On 11 Feb 2019, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MoARA), the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), the Ministry of Finance (MoF), the Ministry of Commerce (MoFCOM), the State Administration of Market Regulation（SMAR）and the National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration (NFSRA) jointly issued the"National Strategic Plan for Agricultural Revitalization through Quality Enhancement (2018-2022)”, which was compiled under the National Strategic Plan for Rural Development (2018-2022), aimed at boosting the agricultural efficiency and international competitiveness and transforming China from an advanced agricultural country. The document acknowledged the recent achievements in agricultural development, but China's agriculture needs to embrace the crucial opportunities of rural development and consumption upgrading. Series of quantitative goals to be achieved by 2022, including quality of agricultural products, industrial structure, output efficiency, quality of farmers and international competitive strength. 4 developmental directions were pointed out and 7 massive agricultural projects will be implemented.

CURRENT SITUATION, CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES

In recent year, China has acquired substantial growth in agricultural productivity and rural income and entered into a “high quality” growth model:

1. Production layout- The functional regions of grain production and reserve areas of main agricultural products have been constructed systematically and industrial structures of superior and characteristic  agricultural products have been initially formed;

2. Resource usage- the utilization rate of irrigation water has been increased to 0.548 and the national initiative of zero-growth of chemical fertilizer and pesticide has been fulfilled 3 years earlier. The recycling rate of livestock manure and agricultural film and utilization rate of crop straws maintain at above 60% and 80% respectively;

3. Facilities/equipment and technology- 73 million hectares of high-standard farmland has been constructed and over 96% of the main crops were cultivated with fine breed. 66% of the crops were produced using mechanized agriculture and 10.7 hectares of the farmland has been treated with soil-testing fertilization;

4. Business scale-The number of new-type business entities has reached to some 8.5 million and the business scope includes farmland trusteeship, bundling services and industrial consortium. Over 40% of the farmland is operated by scale entities;

5. Economic performance-The adjustment in plantation and animal farming has achieved significant success. The ratio between the value of agriculture product processing sector and the value of agricultural production was 2.2 to 1. The value of leisure farming and agro-tourism has grown by more than 9% annually.

6. Product quality and safety- qualification rate of national routine inspection stabilized at above 96% for consecutive 5 years and the number of certified green agricultural products, organic agricultural products and geographical-indicated agricultural products was 36,000.

Meanwhile, the quality development of China's agriculture is challenged by a series of problems. China still needs to transform the concept from output increase to quality improvement and the ever-increasing demand for quality products is yet to be met. China has not yet perfected the regulatory system for standardized production of agricultural products and poor supervision are posing hidden risks to product quality and public safety. Since China has traditionally adopted the extensive mode in agriculture production to date, resource restraint is more evident than ever before. The disconnection between technology and production and poor convergence among agriculture, industry and service sectors have weakened China's competitiveness strength and part of agriculture products are considerably import-reliant.

China's per capita GDP is closed to $9,000 and the burgeoning middle-income groups have dramatically boosted stronger demand for quality products. China has vigorously advanced agricultural supply-side structural reform across the country and gained wider experiences, some of which are practical and duplicable.

The next 5 years will be an important strategic opportunity for China's agricultural development and a roadmap was elaborated to outline the development goals to be achieved by 2022:

KEY INDICATORS FOR CHINA’S AGRICULTURAL REVITALIZATION THROUGH QUALITY ENHANCEMENT

MASSIVE AGRICULTURAL PROJECTS

The implementing plan offers greater impetus to greening, optimization, characteristic and branding construction in agricultural sector and 7 massive projects will be implemented to support these directions.

1. Green Development

• Farmland construction-China will launch large-scale efforts in soil leveling, amelioration, irrigation and drainage and the infrastructures including roads, shelterbelt networks and power distribution facility. 66.7 million hectares of well-facilitated and mechanization compatible farmland will be constructed by 2022;

• Characteristic products-300 more demonstration plots of characteristic products will be constructed and designated by 2022 and publicity and marketing campaign will be enhanced to increase international awareness;

• Protection of fertile soil-40 million hectares of fertile soil will be protected  in northeast China and the farmland quality will be improved by 1 grade.

• Green development promotion initiative-China will make further works on resource utilization, including replacement of chemical fertilizers and pesticides and recycling of crop straws, livestock manure, agricultural film, as well as aquatic conservation in Yangtze River region. By 2022, the utilization efficiency /recycling rates of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, crop straws, livestock manure and agricultural film will reach 41%, 86%, 75% and 82%. 300 counties will be designated as the “demonstration county of green pest control” and about 100 plots will be designated as the “demonstration plot of agricultural sustainable development (green development pilot zone)” and their practices would be adopted in other areas.

• Environmental stewardship-The prevention and control of pollution sources and areas will be further intensified and the groundwater overexploitation northern regions will also be regulated. China expects to accomplish some pollution abatement demonstration zones and exploitation-replenishment balance  in northern regions, as well as several successful soil heavy metal treatment patterns.

• Fauna and flora protection- The defects in fauna and flora protection and alien biological invasion prevention will be remedied by projects construction and perfect safeguard systems including monitoring and forecasting, disease and disaster emergency response, pesticide risk monitoring and control, as well as inter-regional integrated control.

