World Agriculture
Developments, trade, data, and topics in world agriculture
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Can ecological agriculture feed China?Can ecological agriculture feed China? Wang Xuan 10.07.2014 Unfair subsidies and confused debates are hampering the development of ecological agriculture, argues Wang Xuan article image Ecological agriculture can meet China's future food needs, argues Wang Xuan (Image by Greenpeace) Frequent food scandals in China in recent years such as "cadmium rice" and "poisonous beans" have caused public outrage. In response, voices calling for the development of ecological agriculture (by which I mean to minimise the use of chemical fertilisers and maximise the use of local knowledge and resources) have swelled. Fewer chemicals in agriculture, for example through biological control and promotion of organic fertilisers - argue supporters of ecological agrticulture - will decrease harmful impacts on the environment and ensure food safety. While the chemicals used in agriculture do not normally contain heavy metals, overuse of them will acidify the soils. In this kind of soil heavy metals become more active and more easily absorbed by plants. Opponents of ecological agriculture claim that the use of fewer fertilisers and pesticides will decrease agricultural output. They do not believe that ecological agriculture can feed China. Food waste and diets But the very question - can ecological agriculture feed China? - is in fact highly problematic. First, what is "feeding China" actually supposed to mean? According to data from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation, the world produces enough food to cover the world population's needs - yet nearly 900 million people still go hungry every day. China alone is home to 130 million people experiencing malnutrition, mostly in remote rural areas, while nearly a fourth of the urban population is obese. Thus food security does not solely depend on food production, but also on distribution - which is to say accessibility. It is erroneous to believe that sufficient food production automatically eradicates malnutrition as long as China's poor continue to have much worse access to the stuff than the rich. Second, food waste remains a serious problem. According to estimates from the United Nations Environment Programne, one-third of the world's food production gets wasted during storage, transportation and consumption. Experts from China Agricultural University found that around eight million tonnes of protein and three million tons of fat go to waste from the nation's dinner tables alone - enough to feed 200 million people for a year. In this light, China's current level of food production is more than sufficient. Critics say that with climate change and other threats to agricultural output we cannot switch to systems of farming that may be less productive. However, research continues to suggest that ecological agriculture actually would meet challenges better than conventional agriculture and could ensure the long-run sustainability of food production. For example, a global survey of 18,870 rice farmers in 13 countries shows that a traditional growing method known as "System of Roots Intensification (SRI)" (which relies on tillage, density reduction, soil fertility enhancement etc.) can yield 20-100% more rice while reducing fertilisers by 50-100%, seed demand by 80-90% and water demand by 25-50%. A case study on Xinsheng Village in Sichuan province reveals that SRI increased rice yield by 42% compared to conventional farming and that many farmers found SRI to be less labour-intensive. A study on 62 'ecological operations' from around the world concluded that fewer pesticides were used in 75% of the cases (by an average of 70.8%) while output increased across the board (by an average of 41.6%). Ecological agriculture has already proven successful in some of the world's agricultural powerhouses. The combined wheat production of France, Germany and the UK accounts for one-third of Europe's total. High yields have been maintained despite a decline in the use of fertilisers over the past 20 years (see below). Research has previously shown that European farms that implement the strictest ecological standards at first obtain yields 8% smaller than those of conventional farms. Yet after a transition period production picks up and eventually meets, or even exceeds, yield levels achieved by conventional agriculture. Were China to implement ecological agriculture and aim to use fewer chemical inputs step by step in different areas, the slightly lower yields of the areas in transition could be offset by increases in other areas not yet converted, so overall there will be no major fluctuations of output. And if food waste were to decrease as well by even as little as 10%, then ecological agriculture could indeed "feed China ". Fertilisers and chemical inputs Organic farms do not achieve less output. The labour-intensive nature of ecological agriculture is, potentially, not an impediment either as it provides employment opportunities to rural jobseekers. Furthermore, organic farming technology is constantly improving. Ecological agriculture's real disadvantage is its weak position in an imbalanced discourse and the uneven distribution of benefits. The benefits are anchored in the State Council's Notice, 'Reform on Deepening the Fertiliser Distribution System,' which outlines a series of preferential treatments for fertiliser companies. China subsidises the fertiliser industry with nearly 110 billion RMB a year, nearly as much as the central government spends each year on education. The original intention behind the subsidies was to lower the price of fertilisers, thereby keeping farmers' production costs low. But the "Notice" also liberalised the fertiliser business and so the market now determines the price. The proportion of farmers' spending on fertilisers has constantly increased vis-a-vis their production costs and just a quick glance into the fat books of the companies tells us all about the whereabouts of the money. Organic farms, in contrast, receive zero support. Greenpeace finds that the government has launched no concrete project related to ecological agriculture and only spent a total of 7 million RMB on related research in 2011. Rather than asking whether ecological agriculture can feed China we should be asking whether ecological agriculture would also feed the chain of vested interests in today's conventional agriculture.
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Analysis and Reflection on Some Important Issues of National Economic SecurityAnalysis and Reflection on Some Important Issues of National Economic Security china Economic News Network 2014-06-19 11:31:02 (Author: in the water) national economic security is an important part of the national security system relative to national political security, national military security and national cultural security. In the early concept of national security, countries emphasized military security and political security, but did not involve economic security. However, with the end of the Cold War and the rapid development of the world economy, economic security has gradually attracted the attention of all countries and has become the basis of national security. National economic security is in the basic position in the national security system, and economic interests and economic security play a guiding role in the national security strategy. Whether it is a hegemonic country or a developing country, the premise of its national security strategy is to expand and safeguard national economic interests, so the national security strategy is centered on economic security needs. National economic security is the economization of national security, which usually refers to the domestic and international environment faced by a country's economic survival and development, the ability to participate in international economic competition and the corresponding international political status and influence it brings. Its most fundamental economic interests are not harmed, that is, a country's economy as a whole has sovereign independence, a solid foundation, healthy operation, steady growth, and sustainable development. National economic security mainly includes financial security, industry and trade security, strategic resource security and economic information security. What is 1. National Economic Security? National economic security has not yet formed a more unified definition. The understanding of economic security by politicians and strategists in developed countries such as the United States and Japan is mainly based on national economic interests and national security needs, and elaborated from the strategic and policy levels. The U.S. government and theorists believe that the national economic security of the United States is that the country's economic interests must have sufficient security guarantees; the national economic development of the United States cannot be threatened by external threats; economic security is essentially "the ability of the economy to adapt to change", the national economy The international competitiveness of the system. Proceeding from the status of a hegemonic country, American politicians and scholars believe that economic security is the guarantee and embodiment of the hegemonic status of the United States in the world. The Japanese government's view on national economic security is that since Japan has neither resources nor energy, both rely on the international market. Therefore, Japan must maintain the country's economic security by ensuring the stable supply of overseas resources and energy and the opening of the international market. Russian economists and strategists tend to closely link social security with economic security, arguing that "socio-economic security is a state of the national economy. In this state, it is possible to ensure rapid social development, maintain economic and social stability, and have a strong national defense capability to withstand the influence of internal and external undesirable factors". Russian scholars believe that to ensure national security, we must first ensure the country's economic security, and for Russia, economic security is to ensure the normal operation of the national economy. Since the definition of national economic security by Russian scholars is based on the special feelings of countries in transition, it is more meaningful for our country. Chinese scholars have a more consistent definition of national economic security: national economic security refers to the overall economic competitiveness of a country; the ability of a country's economy to resist various external invasions, interferences, crises, and stable development; a country's economy can exist, And the continuous development of the domestic and international environment. National economic security corresponds to national economic interests. However, it can only be the major national economic interests in the national economic interest system that can be recognized by the national economic security level, and the government formulates public policies and even adopts strong measures to support it. These major economic interests are related to the survival and development of the whole country and all the people, and even the rise and fall of the country. Only when it involves the survival and development of all the people of the whole country, and even when the major economic interests related to the rise and fall of the country are attacked and destroyed, can we make a judgment that "national economic security has been endangered. 2. the main problems and challenges facing China's economic security at present, China's economic security is facing severe challenges and unprecedented threats, mainly in the following nine aspects. 1. Financial security, internal and external troubles. Financial security is the core of economic security. However, China's financial security is not safe, and even poses a great threat to economic security. On the one hand, the institutional contradictions accumulated for a long time make China's financial security have huge hidden dangers; on the other hand, with the international financial integration and China's accession to the WTO, China's financial security will face the test of external shocks. First, the illegal activities of financial institutions are serious and the financial regulatory system lags behind. At present, in the financial field of our country, some financial institutions take risks in order to pursue high rates of return, and violations of laws and regulations occur from time to time. This behavior not only seriously damages the interests of depositors and reduces the credit of financial institutions, but also poses a potential threat to the healthy development of China's finance. This potential threat is amplified by the lack and lag of the external regulatory system. Second, external shocks from financial openness and financial globalization. After joining the WTO, although it is conducive to learn from the advanced management, technology and experience of international financial institutions to promote China's financial reform and development, but with the gradual opening of the financial market, to a certain extent, it will also cause heavy pressure on China's financial industry. It is difficult for domestic financial institutions to compete with strong financial giants in developed countries in terms of service quality, work efficiency, operating capabilities, and technical conditions. This means that once foreign financial institutions enter the RMB business, domestic commercial banks and other financial institutions will face the problem of losing a large number of customers, and even endanger the survival of domestic financial institutions. Third, international hot money poses a potential threat to China's financial security. International capital, also known as international speculative capital, is short-term capital that has no fixed investment area and moves between markets in pursuit of high short-term profits. This kind of capital wanders in the international financial market, making profits by taking advantage of the short-term imbalance between international interest rates, exchange rates and the prices of financial commodities such as stocks, and the potential threat of international hot money to China's financial security cannot be ignored. 2. Industry and trade security, external shocks are increasing. Industry and trade security is an important part of national economic security. With the implementation of the strategy of reform and opening up, China has made gratifying achievements in attracting foreign investment and foreign trade. At the same time, China's industrial and trade security is also facing the risk of increasing external shocks. First, foreign direct investment (FDI) has brought a certain impact on China's industrial development. First of all, from the perspective of industrial structure, foreign investment in general heavy industry, light agriculture and infrastructure construction; emphasis on small-scale, low-risk general processing industry, light fine processing industry; emphasis on labor-intensive industries, light capital and technology-intensive industries. With the continuous increase of the scale of foreign investment, this kind of industrial investment structure will bring great impact on the overall development of China's industry. Secondly, due to the various preferential policies of the state for foreign investment and the advantages of foreign-funded enterprises, the domestic market of some products in China has been controlled by foreign-funded enterprises, and this trend is still expanding. For example, washing products, beverages, etc., foreign-invested enterprises account for 35%-50% of the output and sales; foreign-invested enterprises in program-controlled exchanges account for 70% of the market; foreign-invested enterprises such as home appliances and cars account for more than half. The entry of a large number of foreign direct investment and the control of the relevant market have formed a strong squeeze on the development of national industries, which greatly threatens the economic security of our country. Second, the high degree of dependence on foreign trade reduces the ability of our economy to resist external risks. With the growth of China's economy, the degree of dependence on foreign trade is gradually increasing. In 2005, China's foreign trade dependence has reached 80%. In 2006, China's dependence on foreign trade was 65 per cent, compared with 21.8 per cent for the United States, 46 per cent for France, 27.4 per cent for Japan and 36.4 per cent for Russia. It can be seen that China's dependence on foreign trade is significantly higher than that of other developed countries. The high degree of dependence on foreign trade reduces the ability of China's economy to resist external risks to a great extent. 3. Strategic resource security, the situation is extremely serious. Since the reform and opening up, China's economic growth has made remarkable achievements, but this extensive economic growth is at the cost of massive consumption of resources. From 1990 to 2001, China's oil consumption increased by 100 percent, natural gas consumption by 92 percent, steel consumption by 143 percent, copper consumption by 189 percent, aluminum consumption by 380 percent, zinc consumption by 311 percent, and consumption of 10 non-ferrous metals by 276 percent. Since the 1990 s, China's total energy consumption has far exceeded its total production, and the contradiction between energy supply and demand has been intensifying. In order to make up for the shortage of domestic energy supply, we must rely on foreign imports, so that the degree of dependence on foreign energy gradually increased. According to relevant forecasts, by 2010, China's dependence on foreign oil, iron ore, copper and aluminum will reach 57%, 57%, 70% and 80% respectively. Once the international energy market fluctuates (such as a sharp rise in international crude oil prices), it will inevitably have a strong impact on the development of the domestic economy and affect national economic security. 