Comprehensive measures to strengthen the support of agricultural science and technology

Notice on Launching the Collection of Agricultural "Spark Technology"

A few days ago, The Ministry of Agricultural and Rural Affairs issued the《Notice on Launching the Collection of Agricultural "Spark Technology"》, and launched the collection of the agricultural "Spark Technology" nationwide, aiming to encourage and respect the scientific exploration and technological innovation, so that more agricultural science and technology innovation spark can be transformed into real productivity. It plays an important role in improving our nation’s agricultural science and technology supply and application capacity.

The key of agricultural modernization is agricultural science and technology modernization. Now, our country’s agricultural science and technology strength has continued to improve, and it’s international competitiveness has been significantly enhanced which provide strong momentum for agricultural modernization. However, from the perspective of comprehensively creating new advantage of industrial development with stronger innovation, bigger competition, safer supply, we still have weakness in our agricultural science and technology.

On the one hand, the industrial support capability of agricultural science and technology is still weaker. Our nation’s agricultural science and technology supply is mainly from colleges and universities、study institutions. Scientific research institutions, which pay more attention to the innovation of technology and theory not the actual need of the agricultural industry chain, resulting in the disconnection between agricultural science and technology and the scientific demand of agricultural industry chain. Insufficient integration of agricultural science and technology innovation chain and agricultural industry chain. It’s hard to provide strong technical support for accelerating the realization of the advanced agricultural industry foundation and the modernization of the industrial chain and supply chain.

On the other hand, agricultural science and technology households face the "last mile" problem. The agricultural science and technology will be transformed into real productivity when it only be applied to the whole process of the agricultural industry chain. The application of many agricultural science and technology achievements have higher requirements on the scale of land and service. For example, intelligent agricultural machinery farming has higher requirements on the scale of concentrated contiguous, and it is economical only if the operating area exceeds a certain scale. However, the family operation dominated by small farmers is a reality that my country’s agricultural development must face for a long time. Due to the small scale of land and scattered management of small farmers, it is difficult to connect with advanced agricultural technologies such as intelligent machinery, which limited the large scale application of agricultural machinery and the widespread promotion of agricultural technology to a certain extent.

To add the “wings” of the science and technology to agricultural, we need to take multiple measures to further improve the supply and application capabilities of agricultural science and technology.

First, break through key core technologies. Agricultural science and technology innovation need incremental innovation “from 1 to N”, and need more agricultural original basic research and applied basic research “from 0 to 1”. We should exert strength of National Laboratory and National Agricultural Research Institute to break through "Neck stuck" key core technology, upgrade major basic theory and cutting-edge technologies in agricultural science, break through technical bottleneck, product equipment and engineering technologies of high quality, efficient and green development of the agricultural industry. Provide original innovation for the advanced agricultural industry foundation and and modernization of the industry chain and supply chain, and enhance the international competitiveness of my country's agricultural industrial chain.

Second, promote the deep integration of industry, academia and research. We transmit market information and agricultural science and technology needs from back end of the agricultural industry chain to the middle end of it, and from the middle end of the agricultural industry chain to the front end of it. Focusing on the needs of the entire agricultural industry chain, taking the county as a unit, focusing on the leading agricultural industry, and carry out the technical research and integration demonstration of the whole agricultural industry chain with universities, scientific research institution and agricultural new high-tech enterprise to improve agricultural industry chain level and the transformation rate of agricultural scientific achievements. To accelerate the development of whole agricultural industry chain through the deep integration of industry-university-research.

Third, assisting the application of agricultural science and technology with the dual scale operation of “land+service”. In the Northeast of China and other areas with more per capita arable land and serious rural population outflow, land transfer can be used to promote large-scale land management, reduce the cost of applying agricultural technology, and increase the benefits of applying agricultural technology. We should combine land scale operation with service scale operation to develop modern agriculture and promote the quick application of the advanced agricultural technology in the Northeast of China. In areas that are not suitable for large-scale land transfer, innovation in the form of agricultural management can be used to solve the problem of uneconomical scale of agricultural technology application for small farmers, so that small farmers can well share the cost-saving and income-increasing results brought by agricultural technology.