Yang Dan: Ensuring an effective supply of primary agricultural products and promoting a good start to the construction of an agricultural powerhouse

2023-04-26

The year 2023 marks the beginning of building a strong agricultural nation and the comprehensive implementation of the 20th CPC National Congress spirit. Recently, Professor Yang Dan, from the School of Economics and Management at Southwest University, was interviewed by our reporter on how to ensure an effective supply of primary agricultural products and promote the construction of a strong agricultural country.

 

Yang stated that "having a strong agricultural supply guarantee capability is a basic characteristic of a strong agricultural country, and ensuring an effective supply of primary agricultural products is a top priority for building a strong agricultural country. It is of great significance for maintaining social stability, ensuring national security, improving people's quality of life, and achieving common prosperity."

 

"Accelerating the transformation from a major agricultural country to a strong agricultural country not only conforms to the development trend of agricultural modernization, but is also a necessary path for the construction of a socialist modernization power," Yang Dan believes. Ensuring the effective supply of primary agricultural products and promoting a good start to the construction of a strong agricultural country can be achieved through five aspects: promoting production, improving circulation, establishing principles, expanding sources, and ensuring emergency supply.

 

China Daily: The core of primary agricultural product supply lies in the domestic production of primary agricultural products. This is related to the proactive control of national food security, economic and social stability, and China’s comprehensive modernization in the new era. How can we enhance the comprehensive production capacity of primary agricultural products?

 

Yang: To promote the comprehensive production capacity of primary agricultural products, it is necessary to fully unleash the potential of core production factors such as land, labor, and technology.

 

Firstly, it is necessary to solidify the foundation of primary agricultural product safety in all aspects, strictly adhere to the "120 million hectares red line" of arable land, strengthen the construction of high-standard farmland, and improve the efficiency of land scale.

 

Secondly, we need to start with key "bottleneck" technologies that restrict primary agricultural product production, accelerate the research, development and innovation of a batch of key core technologies and products, and strengthen modern agricultural science and technology and material support, such as in the biological seed industry, farmland conservation, smart agriculture, and agricultural machinery and equipment.

 

In addition, it is also necessary to increase the income of agricultural production and operation entities, and fully mobilize their enthusiasm for producing primary agricultural products.

 

China Daily: As a middle link connecting production and consumption, circulation plays a guiding and connecting role in promoting production and consumption. How can we promote the circulation of primary agricultural products and ensure their supply?

 

Yang: Currently, China is facing the challenge of ensuring the supply of primary agricultural products under the conditions of openness, which requires the coordinated use of both domestic and foreign markets and resources. Based on a strategic, security, and development perspective, agricultural resource allocation needs to be conducted to meet the needs of society for primary agricultural products.

 

Based on this, we need to strengthen the construction of domestic and international market circulation channels and networks for primary agricultural products, improve the modern market circulation system for primary agricultural products, ensure the flow of information and logistics, and ensure that primary agricultural products can smoothly reach the demand end from the production end.

 

China Daily: In the supply and demand relationship of primary agricultural products, there are differences in the status and contribution of different types of primary agricultural products. How can we ensure the dynamic balance between supply and demand?

 

Yang: To promote the dynamic balance between supply and demand, we need to establish the principle of priority for primary agricultural product supply. Firstly, we need to consider the natural and commercial properties of various primary agricultural products, based on the existing resource carrying capacity and production potential of agriculture, and determine the supply priority from both the demand and supply side.

 

On the one hand, substitutability, income elasticity, food culture stickiness, nutritional value, and green environmental protection should be prioritized on the demand side. On the other hand, tradability, substitutability, and profitability should be prioritized on the supply side. In addition, the comparative advantages of land availability, labor supply, capital accumulation, and technological substitutability should be the priority principles for resource allocation.

 

China Daily: As a populous country of more than 1.4 billion people, ensuring the stable supply of primary agricultural products is of great significance. How can we expand the sources of primary agricultural products and ensure stable supply?

 

Yang: To expand the sources of primary agricultural products, we need to build a diversified supply system. Firstly, we need to establish the concepts of "large-scale agriculture", "large-scale food", and "large-scale resources", broaden the channels for primary agricultural products, and explore and expand agricultural production resources and spatial resources. We cannot rely solely on arable land and traditional resources, but need to expand the entire national land resources and cultivate more abundant biological resources beyond traditional crops and livestock.

 

To achieve this, we need to fully utilize China's abundant resources such as mountains, waters, fields, forests, lakes, grasslands, and deserts, broaden the channels for primary agricultural products from grasslands, forests, rivers, lakes, seas, and facility agriculture, and build a diversified supply system for primary agricultural products.

 

China Daily: What aspects should China focus on to effectively prevent and resolve risks associated with primary agricultural products?

 

Yang: Extreme weather, sudden public health events, and the unstable international environment have brought about instability to the security of the primary agricultural product supply. To prevent and resolve risks associated with primary agricultural products, the key is to improve the collection, storage, and risk warning mechanisms, and enhance the emergency guarantee capacity for primary agricultural products.

 

Specifically, we need to first identify primary agricultural product supply risks, strengthen forward-looking strategic analysis, and establish long-term effective risk warning mechanisms. We then need to improve the national reserve system for primary agricultural products and the system for strategic material reserve of important agricultural products. In addition, we should establish a coordinated linkage mechanism between central and local reserves, ensure the effective operation of the reserve emergency mechanism, continuously improve the efficiency of reserves, and ensure the emergency supply of primary agricultural products.