4. The ability of scientific and technological innovation has been weakened, scientific and technological talents have been lost, and the dependence on international high technology has been deepening. Thirty years of practice has proved that in all industries with a highly open market in my country, the gap with foreign advanced technology has not narrowed, but has a tendency to continue to expand. On the contrary, the more foreign countries impose strict technical blockade on China, the more likely it is that China will make real technological progress. For example, since the full opening of China's color TV industry to the outside world, China's TV manufacturing has become a major global producer, but the core technology of color TV has always been in the hands of foreign investors, the generation gap between China's color TV display technology and foreign countries has not narrowed, and the main profits of color TV production are still controlled by foreign investors. On the contrary, my country continues to be blocked by international blockades in some key areas, and it is in these blocked areas that my country's independent innovation technology has leapt to the world's first echelon, such as launch vehicle technology, satellite communication technology, research and development of large supercomputers, and recent high-speed EMU technology, maglev train technology, etc. But these areas of technology that have been forced to come from behind are only a few. The loss of scientific and technological talents is weakening the foundation of China's independent scientific and technological innovation. In recent years, China is the third wave of immigration since the reform and opening up. The difference between this immigration wave and the previous two immigration waves is that this third immigration wave shows that my country's education system has also been completely incorporated into the unreasonable international division of labor system. my country is also placed at the bottom of the industrial chain in the international education system., Responsible for primary education (elementary school, middle school), while college education has begun to be monopolized by developed education systems such as the United States. There is a serious shortage of public resources for education in China, and a very small number of students can receive "elite education". This small number of reserve talents who have received "elite education" are setting off an increasing wave of immigration. By 2010, the total number of students studying in the United States in my country has exceeded 100,000. Most of the students in the graduating classes of some key middle schools choose to study directly and give up applying for domestic universities. For students who have already gone to domestic universities, most of the outstanding students from our top universities choose to go abroad. According to statistics, as an important reserve force for my country's scientific and technological development, the current return rate of science and engineering doctoral graduates studying in the United States is only 8%, which is the lowest in the world and far lower than other developing countries. Not only that, my country is currently surging with a wave of immigration dominated by technical elites and entrepreneurs. This will mean the double loss of knowledge and wealth in our country. 5. China's agriculture and food security are facing serious challenges. As of 2010, China has seven consecutive years of grain harvest. But behind this is the grim situation of China's agricultural security and food security. At present, my country's agriculture and food security are facing serious threats in the following main aspects: one of the threats: foreign investment is stepping up its massive penetration into China's agricultural sector. Foreign capital, mainly US capital, is stepping up efforts to penetrate and control China's agriculture and food sectors in the following ways: directly seizing market share with low-priced agricultural products to combat China's local planting industry; cooperating with financial capital to fully penetrate the circulation of agricultural products; and gradually controlling China's agricultural products market with genetically modified seeds as a weapon. Therefore, when China's agricultural sector is gradually and fully opened to foreign investment under the WTO framework, the competition for foreign investment in China's agricultural products is showing a trend of overall retreat. my country's soybeans, corn, cotton, vegetable seeds, meat and other fields are being occupied by foreign capital. Take soybeans as an example. Since China's accession to the WTO and the abolition of import tariffs and quota restrictions on soybean, China's soybean planting has been completely defeated. my country has changed from the world's largest soybean producer and soybean exporter to the world's largest soybean importer in less than ten years. The import dependence of soybean consumption has reached 70%. In the context of my country's increasing dependence on imports of soybean and other oil crops, multinational capital has further controlled more than 60% of my country's oil companies. At present, similar transnational capital invasion operations to the upstream and downstream of my country's edible oil industry chain are being repeated in agricultural fields such as cotton, corn, seeds, meat and poultry, and have begun to gradually strengthen the invasion in the most basic agricultural products such as wheat and rice. Intensity. Threat two: China's agricultural land quantity and quality continues to decline, threatening China's food security. Although my country has stipulated a red line to ensure "1.8 billion acres of arable land" to ensure food security, the obvious challenges are: first, the bottom line of the red line of "1.8 billion mu of cultivated land" is being eroded in large-scale urbanization, real estate development and industrial project development. Second, the quality of this "1.8 billion mu of arable land" is declining, and it is being challenged by a serious decline in quality in the following main aspects: some local governments, in the name of land replacement, replace good land with inferior land, carry out real estate development with good land, replace the quota of arable land with inferior recultivated land, and use a large number of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on the land. The fertility of our arable land continues to decline; land and pasture are being degraded under excessive use. The high-intensity use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides in agriculture is the basic reason why China can still maintain grain production. But it is also a time bomb that will trigger a future food crisis in our country. According to statistics, the amount of fertilizer used in agricultural land in China is five times the world average. China's agricultural land accounts for only 7% of the world's total, but the amount of chemical fertilizer used accounts for 34% of the world's total. The damage to agricultural land caused by excessive application of chemical fertilizers is extremely difficult to repair. Once the land becomes "waste land", the natural restoration process will take hundreds of years or even longer. According to the research of the Ministry of Agriculture, the problem of grassland degradation in my country has been very serious. The area of grassland degradation has reached 90%, and it is still increasing at an annual rate of 0.5 (that is, 30 million mu). Threat three: China's extensive agricultural production will threaten China's food security. The scientific and technological content of field agriculture in China is low, and the investment in agricultural science and technology is seriously insufficient, which leads to the dependence of agricultural production on the continuous application of chemical fertilizers. The consequence of the abuse of chemical fertilizers in my country's agriculture is not only to cause land degradation, but more seriously, the abuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is making my country's agricultural production "petroleum", making my country's food production directly linked to the world oil market. The sharp rise in world oil prices in the past few years has led to sharp fluctuations in world food prices and China's food prices, which is enough to be alarming. The water crisis. my country is a country with a serious shortage of water resources per capita. The per capita water resources in my country is only 2300 cubic meters, which is only 1/4 of the world average. It is in such a serious water shortage of natural environment, China's agricultural water to account for more than 70% of the water consumption. Among them, the extensive irrigation method of agricultural water has wasted more than 40% of the precious agricultural water. The effective utilization rate of agricultural water in China is very low. At present, about 10 per cent of our food production is completely dependent on groundwater. In Shandong, one of the main grain producing areas in China, the dependence of agricultural irrigation water on groundwater has exceeded 50%, and the extraction of groundwater for agricultural use has reached twice the amount of recharge. In the North China Plain, one of the main grain producing areas in my country, the extraction of groundwater is 32 billion cubic meters per year, which has far exceeded the recharge of precipitation and rivers. Because of the over-exploitation of groundwater for many years, more than a dozen huge funnel areas have been formed in the North China Plain, that is, the land subsidence area formed by the serious decline of groundwater, which means that the stratigraphic structure of groundwater supplied by surface water has been destroyed in the area, and the groundwater in North China can never be repaired. To make matters worse for China's per capita water scarcity, the distribution of water resources in China is seriously unequal. my country's per capita water resources only rank 88th in the world, but the area north of the Yangtze River in my country only accounts for 1/3 of my country's average level. The land area north of the Yangtze River accounts for 63% of the country, but only 19% of the water resources. On the one hand, the area north of the Yangtze River is an important agricultural production area in China, on the other hand, it is an area with serious shortage of water resources. The development of three things in our country in the past three decades has further exacerbated the development of my country's agricultural water crisis: First, the investment in farmland water conservancy facilities is seriously insufficient. According to the survey, the basic construction of water conservancy facilities in China is still basically dependent on the construction results of 30 years ago. Second, the scientific research investment in water-saving agriculture is insufficient, and there are almost no scientific research results of water-saving agriculture. Third, the national eating habits are becoming more and more abundant, which will aggravate the development of China's agricultural water crisis. Not only that, China's agricultural and industrial development model is also exacerbating China's water crisis. In the past 30 years, China has become the world's largest textile industry. The textile industry is a high water consumption industry. China has not been able to invest in scientific research to develop new water-saving textile industry technology. Therefore, China's textile industry as a whole is an industry with extremely low water use efficiency. 7. The promotion of agricultural transgenic technology may seriously threaten the food security of our country. At present, the debate on the impact of transgenic technology on the safety of agricultural products is quite fierce, but this is not a fundamental problem that threatens the safety of agriculture in our country. The impact of genetically modified technology on food safety is a problem that can only be accurately judged after at least decades or even hundreds of years of observation. It is too hasty to make an affirmative or negative judgment on it. However, from the perspective of decision-making science, whether the impact of genetically modified crops on food safety and human safety is positive or negative, it will threaten China's food security. The reasons are as follows: one of the reasons: if transgenic technology has been proved to be harmful to human body after decades or even hundreds of years of observation, it will certainly seriously threaten China's food security. However, if transgenic technology is proved to be harmless to human body after decades or even hundreds of years of observation, it will still seriously threaten China's food security. Because the technology patents of genetically modified technology are basically monopolized by multinational companies, my country currently does not master the technology patents of genetically modified technology. If my country promotes genetically modified technology on a large scale, the core technology of my country's grain production will be basically mastered by multinational companies, and the lifeblood of my country's grain and agricultural production will be in the hands of international capital. Moreover, foreign capital is trying to use genetically modified technology as a breakthrough to comprehensively break through my country's last line of defense against the most basic food crops such as rice and wheat. The GM technology patents of these basic food crops have been basically controlled by foreign capital. If my country promotes genetically modified technology in basic food crops, my country's food sector will be firmly controlled by foreign capital, and my country's food security defense line will completely collapse. Reason 2: If genetically modified technology is promoted on a large scale in my country, under the constraints of the natural environment where my country's water resources are severely scarce, my country's agricultural production will fall into a more serious water crisis. So far, the water demand of genetically modified crops is much higher than that of native natural crops, and some have several times as much water demand. In addition, the demand for pesticides for genetically modified crops is also more stringent. The pesticide technology patents of genetically modified crops are mostly in the hands of multinational companies. Therefore, genetically modified crops will make China's demand for water and oil higher, which will aggravate the contradiction of resources in China. The third reason: transgenic technology will reduce the ability of China's agriculture to resist disastrous natural weather, and will greatly reduce the ability of China's agriculture to save itself in the face of major natural disasters. Reason 4: Transgenic technology is a strategic weapon for multinational companies to infiltrate and master the lifeblood of China's agriculture. Over the past decade, international transnational capital has taken full control of China's soybean industry and extended the industrial chain of China's edible oil and feed industry by using transgenic technology. In addition, transnational capital has partially controlled my country's cotton production and corn production by using genetically modified technology, and is striving to penetrate into the field of rice and wheat production. The soaring price of cotton in my country in 2010 is the consequence of the continuous use of cotton transgenic technology by multinational capital to penetrate my country's cotton production in the past ten years. It is the cotton transgenic technology of transnational capital that leads to the decline of cotton quality and yield in China, which leads to a serious gap in supply, forcing China to increase the import of American cotton. In addition, multinational capital currently controls more than 50% of the market share of vegetable seeds in China. 8. The disorderly flow of huge local hot money threatens China's economic security. In the U.S. economic war against our country, foreign hot money is one of the assault forces to launch attacks. In China, another equally amazing destructive force is "local hot money". In recent years, this "local hot money" has repeatedly made waves in China. It can be seen everywhere in China's stock market, property market, agricultural product market, grain circulation field, commodity market, mineral market, gold and silver, medicine circulation, etc. The most conservative estimate of the scale of this local hot money is several trillion yuan, or even higher. The "hot money" mentioned by public opinion, such as the "hot money" in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, is one of its main forces. The existence of "local hot money" and its destructive power have so far not attracted the attention of the Chinese people. The composition of this "local hot money" mainly includes the following main components: first, part of the operating funds of private enterprises are separated from industry and turned into speculative funds; second, idle funds of state-owned enterprises are turned into speculative funds; third, there is no fixed investment in residents' savings. Target speculative funds; fourth, commercial circulation capital is transformed into speculative funds, etc. At present, China's large-scale "local hot money" will cause great damage to China's economy if it forms a common attack target with the inflow of "international hot money" from abroad. 