Report on the Work of the Government

3. Promoting steady growth of agriculture and sustained increases in rural incomes

We need to pay even greater attention to modernizing agriculture in the course of industrialization and urbanization. We must continue to make solving problems related to agriculture, rural areas, and farmers a top priority in all of our work; increase policy support to strengthen agriculture, benefit farmers, and enrich rural areas; and consolidate and build upon achievements in the development of agriculture and rural areas.

We will steadily develop agricultural production and increase farmers' incomes by various means. We will continue to carry out activities to steadily increase grain production, keep the area of land sown to grain crops stable, and increase per-unit yields. We will guide farmers to adjust their mix of crops or livestock, and produce more farm products that are high in quality or short in supply. We will support the production of vegetables, meat, eggs, milk, and aquatic products. We will continue to increase agricultural subsidies, raise their standard, expand their coverage, improve mechanisms for issuing them, and direct new subsidy increases mainly to large family farms, specialized farmer cooperatives, and producer-oriented service organizations. We will continue to raise the minimum purchase price for grain, and we will raise the average floor prices for wheat and rice by 7.4 yuan and 16 yuan per 50 kilograms, respectively. We will improve the mechanism for subsidizing major growing areas and increase rewards and subsidies to major counties that produce important agricultural products such as grain, oilseed, and hogs. We will implement the 2011-2020 rural poverty alleviation and development program and, in accordance with the new national standards for poverty alleviation, do a good job of all poverty alleviation and development work, and step up our work in contiguous areas with particular difficulties to ensure that people in poverty share more fruits of reform and development.

We will speed up progress in agricultural science and technology. The fundamental way to develop agriculture is through science and technology. We will vigorously promote innovations in agro-science and increase support for R&D on and the application of key technologies for cultivating superior varieties and breeds, preventing and controlling animal and plant epidemics, and ensuring the quality and safety of agricultural products. We will accelerate reform and development of the service system for spreading agricultural technology in villages, and improve public service agricultural agencies in townships, towns, and regions. We will improve the system for subsidizing agricultural technologies and encourage farmers to use advanced and appropriate agricultural technologies. We will develop modern agriculture demonstration sites, encourage farmers to grow high-yield crops, promote the standardization of farming techniques, and accelerate agricultural mechanization.

We will strengthen agricultural and rural infrastructure. The central government plans to allocate 1.2287 trillion yuan for agriculture, rural areas and farmers, 186.8 billion yuan more than last year. With these funds we will build and upgrade water-saving facilities in irrigated areas and build more small water conservancy projects, and vigorously develop water-efficient agriculture. We will intensify efforts to develop, improve, and reclaim rural land and develop on a large scale basic farmland that meets high drought and flood resistance standards. We will take speedy steps to harness small and medium-sized rivers, reinforce small aging reservoirs, and take comprehensive measures to prevent and mitigate geological disasters caused by mountain torrents. We will continue to improve working and living conditions in rural areas by strengthening infrastructure such as water, power, and methane supply facilities, roads, and cultural and sports venues, and by cleaning up the environment and renovating dilapidated houses more quickly.

We will deepen rural reform. We will uphold the basic rural operation system. We will work diligently to determine, register, and certify land ownership. Farmers' rights to the land they contract to work on, to the land on which their houses sit, and to proceeds from collective undertakings are property rights conferred by law, and these rights must not to be violated by anyone. We will provide better supervision and services for the transfer of contracted land-use rights, and develop farming operations on an appropriately large scale. We will place farmland under strict protection, and formulate and promulgate regulations concerning compensation for the expropriation of rural collective land. We will support large-scale farming by specialized farmer cooperatives and leading enterprises, encourage various sectors of society to provide services for agriculture, develop agricultural insurance, and increase commercialization and specialization in agriculture. We will deepen comprehensive rural reform. We will also reform systems for managing state-owned farms and forest farms and continue to deepen reform of tenure in collective forests.