Japan and the United States, two countries with one small and one large, one east and one west, have different national conditions and great differences in agricultural resources, but one thing is similar is that they have made great achievements in agriculture. From the model of agricultural development in the United States and Japan, perhaps we can learn from it and find our own development path.
The success of American agriculture is due to its unique agricultural resource factors. However, it is closely related to the competitive production mode composed of the organizational structure and operation mechanism of agriculture and related industries formed by the historical evolution and market competition over the past century.
The United States is the country with the largest arable land area in the world, of which the cultivated land area reaches 197.45 million hectares, accounting for 13.15% of the world's total arable land area (150151 million hectares). The U.S. has 0.7 hectares (about 7,000 square meters) of arable land per capita, which is 2.9 times the world's per capita arable land (0.23 hectares).
Japan, on the other hand, is a country with fewer people and more people, and it has too many factors of its own efforts to become the world's agricultural power. Japan's agricultural modernization has taken a different path from the advanced countries in Europe and the United States to achieve agricultural modernization, and has achieved remarkable results, which is known as the "Japanese model".
The biggest feature of Japanese agriculture is that there are many people and little land, the land is scattered, and small-scale operation is carried out, according to this national situation, Japan chooses the road of improving varieties and improving soil first, mechanization is later, and the specific path: "land improvement - chemicalization - fine seeding - mechanization."
Let's take a look at the characteristics of agricultural development in the United States and Japan.
USA: It's planting, it's business
Located in the Great Plains region of the Midwest of the United States, Iowa is a large agricultural state, located in the center of the United States, known as the heart of the state. Here the soil is fertile, the agricultural products are abundant, 20%-25% of the Corn in the United States, 20% of soybeans, 30% of the pork, produced in this state, known as the "granary of the United States" .
Reed Kuper's KuperStock farm is one of the 120,000 farms in Iowa, mainly growing corn and soybeans, here not only modern laboratories, fertilizer stations, machinery and grain depots, but also large livestock farms, perfect agricultural industry chain and advanced business philosophy to improve agricultural production efficiency, reduce production costs, the farm income is naturally considerable. Summarizing KuperStock Farms and American Big Farming, here is not only "planting", but also operating.
"A farmer can cultivate tens of thousands of acres of land, spray pesticides with airplanes, plant land with satellites, use genetically modified technology to solve the problem of pests and diseases, and then transport the agricultural products produced to the whole country and even around the world through long-distance transportation", these are the epitome of American large farms, and behind this microcosm is the modern business model of American agriculture.
KuperStock Farm is a fully personal farm, the Reed Kuper family, running the entire farm, 120,000 acres of arable land with fertilization, arable land sowing, field management, harvesting and storage, etc. only need to be completed by five of them, which requires that the operation of the farm must be modernized. In the United States, there are more than 2 million farms like KuperStock, which underpin U.S. agriculture.
Under the current situation of sluggish economic development in the United States, the development of these modern farms is very good, creating a counter-trend development of American agriculture, agriculture has become the second best industry in the United States. In the modern operation mode of the farm, industrialization and mechanization have reduced the cost of production, scientific planting and management have promoted the increase of grain production year by year, and the income of farmers has become more and more abundant.
The efficient input-output ratio makes large farmers like Reed Kuper more attentive to running large farms, more and more inputs, and better and better farm operations.
1. Attach importance to agricultural education
For more than a hundred years, the United States has made great efforts in agricultural education, scientific research, extension, and improving the quality of farmers. Ensure funding for agricultural education, scientific research and extension, ensure that scientific research results are continuous, and promote and apply them in a timely manner; Modern equipment and facilities for agricultural education, research and extension sectors; Adhere to the principle of bringing universities to the people and educating for the people, and cultivate outstanding talents for modern agriculture.
At present, the proportion of farmers with a high school education or above (including college) in the United States has reached 90%. 50 per cent of farmers under the age of 50 have a university or college education. They can not only engage in the management of farm enterprises, but also operate computers and various agricultural machinery, and they are both managers of enterprises and skilled technical workers.
2. Promote agricultural machinery
In the 1920s, the United States began to use machinery to transport agricultural products, using simple livestock slaughtering and fruit packaging production lines. In the 1940s, large agricultural machinery such as tractors and harvesters began to be used. In the 1950s and 1960s, the level of agricultural mechanization had reached a very high level.
All kinds of field crops have been mechanized from land preparation, fertilization, spraying, cultivation, harvesting, transportation and processing; Feed processing, feeding, milking, manure cleaning, slaughtering, processing and packaging in the livestock industry have also been mechanized. In the 1970s, the most difficult cotton and tobacco harvests were also mechanized. In recent years, they have made great efforts to promote the use of modern high-tech (computer management, automated operations, genetically modified varieties, etc.).
3. Intensive operation, specialization of production, and socialization of services
At present, the average size of farms in the United States has reached 475 acres. Large farms have reached 3,000-4,000 acres. Intensive management has become its main mode of operation.