9. The superposition of the two major problems of "over-reliance on export-oriented" and "getting old before getting rich" will threaten China's economic security. According to estimates by population experts, China's demographic dividend period will end in 2030. After that, the total social dependency ratio will rise rapidly. At present, an average of 5.4 working-age adults in our country are raising one elderly person. Twenty years from now, in 2030, the proportion will fall to 1 elderly person for every 2.5 working-age adults. By 2050, this ratio will fall further to one older person for every 1.6 of working age. From the perspective of my country's current labor knowledge structure, at least half of the labor force in my country and in the next ten or twenty years, that is, at least 50%-60%, will still be mainly composed of migrant workers and low-end blue-collar manual workers. The low productivity of this labor force is bound to make it difficult to bear the increasing burden of raising an ageing population. At present, American society is facing the same challenge of aging. More than 30 percent of the U.S. population is now over 50 and more than 20 percent are over 65. According to estimates by US institutions, by 2016, the expenditure of the US Social Security Fund will exceed the income, and the potential gap of the US Social Security Fund will reach 40 trillion US dollars. In the face of such great social security pressure, the solution must be to issue money indiscriminately to claim wealth from the world. And if our country still one-sidedly emphasizes the "export-oriented" strategy, our country will become one of the main countries to support the aging population of the United States. Some Countermeasures 3. Ensuring China's Economic Security economic security is an important part of national security. It is related to the sustainable development of China's economy and the continuous improvement of its comprehensive national strength. It is also a strong guarantee for the realization of the "Chinese Dream" in the hearts of 1.4 billion Chinese people. The Party Central Committee and the State Council attach great importance to the economic security of our country under the new situation. The report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out that "to adapt to the new situation of economic globalization, we must implement a more proactive opening strategy and improve an open economic system that is mutually beneficial and win-win, diversified and balanced, safe and efficient. ...... Improve the ability to resist international economic risks." Some potential risks or signals in domestic economic security have attracted the attention of party and state leaders. All these have pointed out the direction for us to adhere to reform and opening up and ensure national economic security. 1. Improve the legal system for safeguarding China's industrial security. The construction of China's industrial safety legal system should follow the principles of unity of the legal system, ease of operation and coordination. In the current international environment, we can consider to strengthen the construction of the legal system of industrial safety from the following aspects: first, improve the laws and regulations on industrial safety. my country should promptly revise and improve laws and regulations including anti-dumping, countervailing, foreign investment, intellectual property protection, national security, agricultural protection, etc., to form an industrial protection legal system that complies with WTO rules, and promote the legalization and systematization of industrial protection methods; Strengthen the formulation of technical regulations and standards to strengthen the effect of industrial protection; in the process of performing relevant legal procedures, it is clear that enterprises are the subject of litigation, the trade association is the core of organizing and coordinating the response, giving full play to the leading role of both in the export response. At the same time, strengthen the guidance of enterprises to respond to lawsuits, increase negotiations and negotiations, establish a feasible and effective incentive mechanism, and promote enterprises to respond to lawsuits to achieve better results. Secondly, formulate comprehensive laws to regulate foreign investment. It is recommended that relevant departments consider including the industrial orientation, objects, principles, methods, legal application, legal responsibilities, and national review and supervision of foreign investment mergers and acquisitions, so as to make it a programmatic law for regulating foreign investment in my country. Thirdly, strengthen the legislation of industrial safety early warning system. Timely introduction of industrial damage early warning monitoring laws and regulations to strengthen the guidance of industrial safety early warning work. Finally, the coordination of the Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries with other laws and regulations should be strengthened. As a departmental regulation, the "Catalogue for the Guidance of Foreign Investment Industries" should be coordinated with relevant laws and regulations to achieve the unity of the legal system. 2. Give full play to the leading role of the government and effectively enhance the competitiveness of the industry. From the process of industrial protection in developed countries such as the United States, Japan, and Europe, it can be seen that the process of industrial protection is a process of continuous upgrading of the industrial structure, so as to effectively avoid the disadvantages of unreasonable resource allocation and inefficient operation of the industry. Therefore, China needs to seize the opportunity of international industrial division, adjustment and reorganization, give full play to the leading role of the government in industrial development, implement policies to promote industrial development, and provide necessary protection and support for industries with potential advantages in a certain period of time through the organic cooperation of industrial policies and trade policies, so as to promote their development, growth and expansion until they become important industries of the national economy. Build an industrial safety early warning system. Establish an effective interaction mechanism between the government, industry associations and enterprises. The experience of foreign countries shows that maintaining industrial security is not the business of a certain department or an enterprise. It requires the joint efforts of all relevant parties. Close cooperation between the government, industry and enterprises is very important. Only by coordinating and uniting from top to bottom can we form a joint force and have the strength to safeguard industrial security. The competent departments of the Chinese government should strengthen the contact with various industry associations and enterprises, establish contact mechanisms and effective communication channels with industries and enterprises, and exchange information in a timely manner, so that the government can formulate practical and feasible industries on the basis of maintaining information communication with industries and enterprises. Protect policies and work together to do a good job in industrial safety. Trade associations should play a special role in maintaining industrial security. Trade associations should give full play to their role in regulating and serving the export behavior of enterprises, and provide timely legal advice on import anti-dumping for export enterprises. The government, industry associations and enterprises should be highly sensitive to information on various foreign trade remedy measures and technical barriers to trade, and make full use of various channels to collect and sort out information on various barriers that are currently and are being formulated abroad that affect domestic exports. Establish a trade barrier database and consulting center, so as to take preventive measures in advance against possible trade barriers abroad. 3. The problem of industrial safety involves the measurement of industrial safety situation, and the construction of industrial safety early warning system is inseparable from the judgment of industrial safety. First of all, the establishment of industrial safety early warning index system. An important part of the industrial safety early warning system is to build a set of indicators that can reflect the status and trends of industrial development in a comprehensive, dynamic and timely manner. Secondly, determine the industrial safety warning critical domain. The industrial safety early warning system can only really operate after the index early warning critical region is determined. The reasonable definition of early warning critical area has a great influence on accurately monitoring the evolution of various early warning indicators, and then making accurate judgments on the operation and development trend of the industry. Finally, the industrial safety early warning results are analyzed and output. The establishment of an industrial safety early warning system aims to make predictions and issue warnings in a timely manner before the emergence of warnings. Forecasting and warning are based on the output of the early warning system, and the final judgment of the performance of the early warning system depends entirely on the output of the early warning system. 4. Effectively promote independent innovation. Foreign experience tells us that attaching importance to the development of high-tech industries and possessing independent intellectual property rights is the key to maintaining national industrial security. With the gradual integration of China's economy into internationalization, independent innovation plays a more and more important role in improving the international competitiveness of the industry. In particular, in order to form the sustainable competitiveness of the industry and maintain the stamina of sustainable development, we must make a big breakthrough in independent innovation. It is necessary to take the establishment of an innovative country and the cultivation of innovative enterprises as the fundamental measures to ensure industrial security, the strategic alliance of industry-university-research technological innovation as a strategic measure to promote independent innovation, and the establishment of an enterprise technological innovation service platform as a strategic breakthrough. to introduce and train excellent talents as the key to the strategy, and to improve and implement various policies of independent innovation as the strategic guarantee of industrial security. In short, only by establishing a technological innovation system with enterprises as the main body, greatly enhancing the independent innovation capabilities of Chinese enterprises, and realizing economic innovation-driven development, can we maintain my country's industrial security and promote stable, sustained and rapid economic development. 5. Formulate foreign investment regulation policies in line with national conditions and strengthen the supervision of industrial safety. From the experience of various countries, when appropriate foreign investment regulation policies are adopted, which are in line with national conditions and development strategies, the use of foreign investment will achieve good results. On the contrary, the cost of using foreign capital will far exceed its benefits. With the rapid growth of foreign investment and the accelerated pace of foreign mergers and acquisitions, there will be more and more industrial security problems, and it is necessary to strengthen the supervision of industrial security. Strict management of foreign investment, especially strict regulation of foreign mergers and acquisitions. Foreign investment should be encouraged and prevented by "two hands". The grasp of its looseness and tightness and the design of the policy combination should be based on my country's development strategy, the stage of economic development, the maturity of the industry, and the domestic and foreign situation and conditions. Adjust in a timely and flexible manner, so as to assess the situation and keep pace with the times. At the same time, it is necessary to change the management of foreign investment, strengthen the management of foreign investment that has been introduced, establish an index system for the evaluation of foreign-funded enterprises by supervising the development of investment enterprises, distinguish the level of foreign-funded enterprises, adopt different standards, and restrict or even close those enterprises that bring less benefits to China's development. Source: China Economic News Network Editor: Zhao Yangzi
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Book Review: The Fibers That Shaped the Modern WorldFinancial Times, James. Crabtree looking around, a stately neo-Gothic building outlines the skyline of south Mumbai. These buildings, with ornate towers and oddly shaped water jets, are perhaps more in tune with Manchester or London and are somewhat out of step with the financial capital of modern India. At first glance, these buildings, which are out of step with their surroundings, are probably nothing more than the product of the colonists' ambition (some might say the product of extravagance). But in fact, these buildings arose from a rather surprising commercial motive: the global cotton trade. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 cut off one of the most important cotton supply lines in the British Empire, which in turn led to a surge in cotton exports from its second largest supplier, India. India's economy began to prosper, and the income from it funded the construction of large railway stations and civil buildings in Mumbai (the English name of Mumbai was Bombay at that time). Nearly two hundred years later, the Mumbai skyline provides only a small example of the profound impact of cotton. George? Riello (Giorgio Riello)'s book Cotton: The Fabric that Made the Modern World (Cotton) reveals more such examples for us. The author of the book admits that, unlike some other popular history books that try to interpret the road to globalization through individual commodities such as tea, coffee, cod and salt, "Cotton" is not particularly oriented towards leisure books. As an economic historian at the University of Warwick (Warwick University), he looks at a more comprehensive goal: to describe in detail the impact of cotton, including its role in the rise of India and China at the beginning of the last millennium, and its early role in the rise of the global textile industry. Today, the industry's annual business size has reached $425 billion. But the author also makes an important argument in the introduction, refuting what he calls a "primary school" textbook view on cotton. From the beginning of the 17th century, the northwest region of England, with Richard? Arkwright (Richard Arkwright) of the worsted machine and other inventions, for the first time overtook India to become the world's number one cotton fabric producer. Referring to that period, Leiro writes: "It has become an unspoken truth that cotton was the driving force of the industrial revolution.... Large factories appeared, employing (and exploiting) millions of workers. This is the beginning of what we call the modern industrial society." the author does not dispute the importance of cotton in the formation of industrial society, nor does he want to question the importance of cotton to other fields, such as its role in the emergence and development of slavery in the United States. Instead, he aims to add context and depth to the rough description, explaining why these events often hinge on hundreds of years of technological and business innovation, almost all of which takes place in Asia. This book therefore devotes a great deal of space to explaining how cotton spinning technology first spread from India to China and only then to Europe. This narrative explains the importance of the two ancient powers of China and India to the eventual industrialization of Europe. The author points out, with slight complacence, that when Arkwright improved his cotton spinning machine "in the north of England in the 1870 s", "India was still the world leader in the cotton spinning industry". This method of discussion makes him not mention contemporary society too much, but in his careful and rigorous research, he still makes some enlightening comparisons between that time and our current era of globalization. First, a sudden change in the trading landscape for raw materials such as cotton could have far-reaching social and political implications. This insight applies both to the factories in Lancashire and to the plantations in the pre-war South of the United States, as well as to the recent end of the commodity "super cycle" or China's search for natural resources in Africa. Second, the interaction between Western and Eastern economies is enduring, and this relationship will have a decisive impact on the next century. According to Lillo, the rise of cotton relies on technology that has long been developed in Asia. Now, given that China and India are likely to return to the top two seats of the world economy, it can be said that this process is going in the opposite direction. Cotton itself confirms the fact that, with the help of technology imported from industrialized countries, today's India is destined to become the world's number one cotton producer again in the next decade or so. In this sense, the story of cotton offers a relatively simple perspective. Globalization is often seen as a contemporary phenomenon, but that is not the case at all. The writer is the FT's Mumbai correspondent cotton: The Fiber That Shaped the Modern World george. Translator of Liello/Liu Xin Cambridge University Press (Cambridge University Press), RRP: £ 25/$35 http://www.ftchinese.com/story/001051785
