By Ye Xingqing,Research Department of Rural Economy, DRC

One of the major tasks in the course of economic and social development during the 13th Five-Year Plan period is to address some urgent issues, and one of them is agricultural modernization. To realize agricultural modernization is in fact to realize national modernization. Compared with the development of industrialization, IT application and urbanization, agricultural modernization is still lagging behind. So the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee proposed that in the next five years China should vigorously promote agricultural modernization and achieve significant progress by 2020. In the next five years we should adhere to this major goal and solve the most prominent problems facing agriculture modernization.There are two significant problems facing us during the 13th Five-Year Plan period. First, we should utilize the window period of the 13th Five-Year Plan to summarize the relevant issues relating to China’s low competitiveness of agriculture and find out the best way to solve them. The relevant problems are as follows. 1. We should enhance the competitiveness of agriculture and promote land circulation and concentration, and improve labor productivity in agriculture, which is probably one of the most basic measures to improve the competitiveness of agriculture.2. We should carry out reform of agricultural support and protection system, mainly including the implementation of market pricing, and the separation of price from subsidy. 3. We shouldpromote the strategic adjustment of agricultural structure, implement the strategy of comparative advantage,relax market access for agricultural products, and properly deal with the relationship between imports and farmers' livelihood.4. We shouldencourage non-price competition throughthe development of three industry convergence and the sale of agricultural products by farmers in local market, and we should cultivate brand building of agricultural products, and add cultural elements to agricultural products toenhance non-price competitive advantage of China's agricultural products. In addition, due to the fact that people are worried about food safety in China, this is another major issue to be addressed during the process of adjusting agricultural structure. Efforts should be made to guarantee food safety so that consumers can rest assured about domestic food quality. Second, we should utilize the window period of the 13th Five-Year Plan to solve the low sustainable development of China’s agricultural growth. There are two ways to solve this problem. 1.Measures should be taken to remove the unhealthy capacity via appropriate outlets. 2.We should, according to the requirement of the central government, enhance land and technology input to increase grain production during the 13th Five-Year Plan period.

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