Comprehensive report on the "three rural direct trains": Recently, the National Bureau of Statistics released data that China's grain output exceeded the 600 million tons mark in 2013, and increased production for the tenth consecutive year.

Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Central Leading Group for Rural Work, attributed the main reason for the increase in grain production to science and technology. He said that in recent years, the main reason for the annual increase in grain production was that relying on science and technology, the increase in unit yield played a role of more than 80%.

Just over a month ago, the State Council issued the "National High-standard Farmland Construction Master Plan", which proposed that by 2020, 800 million mu of high-standard farmland should be built to ensure the harvest of drought and flood, and the average grain production capacity per mu should be increased by more than 100 kg.

The reporter of the 21st Century Economic Report learned from the Ministry of Agriculture that in order to improve the rice yield, the Ministry of Agriculture launched a project called "China's 1000-kilogram Super Rice Research Program" in the middle of this year. Led by Academician Yuan Longping, the project plans to cultivate new super rice varieties with yield potential of more than 1000 kg per mu in five to eight years.

However, what is behind technology and high standard farmland?

A person from the Department of Ecology of the Ministry of Environmental Protection said that the multiple cropping index of crops in southern China is very high, which is basically supported by chemical fertilizers. After the application of chemical fertilizers, only 35% of them are effective, and the remaining 65% become pollutants and remain in the environment.

The massive use of pesticides and fertilizers has caused extensive non-point source pollution in agriculture, and the recent outbreak of "toxic rice", "toxic ginger" and other crop food safety incidents have also made people worried about this.

In addition, in order to mobilize the enthusiasm of all localities and achieve the targets of grain production increase, the central government has the tendency to fish in all directions, and has constantly changed some plots that are not suitable for planting staple food into staple food.

As early as 2005, the central government issued a reward policy for major grain-producing counties. The reward standard is based on the grain commodity quantity, yield and planting area. Under this policy background, the major grain-producing regions have carried out planting transformation one after another, which is particularly common in Northeast China.

A report from the Ministry of Agriculture said: "Therefore, in order to get rewards, some counties and cities in Heilongjiang actively promoted the conversion of soybeans (4421,0.00,0.00%) to corn (2368,5.00,0.21%). Based on the corn yield of 850 jin/mu and the soybean yield of 250 jin/mu, the yield of one mu of land can increase by 600 jin."

However, this simple pursuit of food production does not fully take into account the local environment and the affordability of resources.

Liu Zhongtang, former director of the Soybean Engineering Center of Northeast Agricultural University, told the 21st Century Economic Report that Heilongjiang used to be afraid of floods, but with the continuous expansion of the grain planting area in recent years, and the conversion of the dry land originally planted with wheat and soybeans to rice, a high water-consuming crop, Heilongjiang has changed from a large province of water resources to a large province of water scarcity.

Because the yield of rice is much higher than that of soybean and wheat, the local government and farmers are happy to see this gradually changing planting pattern.

Interestingly, behind the ten consecutive increases in grain, is the surge in China's grain imports. According to the data of the General Administration of Customs, the total amount of China's grain trade in 2012 was US $175.77 billion, including US $112.48 billion of imports. The trade deficit was US $49.19 billion, up 44.2% year on year.

Cheng Guoqiang, a researcher at the Research Center of the State Council, said that the main reasons for this situation were the obvious price difference between domestic and foreign grain, and the sharp increase in domestic demand.

Cheng Guoqiang also said that in order to protect and improve farmers' enthusiasm for grain planting, China should reconstruct a market-oriented grain interest protection mechanism. It believes that the grain price support policy, which focuses on low purchase price and temporary collection and storage, has reached an important juncture to be adjusted urgently. Therefore, he suggested that we should explore the implementation of price differential subsidies with less distortion to the grain market, stabilize the price band, and gradually replace the low purchase price and temporary collection and storage measures; Policy recommendations such as the implementation of the grain income insurance system and the thorough eradication of policy factors that distort the market may be put on the decision-making agenda faster.