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Nature MRSA (methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus): Trouble on the farmMicrobiologists are investigating whether the use of antibiotics on farms has triggered an epidemic of drug-resistant strains in the population. Nature| News Feature http://www.nature.com/news/mrsa-farming-up-trouble-1.13427 MRSA: Farming up trouble Microbiologists are trying to work out whether use of antibiotics on farms is fuelling the human epidemic of drug-resistant bacteria. Beth Mole1 24 July 2013 Pigs carrying methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus were found on US farms for the first time in 2007. DANIEL ACKER/BLOOMBERG/GETTY The sight of just one boot coming through the doorway cues the clatter of tiny hoofs as 500 piglets scramble away from Mike Male. “That's the sound of healthy pigs," shouts Male, a veterinarian who has been working on pig farms for more than 30 years. On a hot June afternoon, he walks down the central aisle of a nursery in eastern Iowa, scoops up a piglet and dangles her by her hind legs. A newborn piglet's navel is an easy entry point for bacterial infections, he explains. If this pig were infected, she would have an abscess, a lump of inflamed tissue, just below the navel. “In human terms, she'd be an outie instead of an innie," he says, rubbing the pig's healthy, pink belly button. Nearly six years ago, an outbreak of 'outies' at this nursery marked the first known infection with methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus(MRSA) in pigs in the United States. MRSA has troubled hospitals around the world for more than four decades and has been infecting people outside of health-care settings since at least 1995 (see Nature 48223-25; 2012). It causes around 94,000 infections and 18,000 deaths annually in the United States. In the European Union, more than 150,000 people are estimated to contract MRSA each year. Its first appearance on a US farm signalled the expansion of what many believe is a dangerous source of human infection. More on antibiotics: The last resort Male investigated the infections with Tara Smith, an epidemiologist at the University of Iowa in Iowa City, who has since launched one of the most comprehensive investigations yet of where MRSA lives and how it spreads into and out of agricultural settings. She has surveyed farms and grocery stores as well as people's homes, noses and pets. Her findings could help to end a raging debate about whether farms' use of antibiotics is contributing to the rise of drug-resistant bacterial infections in humans. Scientists and health experts fear that it is, and that drug-resistant bacteria from farms are escaping via farmworkers or meat. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommended more restraint in the use of antibiotics in livestock, following the lead of regulatory authorities in other countries (see Nature 481, 125; 2012). But the meat and agricultural industries are fighting those restrictions. They claim that MRSA and other drug-resistant bacteria that cause human infections arise in hospitals, and that meat production includes safety measures, such as sanitation rules in slaughterhouses, that prevent resistant bacteria from spreading to and infecting people. “There's a long way between the farm and the table," says Ron Phillips, a representative for the Animal Health Institute, a trade organization based in Washington DC that represents veterinary-medicine companies. The major problem has been lack of data. Many farmers are reluctant to allow scientists access to their facilities, and farmworkers - many of whom, in the United States, are undocumented immigrants - are wary of anyone who might want to sample them. But Smith and a small group of researchers are starting to fill the void. They have “really shaped the state of knowledge in the United States”, says Christopher Heaney, an epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. Smith's current research, says Heaney, could allow officials to “truly say where these bacteria in people's noses are coming from ”. Profit and loss At a concentrated animal-feeding operation (CAFO) about an hour's drive west from Ames, Iowa, the usual din of the nursery is punctuated by the sound of piglets sneezing, thanks to an outbreak of H1N2 influenza. Craig Rowles, a veterinarian and the farm's manager, surveys his charges, some of which have mucus dripping from their snouts. “It's just like when you bring kids to a day-care centre," he says. “After a while, they're going to come home with a snotty nose ." Rowles is using a vaccine to fight the outbreak, but he is also dosing the pigs with two antibiotics - chlorotetracycline and Denagard - to prevent secondary bacterial infections. The combination is also routinely used to prevent bacterial diarrhoea and other common ailments in piglets. Expand NIK SPENCER/NATURE Such practices have been common for decades. But few CAFOs have veterinarians on staff to advise on antibiotic use. They are not required to: veterinary antibiotics are generally available over the counter. And some CAFO operators use antibiotics much more liberally than Rowles does. Small doses of antibiotics in feed curb low-grade infections that might otherwise stymie livestock growth. Studies have found that certain antibiotics can increase pigs' growth rate by 2.5%, enough to make the difference for farmers between profit and loss. In the current US market, a farmer might get around US$1 per pound for a pig that costs about $0.94 per pound to produce. Although farm owners do not always reveal the quantities or types of antibiotics they use, an analysis of FDA data by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future in Baltimore found that in 2009, some 13.1 million kilograms - 80% of the antibiotics sold in the United States that year - were used on farms. Antibiotic use on such a broad scale leads to resistant microbes. In a 1976 study, Stuart Levy, a microbiologist at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, Massachusetts, found that when farmers started using tetracycline, the numbers of tetracycline-resistant bacteria on the farms spiked 1. Within months, resistance had spread to microbes in farmworkers' intestinal tracts. “You don't have to look that far to see resistant bacteria moving to the environment," Levy says. In humans, S. aureus generally lives peacefully on the skin and in the nose. But if the bacterium enters the body through a wound, for example, it can become an aggressive pathogen and eventually make its way into the bloodstream to cause deadly infections. Most infections succumb to antibiotics, but resistant varieties, including MRSA, can be difficult if not impossible to cure. There are 270,000 strains, each potentially harmful. Smith and her colleagues are distinguishing the strains of S. aureus around Iowa City in part by sequence type (ST), a categorization based on DNA sequences from several places in the genome. The sequence type that Male and Smith found in the Iowa nursery in 2007 was ST398 (ref. 2 ). Before then, researchers had seen ST398 mostly in Europe, where it was found in livestock and farmworkers but usually did not cause infection. But two years earlier, ST398 had been reported in a hospital in Hong Kong 3, from patient samples dating back to the early 2000s. For Smith and her collaborator Lance Price, an epidemiologist at George Washington University in Washington DC, it was a sign that the boundaries between animal and human infections were blurring. In February 2012, Price, Smith and their colleagues published a genetic analysis of strains related to ST398 isolated from animals and humans around the world 4. They found that the lineage that gave rise to ST398 originated in humans. At some point, it crossed into livestock, where it acquired genes conferring drug resistance and a preference for pigs before jumping back to humans. As of 2012, ST398 was the cause of up to 20% of human cases of MRSA in the Netherlands, although the infections are generally mild. “No one has even looked at these strains in the United States," says Smith. Doctors, she says, often don't determine what strain of MRSA is causing an infection, so it is possible that the bug has been stealthily migrating between farms and hospitals for years. “In 2009, 80% of the antibiotics sold in the United States were used on farms ." Smith's next step was to see if there were other ways MRSA might make it off the farm. At a grocery store on the outskirts of Iowa City, Smith pulls a shopping cart from a metal corral, takes a sterile swab from her purse, wipes the cart's handle and deposits the swab in a plastic sheath. Then she heads to the meat case. “I think the average consumer doesn't think of this as a risk," Smith says, picking up a shrink-wrapped tray of bright red steaks. Her swabs have told a different story. Beginning in January 2012, Smith and her research assistant, Dipendra Thapaliya, spent a year collecting weekly swabs and meat samples from local grocery stores, including this one. They found S. aureus on nearly every type of surface. Five per cent of grocery carts carried MRSA. Of meat samples, 30% harboured S. aureus, 11% had S. aureus resistant to multiple antibiotics and 3% carried MRSA. The data, which have not been published, also showed that pork products had some of the highest levels of MRSA, whereas meat labelled 'antibiotic free' had little or none. This mirrors what Smith and her colleagues found in samples from farms across the state. On the menu Now Smith is conducting detailed genetic analyses of the samples to identify MRSA subtypes and where they might have originated. She and her colleagues have found ST398 in the grocery-store samples. But to their surprise, they also found ST5, which is generally found in hospitals and in 'community' infections with no obvious link to farms or hospitals. Last year, Smith and Timothy Frana, a microbiologist and veterinarian at Iowa State University in Ames, found that veterinary students who carried MRSA in their noses after visiting pig farms picked up mainly ST5, most of which was resistant to tetracycline 5. The presence of ST5 among livestock suggests that S. aureus strains may move easily between pigs and people, and may become resistant on farms. “It's the most interesting finding from our study," says Frana. In lab tests, Smith and her colleagues have found that 30% of the S. aureus harboured in meat is resistant to tetracycline. Given Levy's data from the 1970s, this is not surprising, says Smith. But researchers, including Heaney and his group at Johns Hopkins, are finding that a bacterium's drug-resistance profile can give information about where the bug came from that sequence type and other gene-based categorizations may not. In a study comparing workers from different farms, tetracycline-resistant MRSA showed up only in workers from farms where antibiotics were used 6. In the last phase of their research, Smith and her colleagues will try to determine whether MRSA is trafficking between farms, households and clinics (see 'From the farm and back again'). They are taking nasal samples from 1,300 people and swabbing doorknobs, kitchen sinks and even family pets in 96 households around Iowa City. The researchers are comparing S. aureus strains they find in these samples with the MRSA strains they have found in grocery stores and farms and with strains local doctors find in infected patients. If a strain shows up in all the locations, the researchers will sequence the whole genomes of individual isolates to retrace their movement and evolution. The results have the potential to create the first complete link between farms and clinical cases of MRSA. Ban versus beast CAFO supporters acknowledge that farm strains of drug-resistant bacteria could theoretically spread to people. But “I don't see this equating to human health risk”, says Scott Hurd, a veterinarian and epidemiologist at Iowa State University who has conducted multiple studies to assess the risk of drug-resistant bacteria spreading through meat production. He says that the average person has a greater chance of dying from a bee sting than of contracting MRSA from pork. Hurd argues that limiting the use of antibiotics on farms could be harmful to human health. Even Smith's grocery-store study found that meat sold as 'antibiotic free' had the highest levels of garden-variety S. aureus, suggesting that untreated animals harbour more pathogens. “Animals really do need to be treated," Hurd says. Nevertheless, regulatory authorities have clamped down on antibiotic use on farms. The European Union began phasing out antibiotics for growth promotion in the late 1990s. Denmark led the charge with a full ban in 2000. (China, however, which claims half the world's pig population, has yet to rein in antibiotic use.) The bans' effects on drug resistance and human and animal health have been murky. Levy and other supporters of the bans say that the result in Denmark has been positive, pointing to data showing a drop in the use of antibiotics on farms and an increase in meat production. But opponents, including the Animal Health Institute, point out that the use of antibiotics to treat acute illness in Denmark has increased, as have animal deaths. Last year, amid mounting pressure from several groups, including the National Resources Defense Council, based in New York, the FDA released new guidance calling for the “judicious use” of antibiotics on farms. The agency discouraged the use of antibiotics for growth promotion and urged label changes to the drugs and more veterinary oversight for their application. Not all the guidelines are yet approved, and compliance is voluntary. Nevertheless, the agency has suggested that it will enforce tougher rules if farmers and drug-makers do not adopt the guidelines within about three years. Few are satisfied with the FDA's policy. Pig farmers and meat-industry representatives consider the move a blow to farmers and animal welfare, and supporters of antibiotic restriction say that the voluntary guidelines do not go far enough. Scientists, meanwhile, have pressed the FDA to reveal more data on how farmers are using antibiotics, so far without success. Smith, who is concerned that farmers are still overusing antibiotics, hopes that the results of her current research will sway their opinions. Antibiotics on farms can trigger the emergence of resistant strains, she says, and those strains turn up on meat, in grocery stores and in homes, and they can infect people. “For me, that's enough," she says. At the same time, Smith says that she sympathizes with CAFO operators who are trying to produce meat as safely and efficiently as possible. And although human health should take priority over farm animals, she says, farmers will be reluctant to change until researchers can come up with safe and cost-effective practices to replace the use of antibiotics. For now, Smith says, “we're kind of stumped ”. Journal name: Nature Volume: 499, Pages: 398-400 Date published: (25 July 2013) DOI: doi:10.1038/499398a See Editorial page 379
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US-EU FTA: A Challenge to AgricultureU.S., Europe Trade Deal A Challenge for Agriculture Farm Foundation forum participants outline hurdles for TTIP, remain positive it can provide freer trade between U.S. and EU Janell Baum Published: Jul 18, 2013 As the first round of talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership kicked off Friday, agricultural trade experts say it marks the beginning of a challenging but hopefully rewarding process that could result in the largest trade deal in the world. At present, the United States and the EU have about $2.7 billion of trade daily, and nearly $4 trillion is invested each other's economies, said J. B. Penn of Deere and Co., moderator of a Wednesday Farm Foundation discussion panel comprised of agricultural trade experts. Penn noted that the already significant trade relationship between the U.S. and the EU represents an opportunity for the U.S. to expand trade for many products, but a special opportunity for agricultural products, which account for the largest sector exported. Farm Foundation forum participants outline hurdles for TTIP, remain positive it can provide freer trade between U.S. and EU But as panelist said, there are hurdles to expanding trade and negotiating a trade deal. Specifically, regulations for biotech crops and food safety expectations, along with differences in production and processing methods will require participation from the ag community and special consideration from negotiators. Read more: U.S., EU Begin Trade Negotiations Many have noted the non-tariff trade barriers represent one of the biggest concerns for the agriculture and food industries. "We believe TTIP offers a genuine opportunity to expand dairy exports," said Sue Taylor, Leprino Foods Company. She noted that elimination of tariffs and regulatory barriers are the top priority for the dairy industry. We want to "ensure that our products have access to the EU market without unwanted burdens. Unfortunately, this is currently not the case," Taylor said. Among the trade issues, Taylor said, are somatic cell count limits and bans on the use of generic food names. Along with issues on the food safety and dairy front, biotechnology has gotten a good look from both sides of the negotiation as an expected sticking point. But Matt O'Mara, Director of International Affairs for Food and Ag at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, said the biotech industry largely sees a potential FTA as a positive way forward for biotech. He said biotech is growing in the U.S., but there's rapid adoption of technology is outside of the U.S., too. He estimated that more than 17 million farmers are using biotechnology, and 90% are resource-poor. That figure, he noted, shows the need for across-the-board adoption of technology in trade. If the technology is employed in the exporting country but not in importing there's a disruption in trade, he said, speculating that it will take management of the global regulatory process and major import markets coming to a decision on the product all around the same time. "It's critical that we get these timelines to be as synchronous as possible - when this doesn't happen there's trade disruption," O'Mara said. http://farmfutures.com/story-europe-trade-deal-challenge-agriculture-0-100457
