How does our country modern facility agriculture develop at present? What are the new arrangements and trends in implementing the new plan? The reporter conducted an interview.

Modern facility agriculture is a type of agriculture that uses modern information technology, biotechnology, engineering equipment technology and modern management methods to provide relatively controllable environmental conditions for the growth of animals and plants and to a certain extent get rid of natural dependence for efficient production, covering facility planting, facility animal husbandry, facility fisheries and public facilities providing supporting services.

  The Gobi desert wafts fruit and vegetable fragrance. In the Ecological Agriculture Industrial Park of Suzhou District, Jiuquan, Gansu Province, the assembled solar greenhouse, tomatoes, cucumbers and other vegetables are fresh, and the vegetable farmers are busy picking and loading the truck; In the large-span greenhouse, fruit trees such as pitaya and figs are full of vitality... the area of Gobi solar greenhouse in Suzhou reaches 30,000 mu, and the area of intelligent greenhouse reaches 110,000 square meters.

  Smart animal husbandry to achieve scale. Shandong Laixi, the country's largest sheep milk powder mono production factory was built and put into operation, each person can manage 1000 dairy sheep, 5G, Internet of things, big data, artificial intelligence and other continuous capabilities, Laixi meat and egg and milk output ranked first in Shandong county region for 10 consecutive years.

  Modern facility agriculture can break through the constraints of resources and environment, continuously improve the efficiency of unit output, and ensure the stable and safe supply of important agricultural products. Gansu tapped the potential of the Gobi Desert and developed 400,000 mu of facility agriculture. Zhang Guosen, head of Jiuquan Agricultural Technology Extension Service Center, introduced that the annual output of high-end solar greenhouse vegetables is equivalent to 5-8 times the output of open land; The unit yield of factory recirculating aquaculture is more than 6 kg/cubic meter, and the land use is about 90% less than the traditional mode.

  After years of development, facility agriculture has become an important source of agricultural products such as vegetables, meat, eggs and milk. According to Zhang Hui, president of the Planning and Design Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, the production of vegetables in facilities will reach 230 million tons in 2021, accounting for 30% of the total vegetable production; The planting area of facilities in China has reached 40 million mu, and about 70% of meat, eggs and milk and 52% of aquaculture products are provided by facilities.

  On this basis, to promote the modernization of facility agriculture, there is still broad space: China's annual consumption of more than 97 million tons of meat, more than 34 million tons of eggs, more than 59 million tons of milk, nearly 600 million tons of vegetables, more than 71 million tons of aquatic products; Under the premise of ensuring grain production, it is imperative to obtain area from non-cultivated land and benefit from new technology.

  At the implementation level, the "Plan" puts forward four special plans to clearly construct modern facility planting industry based on energy saving, modern facility animal husbandry based on efficient and intensive, modern facility fishery based on ecological and healthy breeding, and modern logistics facilities based on storage and preservation and drying.

  In Laixi, facility agriculture has become one of the leading industries, with a planting area of more than 300,000 mu and an output of more than 1 million tons. Liu Dong, director of the Bureau of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of Laixi City, said that it is also necessary to improve the utilization rate of agricultural resources such as light, heat, water and soil and the input and output rate of factors, and strengthen the upgrading of technical equipment and modern scientific and technological support.

  In this regard, the "Plan" proposes to promote the research and development and integration of facilities structure, special varieties and other aspects of technology, and strengthen the promotion and application of efficient agricultural machinery, advanced intelligent equipment and management systems. "Complete facilities are a prominent symbol of modern agriculture." Qi Fei, chief engineer of the Planning and Design Institute of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, said that modern facility agriculture integrates advanced technologies such as new materials, intelligent environmental control and precision drip irrigation, and should accelerate the development of intensification, standardization, mechanization, greening and digitalization.

  As facility agriculture moves toward modernization, structural weaknesses such as insufficient total volume and backward facilities coexist, the task of green transformation is heavy, intensive production needs to be strengthened, supporting services are lagging behind, and factor support is insufficient.

  In recent years, the application of facility agricultural equipment technology has been accelerated, and the results have gradually emerged. Zhao Chunjiang, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, introduced that modern equipment and technology such as automatic control of production management and the integration of new water and fertilizer have increased the mechanization rate of facility planting to more than 42%, and large-scale livestock farms have basically realized key link mechanization and automation; Water-saving, land-saving, fertilizing-saving and medicine-saving technologies have been widely applied. The water-using efficiency of high-efficiency plant planting has increased by more than 50% compared with field planting, and the use of pesticides and fertilizers has decreased by more than 30% and 20% respectively. "Shenlan No. 1" and other deeper off-shore large-scale intelligent aquaculture and fishing farms have been put into use.

  Guo Hongyu, director of the Engineering Construction Service Center of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, believes that the front end should speed up the cultivation of independent varieties and build a number of modern facilities and seedling centers in the main producing areas; At the back end, it is necessary to do a good job in cold chain logistics and intensive processing of storage and preservation, and form a cold chain logistics network of agricultural products with complete functions, orderly layout and complete chain.

  The Plan proposes a series of quantitative objectives: By 2030, the scale of China's modern facility agriculture will be further expanded, with the proportion of facility vegetable production rising to 40 percent, the scale of animal husbandry to 83 percent, the proportion of facility fishery production to 60 percent, the mechanization rate of facility agriculture to 60 percent, and the contribution rate of scientific and technological progress in facility agriculture to 70 percent, and a number of modern facility agriculture bases will be established. The qualified rate of quality and safety sampling of agricultural products in facilities nationwide was stable at 98%.

  In the process of achieving the goal, modern facility agriculture will also bring comprehensive benefits.

  In Shouguang, Shandong province, the local vegetable greenhouses have grown to 173,000, with an annual output of 4.5 million tons and a per capita output of more than 4 tons. In 2022, the per capita disposable income of farmers in the city will reach 28,300 yuan. Liu Lihua, deputy director of the Planting Industry Management Department of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural areas, said that facility agriculture has high efficiency, high output and high efficiency, and facility vegetables are labor-intensive industries, and only 20 million workers are needed every year in the production link, and prenatal and post-natal services can indirectly drive a large number of jobs.

  Guo Pei, a professor at China Agricultural University, said that modern facility agriculture also plays a strong role in driving rural infrastructure and effective investment. It is estimated that 1.97 tons of steel and 0.4 tons of cement are needed to transform one mu of facility greenhouses, and 5.5 tons of steel and 5.8 tons of cement are needed to build a new mu of modern facility greenhouses. At present, there are 19 million mu of old vegetable greenhouses in the country that need to be reformed, and there is 5 million mu of development space for high-end facility agriculture, which is expected to drive the use of steel cement more than 100 million tons and pull investment of nearly 2 trillion yuan.

  With the implementation of the "Plan", the modernization of infrastructure will be further integrated into the modernization of agriculture and rural areas, which will help consolidate the foundation of the construction of an agricultural power.

Source: People's Daily (Page 03, July 06, 2023)