No 1 Document for 2009

II.   Steady development of agricultural production

5.   Strengthening support to grain production

The grain sowing area should be stabilized, variety structure should be optimized and yield should be increased to continuously enhance comprehensive production capacity. We will establish and improve interest compensation mechanism of the major grain producing areas. In line with the contribution of the major grain producing areas to national food security, funds for general transfer payments and bonus to counties of large grain production will be increased. Investment in the construction of agricultural infrastructure facilities and funds for integrated agricultural development should be arranged as a priority, support will be given to the development of the grain industry and dragonhead enterprises. It is to guide the establishment of interest integration mechanisms between the producing and marketing areas, to promote accelerated economic and social development of the major producing areas so as to ensure that the major producing areas will get reasonable interest compensation and grain growers will get reasonable economic benefit. Abolishment of counterpart funding requirement for grain risk fund in major producing areas should be accelerated. We will promote the building of grain production capacity for an incremental 50 billion kg, with county (farm) in the major producing area as a unit, inputs will be concentrated on integrated development. The provincial governor responsibility system for “grain bag” should be further strengthened, all localities must assume the responsibilities of protection of arable land and water resources, grain production and marketing and market regulation, effective food security supervision and inspection and performance examination mechanism will be established at all levels. In association with reinvigorating the old industrial bases of the northeast, modern agricultural development should be accelerated. The active role of state-owned farms in constructing modern agriculture and securing national food security must fully be tapped.

6.   Supporting advantageous producing areas to develop production of cash crops as oil-bearing crops in geographically compact areas

We will speed up a new round of regional distribution planning of advantageous agricultural products. Various policy measures of the state supporting oil-bearing crop production must be implemented, the production bases of high quality soybean in the northeast and Inner Mongolia and the “low oleic acid and thioglucoside” rapeseeds along the Yangtze River basin will be strengthened. The national woody plant oil industry development plan should be formulated and implemented as soon as possible, focusing support on suitable areas to develop oil camellia and other woody plant oil industry, and breeding and popularization of high yield and high quality varieties should be accelerated. Cotton production should be steadily developed, the construction of cotton production bases of the Yangtze River basin and 3H areas will be launched. Advantageous areas will be supported to develop sugar, potato and natural rubber crops and actively promote horticulture crop production, such as vegetable, fruit, tea and flower.

7.   Accelerating the development of scale and standardized healthy production of livestock and aquaculture

Through adopting market early warning measures, reserve regulation, increasing insurance products and futures trading, it is to steadily develop pig production. Subsidy policies for improved breeds of pigs and production sows will be implemented continuously, the scope of award to counties with large export volume of pigs to other parts of the country will be expanded. Policies of subsidizing improved dairy cows and feeding of high quality dairy cows will be implemented continuously, financial award policies will be implemented in counties of large dairy production. Efforts will be made to support enterprises to establish standardized milking stations to ensure the quality of source milk. Investment in standardized scale livestock and poultry production farm projects should be increased, support through credit should be increased, land policies of animal farms should be implemented. It is necessary to intensify efforts in improved breeds programs for livestock, poultry and aquaculture, to enrich the contents of animal disease prevention system development, speed up the construction of animal labeling and disease tracking system and put in place the subsidy funds for village disease prevention workers. The demonstration area (farm) of healthy aquaculture production will be expanded. Fish catching breaks and bans system will be continued, aquarist resource nurturing and protection such as increasing fingerling production for release into nature should be intensified. The construction scale of fishing ports, fishing vessel navigation signs and fishing vessel safety facilities should be expanded, ocean fishery industry will be supported and strengthened.

8.   Exercising strict supervision on the quality and safety of farm products from farmer’s field to table

The Law of Food Safety should be promulgated as soon as possible, corresponding regulations and bylaws to match with the agricultural product quality and safety law should be formulated and improved, supervision working mechanism for responsibility division and cooperation should be improved, further exploration on more effective food safety supervision should be carried out, strict food quality and safety tracking system, recall systems and market access and withdrawal systems should be implemented. We will speed up the construction of agricultural production quality and safety inspection and testing systems, improve agricultural product quality and safety standards and strengthen certification of the qualification of the inspection and testing institutions. The scope of agricultural products and foods for routine inspection should be expanded; the costs for compulsory inspection and quarantine will be gradually sorted out and reduced. Feedstuff safety supervision system will be improved to promote the healthy development of the feedstuff industry. Enterprises’ responsibilities for quality and safety will be intensified and self-inspection will be carried out for each batch of products marketed. Credit checking system for quality and safety of agricultural products and food production and management should be established. Special campaigns will be launched to firmly curb pesticide and veterinary (fish) drug abuse in violation of laws. Construction of standardized agricultural demonstration parks should be speeded up to push forward dragonhead enterprises, farmer specialized cooperatives and specialized large households to implement standardized production ahead of others and support the construction of the production bases of green and organic agricultural products.

9.   Strengthening regulation of import and export of agricultural products

High efficiency and flexible agricultural product import and export regulation mechanism should be improved to coordinate domestic and international trade and build closer communication and consultation among the government, associations and enterprises. The scope of credit insurance for agricultural product export should be expanded and efforts will be made to explore risk prevention mechanism of combining export credit insurance with agricultural insurance and export credit. Favorable credit policy will be adopted for the export of labor and technology intensive agricultural products. Agricultural enterprises with transnational operations will be fostered. Following the rule of WTO, access system for foreign ventures to engage in agricultural product and agricultural input operations will be improved, the security examination scope and procedures for foreign ventures to merge domestic agro-enterprises will be clearly defined and joint meeting mechanism will be established.