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Brazil's conundrum: food and storageThe tropical climate allows year-round agricultural cultivation, which seems to be a great economic advantage, but it is also a problem for corn and bean farmers in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, with up to 10% of post-harvest storage consumption. Brazilian dilemma: Grain and storage Debra Levey Larson07/09/2013 @ 1:21pm Tropical climates that allow for year-round farming would seem to be a tremendous economic advantage, but for corn and soybean farmers in the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso, it also poses a problem -- an abundance of grain followed by about a 10% postharvest loss, partially due to a lack of storage. “There is a 34% undercapacity of soybean storage, and the situation is aggravated by the rapidly increasing production of second-crop maize," said University of Illinois agricultural economist Peter Goldsmith. “The worst situation occurs in northern Mato Grosso with a simulation of a full-maize second crop. The potential to succession crop is great and current levels of storage are low. There is clear evidence of a shortage of storage, particularly private and cooperative, as grain production rises in the state," he said. Goldsmith conducted the research project, which was the first to employ geographic information system (GIS) software to map the coordinates of commercial, cooperative, and private grain storage facilities in Mato Grosso. “We created GIS coordinates for every facility, mapped them, and then overlaid how much the production there currently is and how much production there would be if farmers were to produce and store a second corn crop on 100% of the bean crop, in order to find the areas that had the most congestion and the least congestion," Goldsmith said. The study focused on commercial warehouses with capacity greater than 50,000 metric tons, mapping the state's 2,143 registered warehouses. “One region in the northern part of the state is about 6.9 million metric tons under capacity," Goldsmith said. “That's 270 million bushels. If a typical grain bin holds about 50,000 bushels, that's equivalent to 5,420 50,000-bushel grain bins. The area south of that in Lucas is 5 million metric tons under capacity. Of course, the actual undercapacity situation may be less because it assumes double-crop production on every acre. It would be highly unlikely that every acre would be farmed for soybean, maize, and a safrinha, or 'little crop.' Alternatively, though, maize yields are less than half that commonly found in the midwestern U.S., so there is a significant upside to the size of the maize crop .'" Goldsmith said that the information will help determine the best, most convenient locations for additional storage. “The state of Mato Grosso, where I 've been working for the past dozen years, is the largest state producing soybeans in the world," Goldsmith said. “It produces 38% of Brazil's soybeans and an increasingly greater percentage of corn. It's also the number one state in Brazil for rice, cattle, and cotton. Over my years of involvement, I have seen it change from being an emergent agro-industrial complex state to a state that is now a global leader ." Goldsmith said that the project was funded by the Archer Daniels Midland (ADM) Institute for the Prevention of Postharvest Loss at the University of Illinois, which researches many different aspects of postharvest loss in developing countries, in addition to storage. “Losses occur in three areas -- grain that's left standing in the field after a harvest, during the shorthaul when grain falls off of the truck in transportation from the field to either storage or commercial sale, and loss of private storage," he said. “Short-haul loss is fairly trivial in the U.S., but it is significant in developing countries where there is no infrastructure, no paved roads. And the roads that are paved are full of potholes and in very poor condition. Commercial trucks used for hauling grain are not in the best shape, so there's a 3% loss of grain that falls off the truck ." The nature of nonstop, year-round farming in the tropics contributes to the loss. “Farmers have to harvest soybeans during the rainy season because if they wait until the end of the rainy season to plant corn, the corn won't get pollinated due to the onset of the dry season," he said. “There are also significant quality and direct-gain/loss issues due to harvesting at very high-moisture levels. And the urgency brought on by the seasonal timing makes harvesting go very fast. Speed is important because you've got to get the beans out to get the corn in. A farmer might sacrifice soybeans to get the corn planted. And the equipment is in constant demand and kept far from the farmstead so the combines and trucks don't get maintained properly ." Goldsmith said that tropical regions of the globe will be producing more and more of the world's food, so helping farmers in developing countries such as Brazil to create more efficient harvesting, transporting, and storage is a step toward ensuring that there will be enough grain to feed and fuel the world. “This is where the available ground is located," Goldsmith said. “It's been difficult to know how to farm it in the past. The low organic matter and highly acidic soils that are under significant pest pressure make it a difficult area to produce crops, but the Brazilians figured out how to do it and do it very well. “They are part of the global market at the frontier of agricultural production systems," he said. “Places like Mato Grosso are at the margin where the food gap can be closed. In most temperate regions of the world, grain productivity is already high, so increasing output to meet rising demand is more incremental. The big changes are happening in the low-latitude regions of South America and Africa. As a scientifically relevant university, we need to understand the tremendous changes under way in the global agribusiness scene, which currently happens to be in western Brazil. “Mapping Private, Commercial, and Cooperative Storage in Mato Grosso” was co-authored by João Antonio Vilela Medeiros and published in Portuguese in a 2013 issue of the Soybean Research Journal. Editor's note: Debra Levey Larson is a media communications specialist with University of Illinois Extension information technology and communications services. http://www.agriculture.com/news/crops/brazili-dilemma-grain-stage_2-ar32420
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Some Thoughts on Supporting the Development of New Agricultural Business EntitiesJune 25, 2013 | Author: Zhang Hongyu, Zhang Haiyang, Li Na source: Farmers Daily-China Agriculture News Network this year's Central Document No. 1 clearly stated that we should innovate the agricultural management system and mechanism, and build a new agricultural management system that is intensive, specialized, organized, and socialized. Cultivating new agricultural management entities is the key to building a new agricultural management system. Recently, the Department of Industrial Policy and regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture went to Qihe County, Wucheng County, Shandong Province, and Songjiang District, Shanghai to conduct special research, and visited large grain growers, farmers' cooperatives, family farms and agricultural enterprises to understand the main difficulties and policy needs facing their development. In the investigation, we found that the local awareness of cultivating new business entities and the enthusiasm for the development of various new business entities are very high, and it also reflects many difficulties and problems, and we are full of expectations for the state to provide policy support. Through research, we believe that on the basis of the clear policy orientation of supporting new agricultural business entities, it is necessary for the state to refine policy measures and implement policies to create a good external environment for the development of new agricultural business entities. Clearly define the connotation of the concept of family farm the concept of family farm can be roughly expressed as: family management, moderate scale, one industry as the main body, intensive production, that is, farmers as the main body of management, mainly using family labor, moderate production and operation scale, specialization, standardization, intensification, and commercialization An agricultural production and operation unit with a high level and agricultural income as the main source of income. After several years of exploration and development, people's understanding of farmers' cooperatives and leading agricultural enterprises has gradually become clear. What is relatively vague is how to distinguish the concept of professional large households and family farms. The formulation of family farms has been reflected in the "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee. After the release of the No. 1 Central Document this year, family farms have attracted more attention. At present, local enthusiasm for exploring the development of family farms is high, requiring a clear definition of the concept of family farms in order to facilitate the formulation of more targeted policies. In order to avoid the extensive management of agricultural land in the process of rapid industrialization and urbanization, Songjiang District has explored the development of grain-based family farms since the second half of 2007. Combined with Songjiang's successful practice, we summarized the concept of family farm, which can be roughly expressed as: family management, moderate scale, one industry as the main body, intensive production, that is, farmers as the main body of management, mainly using family labor, moderate production and operation scale, specialization, Agricultural production and operation units with high level of standardization, intensification and commercialization, and agricultural income as the main source of income. Family farms should have four basic characteristics: one is family operation. One of the principles clearly put forward by Songjiang is "self-cultivation by operators", that is, in principle, family farm operators must be peasant households in the village, and must mainly rely on family personnel to engage in agricultural production and operation activities, and must not subcontract or sublease the land they operate to a third party; except for seasonal and temporary employment of short-term labor, migrant labor shall not be employed all the year round to engage in the production and operation of family farms. Li Chunfeng, a 34-year-old family farmer in Yaojing Village, Linggang Town, Songjiang District, resigned from the enterprise in 2009 and went home to run his father's family farm (the farmer will retire in principle when he is over 60 years old). Now the farm is run by himself and his parents (his wife works in the enterprise and does not participate in farm management). He only needs to employ 1-2 people during busy farming, and the time is usually less than a week. From this perspective, farms established by foreign urban residents or other investors, or farms that employ labor for a long time, cannot be counted as family farms. The second is moderate scale. In order to give full play to the advantages of family management, the scale of family farms must be moderate and not too large. Director of the Songjiang District Agricultural Committee believes that "degree" is the vitality of family farms. The scale of cultivated land operated by family farms in Songjiang District is generally 100-150 mu, with a minimum of more than 80 mu and a maximum of about 200 mu. At present, 1206 family farms in the region operate a total of 137000 mu of arable land, with an average of 113 mu per farm. Songjiang mainly considers four aspects when determining the principle of moderate scale: first, according to the level of local agricultural mechanization, the maximum scale on which a labor force can operate cultivated land; second, how much land a family can manage at least in order to get rich through its own labor; third, how much land can be transferred out of the local rural labor force; fourth, the income level of family farms should be appropriately higher than that of migrant workers, at present, the annual income level of Songjiang family farms generally exceeds about 15% of the annual income of migrant families. After calculation, the scale of a family farm with an annual income of about 100000 yuan in Songjiang District needs to be more than 100 mu. In addition, the scale of family farms should not be too large, and the income from employment should not exceed the income of migrant families too much, otherwise it will lead to comparison, resulting in farmers returning to their own land, and the scale of family farms will not be stable. If the family farm is too large and needs to employ a large number of workers, there will be labor supervision problems, resulting in increased costs and loss of family business advantages. Therefore, it is necessary to comprehensively consider factors such as the level of economic and social development stages in different regions, the degree of rural labor transfer, the endowment of agricultural land resources, industrial differences, and the income balance of various industries, and determine the reasonable scale of family farm management land according to local conditions. Three is a business-oriented. For a long time, my country's agriculture has become synonymous with hard-working and low-income industries. Young people are not proud of farming, which has led to increasingly prominent structural contradictions in the agricultural labor force. The emergence of family farms has gradually changed people's understanding. The biggest attraction of family farms is that professional production and operation based on agriculture can also increase income and become rich. The results of an annual sample survey of 100 family farms in Songjiang District in recent years show that the agricultural income level of family farms is considerable. From 2008 to 2012, the average net income per mu of family farms increased from 552 yuan to 847 yuan, and the average annual net income increased from 81000 yuan to 95000 yuan. In 2012, family farms with an average net income of more than 800 yuan per mu accounted for 65%. The income level of family farms combined with planting and breeding is higher, and the average annual net income can reach about 150000 yuan (100000 yuan from growing grain and 50000 yuan from raising 1000 pigs on behalf of others). In Songjiang District, agriculture has become a "decent occupation", and engaging in agriculture can also obtain "decent income" and live a "decent life". Four is intensive production. Compared with small-scale farmers, the scale of family farms is moderate and not very large. Specialized production and intensive management can effectively exert the advantages of scale effect and family management. Among the 1206 family farms in Songjiang District, 1013 are specialized in growing grain, 53 are combined with planting and breeding (both growing grain and raising pigs), and 140 are integrated with machinery and agriculture (both growing grain and engaged in agricultural machinery services). In order to ensure that the cultivated land is managed by excellent farmers, Songjiang has established the access and exit mechanism of family farmers through the principle of "selecting the best operators", and strengthened training and assessment. Family farmers also generally have a strong sense of crisis and competition. In order to manage the family farm, farm operators actively participate in various training courses to master the latest agricultural science and technology knowledge. After six years of practice, the group of professional farmers in Songjiang has gradually grown, and the quality of agricultural operators has improved significantly. More importantly, family farms, as the main body of agricultural operations, on the basis of not violating the current