Development Visions and Policies of China’s Agriculture by 2050

Abstract

To achieve common prosperity, we need to equalize the labor productivity in agriculture with that in other non-agricultural sectors. China’s agricultural labor productivity is less than 1/3 of that in the manufacturing and service industries. Our analysis on the trend of agricultural development suggests that it is essential to raise the agricultural labor productivity through internal labor division to ensure national food security. The breeding industry needs to transform toward scaled and modernized development and the planting industry needs to change to a new pattern—20% of large-scale farmers produce 80% of agricultural products or contribute 20% of added value while 80% of small-scale farmers produce 20% of agricultural products or contribute 80% of added value. Large-scale farmers mainly produce bulk agricultural products including grain to ensure food security while small-scale farmers develop highvalue agriculture to ensure income growth. Eventually, the labor productivity of large- and small-scale farmers will converge to achieve common prosperity, which is inevitable for China’s agricultural development and is an ideal vision in line with national realities. However, the task of transforming to the new pattern is arduous, and the government needs to make major strategic deployments and introduce corresponding safeguards and incentive measures. Particularly, it is necessary to establish a policy support system for large- and small-scale farmers, accelerate the progress of urban-rural integrated development, improve the land transfer markets, optimize the innovative system of agricultural science and technology as well as the human capacity building system, and establish an organizational guarantee system to realize agricultural modernization.

Keywords

• future agriculture, planting industry, 80/20 pattern, agricultural labor productivity