would be no modern China.Therefore, it is an arduous and urgent task before us to strengthen cultural education and scientific and technological training for farmers.