agricultural land system and respecting the wishes of farmers, through the circulation of cultivated land, the production factors such as land, labor, and agricultural machinery are appropriately concentrated to achieve intensive management and specialized production. Effectively improve labor productivity, land output rate and economic benefits. At present, 99% of the land in Songjiang District has been transferred to village collectives. The operating area of family farms accounts for 80% of the grain field area in the whole district. The rice yield per mu has increased by 6.1 in five years, which greatly improves the level of specialization, standardization and intensification of grain production. The main difference between family farms and large professional households is that although large professional households also carry out specialized production, their scale of operation is more flexible, and the standards of large professional households may vary greatly in different places. the scale of land management ranges from dozens of mu to hundreds of mu, thousands of mu and even tens of thousands of mu, and the larger the scale, the more long-term employment is needed. There are 48 large grain growers with more than 100 mu in Qihe County, of which 11 are more than 1000 mu. Wang Chengliang, a major grain grower in the county, transferred 13200 mu of arable land in 3 townships and 11 villages, becoming the first major grain grower in Shandong Province. In a general sense, large professional households with an operating scale of less than 200 acres are most likely to become family farms, and if they are larger than this scale, they may exceed the management capabilities of husband and wife or 2 to 3 laborers in a family, and they often have to be long-term. Employment of agricultural workers has also lost the connotation concept of family farms. Although the family farm itself has many advantages and has attracted much attention, the family farm model is not the only choice. The choice of an appropriate scale business model should be determined from the actual situation of each region and in accordance with the principle of farmers' voluntariness and local conditions. For example, Shanghai is preparing to guide farmers to develop family farms in Jinshan District and Fengxian District where conditions are suitable, Baoshan District will mainly develop collective farms, Chongming District will mainly develop cooperatives, Taicang in Jiangsu will mainly develop cooperative farms, and Shandong will mainly develop large farmers, cooperatives and various leading agricultural enterprises. Different new business entities have their own characteristics and strengths, and policy support must be targeted. It is not appropriate to favor one over the other, let alone give administrative promotion regardless of reality. It should be noted that following the surging of cooperatives, many places have begun to be enthusiastic about the development of family farms. It is more necessary to avoid blind promotion, administrative intervention, violation or even infringement of farmers' interests, and to strengthen the guidance and regulation of policies and laws. More subsidies (assistance) for new agricultural business entities to support the healthy development of new agricultural business entities and ensure the supply of commercial agricultural products, it is necessary to gradually adjust the investment direction and structure of agricultural subsidies, and effectively strengthen the guiding role of subsidy policies. The agricultural "four subsidies" policy has played an important role in mobilizing farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain, but in terms of stimulating grain production, the current policy-oriented function has gradually weakened in many places. According to the investigation, there are certain differences in the distribution mechanism of agricultural subsidies between Shandong and Shanghai. Except for the subsidy for the purchase of agricultural machinery and tools linked to the purchase of agricultural machinery, the other three subsidies are basically owned by the original contractor in Shandong and by the operator in Shanghai. In Wucheng County, direct subsidies for wheat and comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials are combined according to the planting area. The subsidy for improved wheat varieties per mu of 10 yuan is reflected in the unified supply of seeds at a low price. The subsidy for improved cotton varieties 15 yuan and the subsidy for improved corn varieties 10 yuan are sent to Cary in cash. The direct subsidy for wheat, agricultural materials and improved varieties are negotiated by both parties and are generally given to large growers. Due to the implied agricultural subsidies, large grain farmers in Shandong bear high land rents. Wang Chengliang's land lease period is 20 years. The rent per mu in the first three years is 1000 yuan. After three years, the rent per mu is 500.00kg wheat according to the market price at that time. The land rent of Tan Yingwei, a large grain grower of 800 mu in Wucheng County, is also 1000 yuan/mu. In Songjiang District, the direct subsidy for growing grain is directly distributed to the one-card system of family farms and other operators in cash. The subsidy for improved varieties is directly distributed to the operators in kind. Most of the comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials are also distributed to the operators in kind. These three subsidies are calculated and distributed according to the actual operating area of the operators. The district agricultural committee has reasonable control over the land transfer fee of the family farm, and the rent per mu of land is 250.00kg rice, which is paid in kind or in cash. According to the market price, the average land transfer rent of 100 farms in 2012 was 724 yuan/mu. Like many other places, the agricultural subsidies paid by the central government have also become GSP income subsidies for everyone in Shandong, which cannot effectively stimulate food production. Support for large-scale grain production is mainly reflected in local finance. In order to support the development of large grain growers, Shandong Province, in accordance with the requirements of the Ministry of Finance to carry out the pilot work of subsidies for large grain growers, refined the implementation plan, and included large grain planting areas of 300 mu and above (including wheat or rice areas of 150 mu and above) into the scope of subsidies. Large households below 4000 mu will be subsidized by 230 yuan per mu, and each household above 4000 mu will be given a fixed subsidy of 1 million yuan, the subsidy funds are linked to the construction and transformation of farmland water conservancy, drying and storage facilities, the purchase of agricultural machinery and equipment, and agricultural materials, and the accounting system is implemented. Although the central government provides less agricultural subsidies to Shanghai, Shanghai has increased its subsidy support for family farms by strengthening supporting measures. The Songjiang District Government provides a monthly pension subsidy of 150 yuan per person to elderly farmers (male 60 years old and female 55 years old) who transfer their land to the village collective, encouraging farmers to voluntarily transfer their land, and stabilizing the relationship between family farm land transfer. Before March 2013, the district finance will give 200 yuan per mu of land transfer fee subsidy to family farms growing rice every year. Starting from March, it will be changed into an incentive subsidy. The scope of incentives includes high-yield grain competition on family farms, straw returning to the field, direct broadcast of agricultural machinery, promotion of new agronomy and new technologies, production assessment, etc., which are linked to the assessment results. In addition, the municipal and district finance subsidizes family farms by 50% ~ 70% of the total price of agricultural machinery. The rice insurance premium for family farms is all borne by the district finance. To support the healthy development of new agricultural business entities and ensure the supply of commercial agricultural products, it is necessary to gradually adjust the investment direction and structure of agricultural subsidies, and effectively strengthen the guiding role of subsidy policies. First, the annual increase in subsidies for improved varieties, comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials and subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery and tools is mainly used for new business entities that grow grain on a large scale. We will encourage subsidies for improved varieties and comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials in kind, explore the free supply of improved varieties and direct agricultural materials at preferential prices to large professional grain growers and family farms, and give priority to subsidies for the purchase of agricultural machinery and tools. Strengthen the connection of agricultural machinery subsidy lists between regions, so that farmers can obtain subsidies in their hometown when purchasing agricultural machinery in the list in other places. Second, while expanding the scope of subsidies for large grain growers, we should improve the mechanism and methods for implementing policies. In view of the fact that it is difficult for large grain growers to obtain invoices in the purchase of agricultural materials and the construction of agricultural production facilities, while strengthening tax supervision, it is encouraged to explore the possibility of giving corresponding fixed subsidies according to the scale of land operation. The third is to increase subsidies for large-scale business entities other than grain. Policies such as subsidies for improved livestock and poultry breeds, subsidies for breeding sows, subsidies for animal epidemic prevention, and subsidies for soil testing and formula fertilization should be tilted to large professional households, farms, cooperatives, small and medium-sized agricultural enterprises and other moderately large-scale business entities, and subsidies should be increased. Effectively improve rural financial insurance services to solve the problem of matching supply and demand of rural finance and agricultural insurance, and to promote the better and faster development of new business entities, it is necessary to further deepen reforms and continuously innovate systems and policies. The difficulty of rural loans and the small coverage of insurance for agricultural characteristic industries are problems that are reflected more at the grass-roots level. From the perspective of large-scale business entities and grassroots financial institutions, the contradiction between supply and demand of rural financial insurance may exist for a long time. There are two main aspects: first, scale operators have a stronger demand for loans and agricultural insurance. There are two main reasons: one is the large scale and high investment. Songjiang family farm due to the moderate scale, the required production input is not large, family cash flow can meet the production capital needs, loan demand pressure is not big. This in itself is a factor in our promotion of family farms. In Shandong, large grain growers and other large-scale business entities tend to operate on a large scale, with a serious shortage of their own funds and a strong demand for loans. In the early stage, Wang Chengliang has already invested more than 600 million yuan in land transfer rent, more than 280 yuan in agricultural machinery, and more than 300 million yuan in agricultural materials such as chemical fertilizers. In the later stage, the investment in water conservancy facilities for 10,000 mu of dry land still needs more than 2000 million yuan. He is very looking forward to receiving discount loan support. Qihe County Zhenghe Organic Farm rents more than 2000 mu of land for 40 years. The rent for the first ten years is 400 yuan (one-time payment). After that, it will be gradually increased to 500.00kg wheat. At present, more than 800 million yuan has been paid for the land rent, and 7.6 million yuan has been invested in the construction of 20 greenhouses. In the later period, a large amount of investment will be needed for soil improvement and water conservancy facilities construction of 1700 mu of sandy land. The second is the high natural risk and potential loss. Even if small-scale farmers lose all their harvests, the losses are not very large, while large-scale operators are completely different. They put almost all their wealth on agricultural operations. In the event of a catastrophe, the blow may be devastating. Therefore, the large-scale operators especially Need the support of agricultural insurance. At present, the main field crops and some aquaculture industries already have policy insurance, but some regional characteristic industry insurance or no or just started. As an important agricultural industry in the county, there is no insurance for peppers, vegetables and edible fungi in Qihe and Wucheng. Qihe County Meidong Modern Agriculture Company spent 36 million to build 600 greenhouses. When the pilot project of facility agricultural insurance was launched in Dezhou City in 2012, the company took out 50000 yuan to insure the greenhouses. Later, a strong wind set off some greenhouses and received compensation of more than 200,000 yuan. The company deeply felt the importance of facility agricultural insurance. Second, financial and insurance institutions are worried about product and service innovation. The reasons are also broadly twofold: one is the lack of effective mortgages and guarantees for rural loans. Each of the greenhouses of Meidong Company invested 60000 yuan, but it cannot be used as a mortgage, and the transferred land use rights cannot be mortgaged. The agricultural development funds mainly rely on the annual profit of its own sweater factory of more than 1000 yuan, or use the sweater factory to mortgage the loan. Yang Xiaoli, president of the Agricultural Bank of Qihe County, said that the mortgage rate of machinery and equipment for large grain growers is only 20%, that is, machinery and equipment worth 1 million yuan can be loaned up to 200000 yuan. As for pigs, cows, etc., it can not be used as collateral. If large households jointly guarantee loans, the maximum loan can only be 200000 yuan, there is still a big gap. Second, the development of agricultural insurance is facing many constraints. In addition to the natural risk, high operating costs, cumbersome procedures are also quite a headache for insurance institutions. According to Manager Wang of China Property Insurance Dezhou Branch, the current agricultural insurance rate is low and the operating risk is high. Moreover, due to the involvement of thousands of small farmers, the insured area, premium, insured amount, number of households, policyholders, all-in-one card number and other data All need to be verified one by one, and the workload is too heavy. The company and government departments have to invest a lot of manpower and material resources, and the pressure on the compensation. The financial premium subsidy cycle is long and is generally paid before the end of the year. However, the company has to withdraw the risk reserve according to the regulations, which may cause the company's cash flow to be interrupted. To solve the problem of matching supply and demand of rural finance and agricultural insurance, and to promote the better and faster development of new business entities, it is necessary to further deepen reforms and continuously innovate systems and policies. First, innovative rural loan guarantee mortgage methods. Encourage financial institutions to carry out mortgage loans for large-scale business entities such as large grain growers, such as large-scale agricultural machinery and equipment, and land management rights with clear ownership and controllable risks, and appropriately increase the mortgage rate. Encourage agricultural enterprises to provide guarantees for the production of loans to order farmers, or by enterprises to undertake loans, farmers to use. Establish a financially funded agricultural guarantee company to provide guarantees for new agricultural business entities, especially large grain growers. Guide farmers' professional cooperatives with good industrial foundation, large scale of operation, strong driving ability and good credit record to carry out credit cooperation. The second is to further straighten out the institutional mechanism for the development of agricultural insurance. Implement differentiated agricultural insurance support policies, include large-scale facility agriculture and large-scale agricultural machinery and tools into the coverage of central financial insurance subsidies, and increase subsidies. Increase the proportion of agricultural insurance premium subsidies from the central government to large agricultural counties. Explore the establishment of a government-supported agricultural catastrophe risk compensation fund, improve the relevant rights and interests mechanism, and gradually establish an agricultural catastrophe risk dispersion mechanism. Seriously study and solve the problem of facility agricultural land to solve the problem of facility agricultural land, we must develop ideas and think of more ways under the premise of strictly implementing the spirit of relevant documents. The use of land for agricultural production facilities and ancillary facilities is difficult to solve, and it has become a problem that was reflected