1. Financial Support For Agriculture Policy In 2017, the MoA and the Ministry of Finance have jointly supervised subsidies for special transfer payment projects worth of 254.3 billion yuan. Among them, funds for projects supporting the development of agriculture reached 192.8 billion yuan, for ecological and resource conservation 22 billion yuan, for animal epidemic prevention 6.1 billion yuan, for agricultural disaster prevention and production 3.5 billion yuan, for registration right and contract and management right of rural land 5.4 billion yuan, and for fishery and diesel oil 24 billion yuan.  

2. Registration Right And Contract And Management Right of Rural Land By the end of 2017, a total of 31 provinces (including autonomous regions and municipalities directly under the central government) have carried out the rural land contract registration, covering 2 747 units at county level, 33 000 towns, and 540 000 villages. The areas covered 77.266 67 million hectares, accounting for 80 percent of the total and released 106 million certificates of registration right and contract. 

3. Promote Rural Green Development The MoA continue to promote the delineation of 60 million hectares of grain production functional zones and 15.866 67 million hectares of important agricultural production protection zones to ensure the stable use of high-quality cultivated land for the production of important agricultural products such as grain, cotton, oil and sugar. The ministry focused on specialty grain crops, featured horticultural products, featured animal products, featured aquatic products, and featured forestry products, covering five categories and 29 major varieties. The MoA created and identified the first batch of 62 superior production areas with characteristic agricultural products, such as Anji White Tea in Anji County, Zhejiang Province. The country set the goals of controlling the total amount of agricultural water, reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides, realizing the basic utilization of livestock and poultry waste, crop straws, and agricultural film, and insisted on reducing input, using green substitution, and having comprehensive governance, which effectively contained the trend of increasing agricultural non-point source pollution.   

4. Lightening Farmers’ Burdens In 2017, the ministry organized the special campaign against agro arbitrary charges and unjustified financial levies, with a total of 209 projects canceled and 3 506 cases withdrawn. The MoA investigated and dealt with 3 614 cases involving relevant departments and units, covering the cost of apportionment more than 35 million yuan and reducing the burden on farmers by 335 million yuan. The State Council‘s joint meeting on lightening farmers‘ burden focused on three provinces (autonomous regions) of Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, and Qinghai, and identified 12 types of problems in five aspects, and returned 2.198 6 million yuan to farmers and rural collectives. 

5. Construction of Rural Reform Pilot Areas In 2017, all members of the joint meeting of the Rural Reform Pilot Areas worked together and promoted the work, with 58 rural reform pilot areas determined to reform and boldly explored, which formed a number of unique reform results. The rural reform experiment achieved remarkable results. The MoA approved 27 pilot projects in 34 pilot zones, including Beijing Daxing District, to increase their new grain production loans, farmers’ collective income distribution right withdrawal, and rural development land protection. Up to now, it has more than 50 projects on reform in the pilot areas, covering the main areas of rural reform. 

6. Promoting Development of Farmers’ Cooperatives By the end of 2017, a total of 2.017 million cooperatives registered in commerce and industry departments, up 12.4 percent year on year, consisting of 100 million farmers, accounting for 48.1 percent of all farmers. In 2017, a total of 223 000 farmers’ cooperatives were newly registered throughout the country. The form of farmers’ cooperation is extended from professional cooperation of similar products or services to the cooperation of resource elements and shares. The business is extended from production and operation to financing and mutual insurance assistance. The field is extended from agricultural production to the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Cooperation among farmers has entered the inter-social alliance. The MoA promoted agricultural product standardization, branding, and green production, with 170 000 cooperatives implementing standardized production and having registered trademarks, as well as 43 000 cooperatives passing the quality authentication. More than half of the cooperatives provide integrated production and sales services with a total value of 1.104 4 trillion yuan. 

7. Deepening Seed Industry Reform In 2017, the National Crop Variety Approval Committee of the MoA issued the revised Regulations for Major Crop Varieties (National Level) and established a non-main crop variety registration system. A series of new research, new achievements and new breakthroughs have been made in the joint research of the four major crops of rice, wheat, corn and soybean. The MoA accelerated the construction of national-level breeding seed bases and regional breeding bases, which have basically built three national- level breeding bases in Hainan, Gansu and Sichuan, 52 hybrid rice- growing counties, and 49 regional bases for fine varieties. The seed production of hybrid corn and hybrid rice at national seed bases account for 80 percent and 70 percent of the national total. 

8. Policy on Agricultural Machinery Purchase Subsidies In 2017, the central finance allocated 18.6 billion yuan to agricultural machinery purchase subsidies. On the basis of giving priority to ensuring the mechanized demand for grain and major agricultural products production, the MoA strove to promote green ecology development, strengthen innovation practices, accelerated the sharing of inclusive benefits, effectively improved the service management level, and supported about 1.7 million farmers to purchase 1.9 million sets of machines (sets). The country further improved its agricultural technical equipment, and the rate of comprehensive mechanization in crop cultivation and harvesting reached 66 percent or above. The policies were implemented effectively and orderly. 