2. Whole-course Standardization

• Agricultural standardization-Standardized agricultural production will be compressively enforced across the county by introducing international advanced standards and accelerating the development of agricultural production practice for bulk agricultural products and characteristic agricultural products. A total of 100 breeding bases, 800 green-food raw material standardized production bases, 120 agricultural product production bases, 500 standardized demonstration livestock farms and 2,500 health aquaculture demonstration farms will be constructed. In the next 4 or 5 years, 3000 pesticide MRLs and 500 MRLs for veterinary drug and 1000 agricultural standards will be added, ranging from agricultural production to market operating.

• Product certification- China will actively promote the certification of green, organic and geographical-indicated agricultural products and encourage indigenous agricultural enterprises to receive overseas certification/accreditation, as well as expedite mutual recognition with other countries. The number of certified green food, organic agricultural products and geographical-indicated agricultural products will reach 45,000 by 2022.

3. Industrial Convergence

• Agricultural product processing-The existing R&D mechanism of agrotechny and a multitude of down-stream processing enterprises will be upgraded or created and The percentage of processed products will reach to 70% by 2022.

• Refreshment and cold chain-Food transport and warehouse enterprises will be encouraged to upgrade their cold storage, refrigerated truck and supporting facilities and the number of cold chain transport vehicles would increase steadily until 2022.

• Local market and facility-China to construct more local processing facilities including grading, precooling, initial processing, refrigeration and rural circulation system will be modernized by 2022.

• Value-adding-The new-type entities will be encouraged to explore more uses and function of the agricultural products. By the end of 2022, 300 industrial convergence demonstration parks and 300 pilot zones will be constructed and more business pattern can be developed.

• Modernization expansion-High-level integration among agricultural production, processing, logistic, R&D and other services within/nearby the same industrial park will be facilitated and 300 national modernized agricultural parks will be designated by 2022.

• Village development-by 2022, a batch of strong agricultural village will be nourished, which will offer new impetus of China’s economy.

4. Brand Cultivation

• Brand promotion-To improve creditability of it's agricultural brand, China will adopt catalog management on agricultural brands and strengthen the certification, supervision and protection of agricultural brand. Agricultural brand with high market share, strong competitive strength, and rich cultural deposit will be designated as national agricultural brand. China expects 300 public brands, 500 enterprise brands and product brand can be built by 2022.

• International cooperation- Outbound agricultural enterprises are encouraged to construct breeding center, processing facilities, logistic facilities, port and dock, and other agribusiness facilities abroad and 5 to 10 large transnational grain corporations can be cultivated by 2022.

• Export promotion of characteristic- agricultural counties with characteristic products, advanced technology and prominent advantage will be facilitated with scale and standardized production based and local export enterprises will be established and supported.

5. Quality and Safety Promotion

• Credit system-Credit system of safety and quality information exchange and entity credit archives will be established. Credit rating and joint reward/penalty will be introduced and the negative result will be associated with government support/funding and categorized supervision.

• Supervision formwork -A top-down control and dispatch system will be established to organized the supervision on product quality and safety by 2022, comprising 1 ministerial center, 32 provincial centers, 16,800 local service station, 800 green-food raw material bases, 10 national labs for agricultural baseline testing, 32 training base, 50 labs for risk assessment and 50 labs at main producing regions

• Green input extension- Growers will be encouraged to use the low-toxic and low-residue pesticides and veterinary drug. By 2022, the percentage of green agricultural inputs will be 60% and product qualification rate will maintain at above 98%.

• Traceability system- An open traceability system of agricultural products covering the whole nation will connect with the national traceability system of important products. County authorities and scale growers/producers will be guided to implement quality traceability management, risk pre-warning management. Product recall and the traceability control on agricultural inputs will be further completed. By 2022, 280,000 exemplary sites of agricultural traceability will be constructed and 80% of the farmer cooperatives, leading agricultural enterprises and other scale entities can basically realize product traceability.

• High quality grain products-China will continue to increase the supply of high quality grain products by perfecting its quality testing and post-production service and promote sustained income increase of the grain growers. In some grain producing regions, the percentage of high quality grain product will be 30% by 2022.

6. Scientific and Technological Innovation

• Quality orientation-The innovation ability will be improved by investments in faculties targeting major technological bottlenecks. In some core areas such as livestock manure utilization and green agricultural inputs, China expects to make some major breakthrough by 2022.

• Modernized breeding-China will rationalize the layout and improve the facility, function and mechanism of existing seed breeding industry, which will be modernized with specialized germplasm banks, preserve zones, breeding bases and trait testing laboratories.

• Mechanized agriculture-Uses of agricultural machinery will be promoted and IoT (Internet of Things) and artificial intelligence be largely introduced. The percentage of mechanized agriculture will be 71% and 3.34 million hectares of high-efficiency mechanized farmland will be newly constructed by 2022.

• Digital agriculture-China will emphasize the advanced integration between digital technique and modern agriculture, which includes digital rural, intelligent cultivation, intelligent farm machinery and a remote-sensing system combining UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) and field observation will also be constructed. China expects that Digital agriculture technology can be prior adopted on field crop plantation, garden installation and scale cultivation and productivity can be increased by 20%.

7.Human Resource Quality

• Agribusiness-The qualification designation of new-type agricultural entities will continue and the numbers of county exemplary family farms, professional farmer cooperatives and leading agricultural enterprises will be 100,000, 10,000, and 1,500 by 2022 and the percentage of organic agricultural products in their total outputs will be 90%

• Professional farmer-series of training programs will be launched and the total number of trained person-time will be 5 million by 2022.

• State-own agricultural enterprises-In some agricultural reclamation regions, collectivize and enterprise reform and modern enterprises system will be fully carried out. Quality assessment criterion and quality control platform will be constructed to enhance the credibility of state-own reclamation enterprises.