more during the investigation in Shandong. Large grain farmers and grain production cooperatives responded strongly. Zhiyuan Grain and Cotton Planting Professional Cooperative in Wucheng County has built a grain and cotton planting demonstration base of more than 6000 mu, driving the development of 30000 mu of corn under orders. It is urgent to solve the problem of land use for facilities. Wucheng mainly grows wheat and corn all the year round, and there is no dryer in the county to operate grain drying business. The main method for farmers to dry grain is to sun the site. With the expansion of cooperative order planting scale, the disadvantages of traditional methods are increasingly apparent. For this reason, the cooperative invested more than 300,000 yuan to purchase a grain drying tower from Shenyang in 2012, and built a drying site, warehouse and hardening drying field behind the office building, covering a total area of 5 mu. The drying tower and site have been built, but the warehouse has not yet been capped and has been stopped by the county land and resources bureau, because this land is basic farmland in the planning of the land and resources bureau. At present, the township government is coordinating the matter with the Land Bureau, hoping to solve it by linking it with the reclamation of an abandoned local primary school. According to local officials, in the past, in order to strive for a balance between construction land indicators and arable land occupation and compensation, the county often revised its land use plan. "As soon as the land is repaired, the basic farmland will go up the mountain." Adjusted to basic farmland, as long as agricultural production facilities are built, basic farmland will inevitably be occupied, which is a big problem. The problem of grain drying in Songjiang family farm is solved by the government. The drying equipment is all invested by the district finance. The grain department is equipped with drying equipment (located in the grain depot) on a town-by-town basis. The grain planting family farm can make an appointment for drying time and then determine the harvest time. The agricultural machinery cooperative is responsible for the harvest. The grain purchasing and marketing department or the grain processing enterprise directly pulls it for drying after purchase. The family farm does not need to deal with matters after harvest. For family farms combining planting and breeding, the district government issued a document allowing a certain amount of land to be used for the construction of work houses and pig houses, and standardized construction was implemented, all of which were invested by the district finance and used for agricultural facilities. We saw on Li Chunfeng's family farm that the working rooms and pig houses covering an area of 3 acres were clean and tidy. According to reports, the government invested 800000 yuan. The family farm integrating machine and agriculture generally has 4 sets of agricultural machinery. These farms form agricultural machinery cooperatives. The district government specially plans the land for the construction of hangar sheds to realize the centralized storage of agricultural machinery in cooperatives. At present, the region has set up 30 agricultural machinery cooperatives, agricultural machinery services to achieve full coverage of family farms. The problem of facility agricultural land is not without solution. The Ministry of Land and Resources and the Ministry of Agriculture document "on improving the facilities of agricultural land management related issues notice" (land and resources development [2010] No. 155) clearly, production facilities and ancillary facilities land directly used for or services in agricultural production, according to agricultural land management. To solve the problem of facility agricultural land, it is necessary to develop ideas and think of more ways under the premise of strictly implementing the spirit of relevant documents: first, the effective use of general arable land and non-arable land; the second is to improve the efficiency of the use of rural construction land, through village planning and renovation, adhere to the principle of "farmers' land, farmers' use", and use idle land, economical construction land or reclaimed land in the village to build agricultural machinery warehouses, storage facilities, etc; third, when the local government revises the overall land use plan, it fully takes into account the demand for agricultural land for facilities brought about by the long-term development of agriculture; fourthly, it is encouraged to explore models such as warehouse leasing or food banks to solve the problem of grain storage for large-scale grain growers. Increase support for agricultural infrastructure projects most agricultural infrastructure has strong positive externalities, and as public goods or quasi-public goods, the government needs to increase investment to improve it. The weak agricultural infrastructure in our country is an old problem. In the case of small-scale decentralized operation, farmers often have no enthusiasm and ability to strengthen agricultural infrastructure construction. With the increase of the proportion of moderate scale operation in agriculture, if the land circulation relationship is stable, the new business entities have the enthusiasm to improve the agricultural infrastructure, but the government needs to help solve the input problem. Of the 11 villages transferred by Wang Chengliang, only 3000 mu of land in 3 villages can be irrigated with water from the Yellow River, and the other 10000 mu of land do not have irrigation conditions. If all water conservancy facilities are constructed, more than 2000 million yuan will need to be invested. For large-scale operators with very short land transfer contracts, there is generally no enthusiasm to improve agricultural infrastructure, which in turn directly affects their output efficiency and operating efficiency. Most agricultural infrastructure has strong externality, as public goods or quasi-public goods, the government needs to increase investment to improve. In Songjiang District, the government has invested more than 0.2 billion yuan in agricultural infrastructure in recent years. In terms of water conservancy facilities, tractor roads, and cultivated land renovation, the agricultural production conditions of the whole region have been greatly improved. Family farms have obtained a good development environment. Family farms only need to compete for the right to operate cultivated land, and there is no need to worry about agricultural infrastructure, or even invest a penny for the construction of pig houses. With the financial investment at all levels, the agricultural infrastructure is basically perfect. The production conditions of the 20 mu high-yield demonstration base in Qihe County are far better than those of other places in the county. However, as a poor county, Wucheng County is unable to increase investment, and its agricultural infrastructure is quite different from Qihe County. To promote the development of new agricultural business entities, the state needs to increase investment and support in agricultural infrastructure projects. First, in terms of project arrangements such as comprehensive agricultural development, land consolidation, high-standard farmland construction, medium-and low-yield farmland transformation, and farmland water conservancy facilities construction, it is necessary to tilt toward the main body of scale management, especially the implementation of irrigation and drainage, soil improvement, and roads on basic farmland. Renovation, mechanical farming roads, power matching and other engineering construction make it have the conditions for large-scale production. The second is to encourage the development of land joint-stock cooperatives on the basis of farmers' voluntariness, and fully guarantee the property income of farmers' land contract rights through the method of "fixed power and uncertain land, quantitative and non-positioning", which is not only convenient for large-scale agricultural infrastructure construction, but also convenient Large-scale mechanized operations are also conducive to eliminating ridges and increasing land output. Accelerate the training and introduction of new business entities career prospects and social evaluation are very important to practitioners. To attract young people and high-quality talents to join agriculture, it is necessary to accelerate the innovation of the agricultural management system, fundamentally transform the agricultural production and management methods, and make agriculture a profitable, status, promising, and dignified profession. Compared with the traditional small farmers, the main body of new agricultural management is mainly reflected in the integration of new knowledge, new technology, new ideas, new equipment and so on. With the expansion of the scale of operation, the new subjects generally feel the lack of knowledge and technology and the shortage of talent reserves. Large grain growers, cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises, especially business entities engaged in efficient agricultural production, on the one hand, strongly feel the need to improve their own quality, on the other hand, they are also thirsty for talents. In Qihe and Wucheng, edible fungus production is a big industry, but there is a shortage of talents. Gao Min of Fengyu Edible Fungus Co., Ltd. said that at present, the edible mushroom industry lacks practical technical talents, and there are too few edible mushroom talents in agricultural colleges and universities. At present, many employees are studying microorganisms. Although Li Chunfeng, a family farmer in Songjiang, only grows grain and raises pigs, and has participated in many trainings organized by government departments, such as wheat planting, pig raising, and soil fertilization, and obtained several certificates, he still feels that he still needs to improve his agricultural technology in order to meet the needs of farm management and development. In recent years, my country has achieved certain results in the training of new farmers and the introduction of high-quality agricultural talents, but there is still a big gap compared with the needs of modern agricultural development. The problem of lack of agricultural successors is highlighted, and it is urgent to cultivate new agricultural business entities. To this end, we should focus on two major aspects: first, vigorously strengthen the cultivation of new farmers. Formulate a medium-and long-term training plan for new farmers at the national level, vigorously develop agricultural vocational education, organize various forms of agricultural technology training, and train a large number of rural applicable professionals for returning migrant workers, rural capable people, and Senior high school graduates who have failed to continue their studies. Explore the establishment of professional farmers qualification, agricultural industry access system, and constantly improve the new agricultural management system. The second is to increase the introduction of external talent. Innovate systems and policies in terms of government subsidies, social security, project support, financial services, land transfer, title evaluation, rising channels, social evaluation, etc., to attract innovative college graduates and professional and technical personnel with strong professional knowledge Devotion to agriculture. Career prospects and social evaluation are very important to practitioners. To attract young people and high-quality talents to join agriculture, it is necessary to accelerate the innovation of the agricultural management system, fundamentally transform the agricultural production and management methods, and make agriculture a profitable, status, promising, and dignified profession. Effectively play the active role of the government there are many things that new business entities need government support, but the most important thing is to protect land management rights to stabilize the production foundation, and improve agricultural socialized services to strengthen production capacity. The government plays an irreplaceable role in the development of new business entities. In the survey, all kinds of new business entities are full of expectations for government support and positive evaluation of the government's role. There are many things that new business entities need government support, but the most important thing is to protect land management rights to stabilize the production foundation, and improve agricultural socialized services to strengthen production capacity. Specifically, the role of government should highlight the following three points: the first is to innovate the rural land system, stabilize farmers' land expectations, and promote the stability of land transfer relations. This is an issue of common concern to large grain growers, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, agricultural enterprises and other subjects. Songjiang District has explored to determine the land contract period of family farms to at least three years, and to extend the land operation period of family farms with the combination of planting and breeding and the integration of machine farming to more than 5 years. This still cannot eliminate the concerns of family farmers and has a long-term investment for operators. Have an impact. The land transfer contracts of some large grain growers in Shandong are as short as one sign a year, and the transfer relationship is very unstable, which is not conducive to the stable investment and sustainable development of large grain growers. Therefore, it is necessary to pass the confirmation and issuance of land rights, improve laws and regulations, implement property rights protection for farmers' land contract rights, and completely eliminate farmers' worries and concerns about the transfer of land management rights, supplemented by social security, non-agricultural employment, and transfer income Support measures in other aspects allow farmers who are unwilling to farm land to transfer out of land management rights for a long time. The second is to appropriately strengthen guidance and support, improve the development environment of new business entities, and enhance the quality and speed of development of new business entities. New business entities often encounter many difficulties in the early stage of development, lack of guidance in information acquisition and development planning, and need support in financing, personnel training, and material equipment. Governments at all levels should give more care and help to small and medium-sized business entities and moderate-scale business entities. In terms of agricultural land planning control and use control, agricultural infrastructure construction, and maintenance of market order, the government must truly be not absent or offside, and effectively make up for market failures. The third is to strengthen agricultural productive services in key links, solve the problems that new business entities cannot solve or cannot solve well, and continuously enhance the development capabilities of new business entities. A developed socialized division of labor is an important condition for improving the efficiency of economic operation. The biggest advantage of large grain growers and family farms is to do a good job in production management, and productive services in other key links can be undertaken by cooperatives, professional companies, public service institutions, and so on. such as technology promotion, agricultural material distribution, mechanical operation, unified prevention and control, drought and drainage, information services, product sales, and so on. The government needs to make overall plans, improve policies, increase investment, strengthen support, and promote the establishment of a new type of agricultural socialized service system in which public welfare institutions and business institutions cooperate with each other, guarantee strong, and operate efficiently. (Author Unit: Department of Industrial Policy and Regulations, Ministry of Agriculture)