9. Deepening Rural Financial Reform By the end of 2017, financial institutions provided agriculture-related loans worth of 30.95 trillion yuan, up 9.64 percent from the previous year. The balance of agricultural banks’ loans reached 3.57 trillion yuan, up 390 billion yuan from the beginning of the year, an increase of 12.3 percent, 2 percentage points higher than the average. The balance of agriculture-related loans was 3.08 trillion yuan, up 358.6 billion yuan over the beginning of the year, an increase of 141.4 billion yuan. The national rural credit cooperatives had 9 trillion yuan of the balance of agricultural loan and 4.4 trillion yuan of the balance of farmers’ loan, an increase of 9.5 percent and 11.6 percent from the end of the previous year. The country set up 907 corporate credit cooperatives, 1 262 rural commercial banks, and 33 rural cooperative banks. Insurance on agriculture developed rapidly. The central finance allocated a total of 17.909 billion yuan in agricultural insurance premiums, enjoying a year-on-year increase of 13 percent. In 2017, the central government allocated 17.904 billion yuan in agricultural insurance premium subsidies, which brought the nation’s agricultural insurance premium income to 47 billion yuan, and provided 2.79 trillion yuan for 213 million households, and 33.449 billion yuan for 47.371 4 million rural households, up 11.79 percent year on year. 

10. Agro-product Market Control In 2017, the policy on minimum- purchasing price for grain and wheat was further implemented, with the price down slightly. The purchasing price for early indica rice, mid-late japonica rice and japonica rice went down by 0.03 yuan, 0.02 yuan and 0.05 yuan respectively per 500 gram year on year, and the minimum- purchasing price of wheat remained unchanged from the previous year. The MoA launched the mechanism on corn purchase and subsidies in Northeastern China, and improved the subsidy system for producers. It continued to launch pilot reform on targeted prices of Xinjiang cotton, setting the price at 18 600 yuan per ton for three years. The MoA coordinated the targeted price for soybean with the corn storage system in Northeastern China and adjusted into a new mechanism for market-based acquisition and subsidies. 

11. Cultivate New-type Professional Farmers By the end of 2017, the total number of new-type professional farmers in the country exceeded 15 million, and the scale of professional peasants continued to grow. The MoA achieved fruitful results in supporting the industry to fight against poverty, implemented the industrial precision poverty alleviation training program in 792 poverty-stricken counties across the country, and provided special skills training to poor rural people on leading industries and feature industries, which invested 540 million yuan, trained 234 000 farmers, and injected strong impetus into industrial poverty alleviation. 

12. Forestry Development Policy The MoA demarcated and strictly abide by the red line of ecological protection, improved the public welfare forest policy, realized the full coverage of the natural forest protection policy, and introduced the management measures for voluntary tree planting. The ministry improved the wetland protection and restoration system, strengthened the relevant policies on returning farmland to forests, and introduced technical regulations for the restoration of degraded shelter forests. The MoA accelerated the cultivation of new forestry management entities, promoted forest tenure mortgage loans, and strengthened the management of economic forest demonstration bases.   It published the 13th Five-Year Plan for Forestry Industry Development, carried out pilot projects on forest experience bases and forest health bases, and made regulations on the risk assessment of overseas forest introduction and quarantine approval. 

13. Reform and Construction of Grassroots-level Agro-tech Popularization System In 2017, the MoA deepened the reform on the grassroots-level agricultural technology popularization system, and carried out pilot reforms in 36 counties of 13 provinces including Anhui, Zhejiang and Jiangxi. It supported the establishment of star-level services for promotion institutions in 181 counties, and by promoting the pilot projects, the ministry strengthened the construction of agro-tech promotion teams and improved the ability to serve agriculture, rural areas and farmers. The MoA enhanced the construction of information service platform and improvde the efficiency of agro-tech promotion services. It gives full play of the leading role to more than 7 000 agricultural science and technology experimental demonstration bases and the radiation role to more than 1.4 million agro-tech demonstration entities in order    to enhance the agro-tech services. The promotion rate of agro-tech throughout the country reached 95 percent. 

14. Transfer of Rural Labor Force In 2017, the country continued to do a god job in providing services for farmer workers. The country aimed at increasing job opportunities, providing more training opportunities for them, accelerating the establishment of a long-term mechanism for preventing and resolving the problem of wage arrears and promoting the integration of farmers with the society. The number of rural workers continued to increase in 2017, reaching 286.52 million, up 4.81 million people and 1.7 percent from the previous year, with the growing pace up 0.2 percentage point than the previous year. The MoA has increased the income level of rural workers, solved the problem of work arrears, made achievement in the training of them and improved the level of social security. 

15. Rural Entrepreneurship And Innovation The MoA thoroughly implemented the “Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Supporting the Entrepreneurship and Innovation of Rural Residents and Promoting the integraiton of Primary, Secondary and Tertiary Industries,” promoted the implementation of relevant policies and measures, established a coordination mechanism, built a public service platform, and accelerated the cultivation of the entities. The MoA announced 1 096 rural entrepreneurial innovation parks (bases) with regional characteristics, of which seven were included in the National Entrepreneurship and Innovation Demonstration Base. The ministry promoted 100 outstanding leaders in rural entrepreneurship and innovation. 

16. Strengthen Rule of Law in Agricultural and Rural Areas In 2017, agricultural laws and regulations continued to improve, with the level of law enforcement further enhanced, law education deepened, and new progress achieved in law administration. The MoA cooperated with the legislative bodies to complete the revision of three laws and administrative regulations, including the Regulations on Pesticide Management, the Law on Prevention and Control of Water Pollution, and the Law on Farmers’ Professional Cooperatives. The ministry continued to carry out in-depth law enforcement work. By the end of 2017, 30 provinces across the country had carried out comprehensive agricultural law enforcement, and established 284 municipal-level agricultural comprehensive law enforcement agencies and 2 419 county-level agencies. The county-level coverage rate reached 99 percent. 

Note: The above information is sourced from the 2018 China Agricultural and Rural Development Report. To learn more please contact: +86 10 59194918.