Chinese Economic Review: Doing a Compulsory Course in Agricultural Risk Resistance | Ability | Agriculture
At present, China has fully entered the flood season, and agricultural flood control and drought resistance have reached a critical stage. The meteorological department predicts that this year's agricultural meteorological conditions will generally deviate, with regional and phased drought and flood disasters being obvious, and there will be more extreme weather and climate events. This reminds us to do a good job in improving agricultural risk resistance as a "compulsory course", not slackening our efforts in agricultural flood and drought prevention, continuously strengthening the construction of agricultural disaster prevention and reduction capabilities, and enhancing the resilience of agriculture to cope with natural disaster impacts.
Against the backdrop of global warming, extreme weather and climate events are increasing in China, posing a threat to agricultural production. Meteorological information shows that there may be severe floods in the north this year, and there may be another high temperature and drought in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. There are more typhoons making landfall, and there may also be northbound typhoons. Experience tells us that natural disasters come quickly and have a significant impact. Without strong agricultural risk resistance, once a watershed flood or large-scale drought occurs, it may affect agricultural supply and increase farmers' income. Therefore, it is necessary to fully understand the importance and difficulty of agricultural disaster prevention and reduction, and not to take it lightly or be careless. We must be prepared and foolproof.
The biggest risk facing agriculture is natural disasters. Although agricultural technology has made great progress, to a considerable extent, it still relies on nature to make a living. For thousands of years, the process of agricultural production has also been a struggle against natural disasters. Last summer, there was a rare sustained high temperature and little rain weather in the Yangtze River Basin. In some areas, agricultural drought and high temperature heat damage overlapped. Due to effective measures taken to resist drought, the impact of disasters on agriculture was reduced. Although various manual intervention measures cannot eliminate natural disasters, they can improve the effectiveness of disaster response. Recently, there has been widespread cloudy and rainy weather in the northern winter wheat region, with some areas experiencing "rotten rain". Relevant departments are also taking active actions to help farmers reduce losses.
Agriculture is naturally a weak industry with public and public welfare characteristics, requiring priority investment in fiscal funds, allocation of public resources, and protection of human and material resources. To enhance the ability of agriculture to resist risks, we should tailor measures to local conditions, focus on weaknesses and weaknesses, and strengthen investment in services, facilities, and insurance. In the event of disasters, we should strive to reduce production in severely affected areas, maintain stable production in light disaster areas, and increase production in disaster free areas.
Strong service. Improve the agricultural meteorological service system and timely provide refined meteorological monitoring and early warning services based on regions, crops, and disaster types. The meteorological, water conservancy, emergency, agriculture and other departments should improve information sharing mechanisms, timely issue warnings, strengthen emergency duty, and dispatch in a timely manner. Each region should also develop contingency plans based on actual conditions, reserve suitable varieties and sufficient quantities of seedlings and other materials, and strengthen the construction of emergency personnel teams. The focus of response should also vary in different regions. In the north, we need to focus on flood prevention and drought resistance, in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River, we need to focus on preventing high temperatures and drought, in southern and eastern China, we need to focus on preventing typhoons, and in the southwest, we need to focus on drought resistance.
Strong facilities. For food crops, we need to accelerate the construction of high standard farmland. High standard farmland construction is an effective way to combat drought and flood disasters and improve farmland productivity. It is crucial to strengthen investment in farmland construction and post management, and continuously improve production conditions. For economic crops, it is necessary to accelerate the development of facility agriculture. The overall disaster resistance of facility agriculture is better than that of field agriculture, but there are significant differences among different facility agriculture, which depends on the level of facilities. We need to increase investment in fiscal funds and give full play to the role of "allocating a thousand catties through four or two means". In addition, drying equipment, storage facilities, and cold chain logistics are also essential, and corresponding entities should be guided to provide socialized services to small farmers.
Strong insurance. The impact of natural disasters is often accompanied by market fluctuations and industrial and supply chain fluctuations. Natural disasters are largely inevitable, but their impact on the agricultural industry chain and business entities should be minimized to the greatest extent possible. Agricultural insurance should expand its coverage, innovate product types, improve coverage standards, and explore agricultural catastrophe insurance mechanisms for grain crops. Accelerate the development of policy based agricultural insurance, and combine it with commercial agricultural insurance to improve the agricultural risk sharing mechanism, effectively compensate for the economic losses caused to business entities by natural disasters, and provide farmers with peace of mind.
