By Ye Xingqing, Research Team on “China’s Rural Areas: Marching towards 2035”, Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

Research Report, No.66, 2020 (Total 6131) 2021-3-23

Abstract: The development of China’s agriculture and rural areas in the next 15 years will see some major structural changes with new features. The proportion of agricultural output value in total GDP will become smaller and the number of agricultural producers in the working population of the whole society will decrease. There are many factors inducing the above-mentioned changes. The drop of household consumption based on Engel coefficient measurement will inevitably lead to declining growth rate of social consumption demands for agricultural products. The progressive decrease of marginal returns on input and the withdrawal of marginal capacity would make the growth of agricultural production capacity slow down and enlarged dependency on imports would contract the market share of domestic agricultural products. Affected by differences of the evolution stage of industrial structure and agricultural resource endowments, the regional gap of agricultural growth in China will become further widened. The insufficiency of total output and species diversification of major agricultural products will become more prominent, coupled with rations turning excessive and fodder becoming insufficient. The gap between production and supply of livestock products will be expanded. The income improvement of rural households through employment in non-agricultural sectors, the aging trend of rural permanent population and the hollowing-out of villages caused by rural population’s outflow to urban areas will all become more notable and further evolved.

Keywords: modernization of agriculture and rural areas, structural changes, the year of 2035