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Developing country group stresses international dimension of sustainable agriculture and food securityNote: This article is from the TWN Agriculture Info sent publicly by The Third World Network. The third meeting of the United Nations General Assembly's Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals was held in New York from 22 to 24 May. The topics of the meeting included food security and nutrition, sustainable agriculture, desertification, land degradation and drought, water and sanitation. Below are some of the salient points of the statements made by a number of developing countries on the basis of the statement made by the Group of 77 and China. (Responsible editor: if so) Developing country groups highlight international dimensions of sustainable agriculture and food security New York, 31 May (Bhumika Muchhala) -- The third session of the UN Open Working Group on Sustainable Development Goals addressed food security and nutrition, sustainable agriculture, desertification, land degradation and drought, as well as water and sanitation. During the intergovernmental discussions of the Open Working Group (OWG), many developing countries, including Brazil, Nicaragua, China, Indonesia, Kazakhstan, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka stated that while national policies and governance need to be revised and strengthened, international dimensions of food insecurity and agriculture also need to be addressed. This includes developed countries' agricultural subsidies which have a regressive impact on agriculture in developing countries, the dumping of subsidized agricultural products, trade barriers imposed by major food exporters, biofuels policies, and increased food commodity speculation. Many of these countries stressed that the inherent dysfunctions of unsustainable consumption patterns and market practices, which fail to deal with food as a basic human right, need to be addressed. Technology was the key focus for means of implementation to achieve sustainable agricultural practices and food security, in that developing countries must be given technological support to meet their development aspirations. This entails re-examining current patenting rules in the international intellectual property rights system. Furthermore, the modification of indigenous knowledge and patenting this knowledge is a grave concern for many developing countries. Below are highlights of the statements by groupings of countries (the OWG has 30 seats, with two or three countries sharing a seat). The statement of the Group of 77 and China was reported separately in TWN Agriculture Info: SDGs - Supportive global economic conditions crucial dated 31 May 2013. The country grouping of Brazil and Nicaragua, represented by the Deputy Permanent Representative of Nicaragua, Jaime Hermida, stated that the full realization of the right to food, a basic human right, is essential for poverty eradication and sustainable development. Addressing food and nutrition security requires immediate attention to both production and the consumption aspects. Country group deliberations on this area, they said, must be in accordance with the Rio 20 outcome document. On the production side, Brazil and Nicaragua said that renewed commitments and investments are increased, in particular toward increasing agricultural productivity and diversifying agricultural production. The means of implementation, they stressed, are indispensable. This includes social inclusion and social protection policies as crucial tools. More specifically, this also includes special and steady support for small scale producers and family farming, through credit, insurance, infrastructure and access to technology, technical support, and wide ranging benefits in terms of food and nutritional security, as well as employment and income generation. Secure land tenure is also an important issue that must be dealt. The importance of social safety nets to ensure basic access to food and nutrition cannot be understated. Both Brazil and Nicaragua have adopted Zero Hunger programs, which have served to coordinate the State's actions to ensure the right to food through a multisectoral approach, including conditional cash transfers and school meal programs, income generation, strengthening of family farming and civil society participation and articulation. Both national programs have had remarkable results, they said. Brazil and Nicaragua highlighted liberalization of international agricultural trade and the need for reform of protectionist and distortive policies in developed countries as a crucial element for food sovereignty. Agricultural protectionism in developed countries exposes developing country producers to unfair competition, denying access to important markets and discouraging investments. The redoubling of efforts for an ambitious, balanced and development oriented conclusion of the Doha Development Agenda is crucial in this regard. Brazil and Nicaragua lent support to the G77 and China regarding financial speculation on commodities, including food, which has contributed to the recent excessive volatility of food prices. This is an issue which must be dealt with, they said, since it impacts more acutely the most vulnerable populations. However, the misleading notion that associates food security with low food prices or insufficient food supplies needs to be avoided. The main cause of food insecurity today is the lack of income to ensure access to food. Food security can only be ensured through equitable economic growth, the creation of jobs, the generation of income and technological advances, including in the agricultural sector. Poverty eradication and sustainable development depend on farmers in developing countries having a sufficient level of income. However, the UN must avoid using the concept of sustainable agriculture as a justification for discriminatory trade practices and illegal subsidies under the banner of sustainable agriculture. The development of national strategies that encompass the three dimensions of sustainable development, such as Brazil's National Plan of Action to Combat Desertification and Mitigate the Effects of Droughts and Nicaragua's Water Harvesting Program, can help concentrate national attention on the subject and integrate policies in that regard. Such plans can also serve as the basis for cooperation and exchange of experiences. Finally, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity must be a component of all food and agriculture policies, as well as combating desertification, land degradation and drought. The country group of China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan, represented by the Deputy Permanent Representative of Kazakhstan, Akan Rakhmetullin, stated that transformation toward sustainable agriculture and achievement of food security, which includes increasing food production in the developing countries, are among the most important issues that need to be addressed in the discussion on Sustainable Development Goals. While the MDG target of reducing extreme poverty (MDG 1a) may have already been reached at the global level, it is projected that achieving the target to reduce hunger (MDG 1c) by 2015, will be difficult. The target related to child nutrition (MDG 1c) is most probably unlikely to be met and is off-track, as confirmed by the World Bank's progress assessment. The group of China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan asserted that the main causes of this rise in global and national food insecurity, among others, are due to trade barriers imposed by major food exporters, the existing biofuels policies, and increased food commodity speculation, combined with inefficient national governance to cope with such shocks. The Rio 20 Outcome Document, in paragraph 108, reiterates the right of everyone to have access to safe, sufficient and nutritious food, consistent with the right to adequate food and the fundamental right of everyone to be free from hunger. The Rio 20 Outcome Document further highlights the importance of revitalizing agricultural and rural development, notably in developing countries, in an economically, socially and environmentally sustainable manner. The group said that food security is built on three pillars: the availability of food, the access to appropriate foods for a nutritious diet, and the appropriate use of food according to the knowledge and principles of basic nutrition and care, as well as adequate access to sustainable water resources, particularly for women, children and the elderly. The focus on improved practices and higher shares of productive land and pastures, without over grazing, and efficient irrigation systems will therefore positively impact yields, employment and GDP. China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan emphasized that while fulfilling food security is part and parcel of national responsibility, multilateral cooperation and action should be the integral elements to overcome this global challenge. In this regard, enhanced global partnership, as well as means of implementation, are of the utmost importance. On this note, the key structural issues that determine global food security, especially in the following spheres, must be revisited in the context of the Sustainable Development Goals: enhancing access to high quality research and technology; promoting trade and investment in ensuring food security; and environmental-related challenges in the context of the global food crises. Systemic problems can be addressed by improving global trade, food stock management, agribusiness (improving seeds, fertilizer, pesticides), infrastructure development, and intellectual property rights for easing access and enhancing agricultural growth in developing countries. The Rio Outcome Document (paras 110-113) reiterate the importance of sustainable agriculture, and the need for increased investment in sustainable agriculture and practices. Development in the agricultural sector should also focus on enhancing the participation of smallholder farmers; increasing the role of traditional sustainable agriculture practices; and preventing food loss and wastage throughout the supply chain from initial agricultural production down to final consumption. It also needs to maintain natural ecological processes that support food production systems. Addressing food security will also mean recognizing its cross-cutting issues, among others, such as effective and long-term land management systems, especially, for women, together with those of rural development, trade, health, employment, social protection, water, and biofuel energy versus food challenges. On the problems of desertification, land degradation and drought, which are the most overlooked, land is a central element that links energy, food, water and environmental health together. Desertification and drought, especially, cause soil and land degradation, which is closely linked to the two major crises of climate change and loss of biodiversity. China, Indonesia and Kazakhstan stressed that land degradation is very costly and has very immense far-reaching impact. It has brought direct effects on one in every four human beings. Soil erosion in the world's croplands depletes about 20 billion tons of fertile soil. Developing and implementing proactive national drought management policies by dealing with impact assessment, preventive, planning and risk management measures are critical, while at the same time, fostering science, appropriate technology and innovation, public outreach and resource management. Instruments must be designed to incentivize sustainable land management, and effective measures can only be introduced by bridging the science-policy gap through knowledge transfers and capacity building. Halting and reversing declines of land productivity by restoring and regenerating land that is already degraded call for global processes and commitments to implement strategies and interventions to combat the challenges of land degradation. The country grouping of India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka was represented by the Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Sri Lanka, Dr. Palitha T. B. Kohona. The group aligned itself with the statement delivered by Fiji on behalf of the G77 and China, and said at the outset that the right to food is a fundamental human right, as is the right to development. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka said it is incumbent on the member states of the UN to build upon the results of the MDGs. Quantitative assessments of global and regional food requirements made by the FAO and WFP are helpful tools in this regard, but population dynamics, including variations within countries, have to be weighed. Moreover, the increasing demand for food crops and other organic materials in biofuel production should also be addressed substantively. The group highlighted the following points in developing a Sustainable Development Goal on these issues: First, poverty alleviation remains the key challenge while promoting sustainable agriculture as well as food security and nutrition security. In this regard, promoting and accelerating rural development in developing countries must be a priority. Countries which emphasized rural development have recorded notable successes in poverty eradication. Secondly, the two themes are linked closely and we must give serious thought to developing an overall cumulative target under these themes. More specifically, in crafting the basis for targets/goals, we would need to weave these elements together instead of treating them as separate or independent goals. Notwithstanding, we do believe that an overall goal facilitating rural development, food and nutritional security could have a set of nationally driven and determined indicators such as (a) social protection; (B) infrastructure development and linkages to urban centers (c) enhancement of resource endowment, including through access to credit markets of the poor and small-scale farmers (d) national policies and other incentives to encourage private sector investment; and (e) adaptation to the adverse impacts of climate change on agriculture. India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka said that it is important to view varying circumstances and capacities of countries in pursuing these goals consistent with the principle of the common but differentiated responsibilities, an element, which has been firmly reiterated in the Rio+20 outcome. The group stressed that a funded programme must be developed to address nutrition, as malnutrition has been the key reason for MDGs on Infant Mortality and Maternal Mortality lagging behind the rest. We have to aim at higher benchmarks to sustain our efforts. Even within countries that have reached satisfactory average nutrition levels, pockets of malnutrition remain. Fisheries and all forms of aquaculture products must be given a prominent place in our dialogue not only as a part of issues associated with agriculture but also in addressing malnutrition - aqua products being one of the best source of nutrients, including micronutrients. However, it is important to keep in mind the parlous state of global fisheries, mainly due to over exploitation. Overexploitation has been the result, mainly, of the activities of the fleets from industrialized countries. At the moment, over 70% of the global fish stock has reached a critical state. Policies to ensure employment, nutrition and better management of stocks need to be developed. When considering the economic aspects of food production, there must be a focus on affordable access to inputs, including land, water and fertilizer. Access to markets is an integral element. The agriculture sector is a key area of employment generation, especially in developing countries. Over 85% of agricultural land is held by small scale farmers. Therefore, the group said that creating jobs with greater value addition and environmental sustainability is critical. By considering food as a human need, global efforts must aim at a balanced demand-driven approach because a solely supply-driven approach has not led to the desired results. Increasing the availability of land, maximizing the productivity of cultivable lands and increased application of eco-friendly technologies, such as production methodologies that consume low amounts of water, energy, chemicals and land as well as those resulting in low quantities of waste must be taken into account while designing the goals. The restoration of degraded land is essential. This entails a balance between agriculture, deforestation, and the need to generate employment and food. The solution may lie in the access to eco-friendly modern technologies, which are available but are costly. Targeted investment levels in agriculture in developing countries are a possible option. One third of all food production globally is lost or wasted in production, transportation and consumption, amounting to 1.3 billion tonnes per year. This happens in the developed world because of lifestyle patterns and in the developing world due to lack of adequate infrastructure. On this note, the "Think-Eat-Save" campaign of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) should reach a wider global audience. Attitudinal change encouraged by massive awareness campaigns in the developed world will help save huge amounts of food that is wasted. To build on the successes of the green revolution, it is also important to establish mechanisms to effectively accommodate indigenous knowledge on agriculture and food processing. It is with better technology and adequate funding that agriculture can be made sustainable and a burgeoning world population fed. Developing countries must be given technological and financial support to meet their development aspirations. On the other hand, such technologies must also be applicable in the national contexts. To ensure technology for sustainable agriculture, current patenting rules need to be examined. Modification of indigenous knowledge and patenting these become an issue for developing countries. An important aspect of food security and livelihood in developing countries is the impact of massive subsidies given by developed countries to their farmers. These subsidies, amounting to billions of dollars annually, have had a regressive impact on agriculture in developing countries and have retarded progress on MDGs. The issues of subsidies, trade and market access must be addressed comprehensively while dealing with food security in the context of the Sustainable Development Goal menu. The dumping of subsidized agriculture has had a crippling effect on some developing countries. In conclusion, the group said the OWG of the UN General Assembly should not duplicate work already undertaken under existing mechanisms, and rather should benefit from the success that the international community has achieved and build further on these. Similarly, it is critical to think holistically, taking into account cross-sectoral factors. The bottom line should be to make our world a better place for future generations.