Although 64% of the farms in the United States are small but full-time farms, their output value accounts for only 6.4% of the total agricultural output value in the United States; medium-sized farms account for 12.6% and 38% of the output value; and large farms account for only 1%, but their output value accounts for 27.8%. The expansion of the scale of farms has also forced farms to gradually implement specialized production. The proportion of specialization on farms is quite high, most of them are above 80%, and some are more than 95%.
Various agricultural service organizations also emerged. At present, the main types of service organizations are: all kinds of large-scale production materials companies, banks and credit cooperatives that provide credit to farmers, various cooperatives organized by farmers themselves, various associations and farmers' markets organized by farmers themselves.
4. The combination of market mechanism and government support
U.S. agriculture is almost entirely regulated by the market, from labor, means of production, tools of production, to the sale of products.
After the 1940s, agriculture in the United States gradually became internationalized, and more than half of the agricultural products were sold in the international market. In order to maintain the competitiveness of agricultural products, although the US government does not have high subsidies like EU countries, it still attaches great importance to supporting agriculture.
5. Strengthen the construction of agricultural infrastructure
The Highway in the United States is accessible in all directions, the roads leading to farmland are basically asphalt roads, agricultural machinery can easily go to the fields, and the transportation of agricultural products is also very convenient. The power company pulls the cable directly to the farmer's courtyard and shed to encourage the farmer to use electricity.
Many drainage and irrigation facilities have been built in major agricultural areas or river basins, about 60% of the arable land is irrigated farmland, and the application of sprinkler irrigation and drip irrigation technology is more common. After the 1920s, many farmers' markets have been established throughout the United States, and the current market network for the sale of agricultural products is all over the United States, and the sales of agricultural products are also very convenient.
Japan: Small-scale intensive farming production method
Japan's agricultural modernization began after World War II. According to the national conditions, Japan has chosen a model and path of agricultural modernization that is different from that of Europe and the United States, that is, it adopts a land-saving production mode that invests more labor and waste, and develops agricultural modernization by improving agricultural water conservancy facilities, promoting excellent agricultural varieties, and extensively applying organic chemical fertilizers, which combines labor-intensive and land-intensive production methods.
After 1955, Japan's industrialization developed rapidly, absorbing a large number of rural laborers, providing certain conditions for agricultural mechanized production, and at this time, Japanese agricultural production used mechanized agricultural tools in large quantities. Japan's agricultural machinery and tools have been largely modernized from 90,000 units in 1955 to 500,000 units in the mid-1970s.
Japan's characteristics in the process of agricultural modernization are very obvious:
1. First chemical, then mechanized
Japan was the first country in the world to realize agricultural chemistry, which stemmed from its lack of land and the need for intensive farming.
2. Part-time farmers have always occupied a large proportion
There are not many farmers in Japan who are fully engaged in agriculture, and most of them are engaged in other industries and agricultural production.
3. The quality of socialized services in Japanese agriculture is high
This has played a great role in promoting the development of Japanese agriculture.
Japan has a well-developed agricultural cooperative - the Japan Agricultural Cooperative Group (Agricultural Cooperative), which has a variety of functions and comprehensive, covering agricultural production, agricultural products purchase and sales circulation and other fields, in the procurement of agricultural production materials, farmers' production planning, sales of agricultural products and other aspects of the affairs have relevant branches to be responsible.
4. Rural industrial development and agricultural development are synchronized
Japan was the first country in the world to propose rural industrialization. After the Second World War, the Japanese government formulated a series of policies to encourage industrial enterprises to invest in rural areas and set up factories, attract surplus rural labor to industrial enterprises for employment, and enterprises that set up factories in rural areas can enjoy government incentive policies such as loan concessions and tax reductions.
5. Attach importance to the promotion of agricultural education and agricultural scientific research technology
Japan attaches great importance to agricultural education, vigorously develops agricultural education at all levels, and pays attention to the training of farmers, so that the quality of Japanese farmers has also been generally improved. Agricultural scientific research and experimental institutions directly cooperate and cooperate with each other, and realize the application and promotion of scientific research results in various places.
New formats and models for the future agricultural development of the mainland
Due to the diversity of agricultural resource elements, in recent years, through the integration of resources in different ways, a variety of new agricultural formats such as service-oriented, innovative, socialized and factory-oriented have been spawned, and the development of various formats has shown different stage characteristics.
First, the new format of service-oriented agriculture
Through the horizontal expansion of the industrial chain, new service-oriented agriculture formats such as leisure agriculture, exhibition agriculture, landscape agriculture, creative agriculture, and balcony agriculture have been produced.
1. Leisure agriculture
Leisure agriculture is a new form of agricultural production and operation that uses agricultural landscape resources and agricultural production conditions to develop sightseeing, leisure and tourism. We can deeply develop the potential of agricultural resources, adjust the agricultural structure, improve the agricultural environment, and increase the income of farmers in new ways.
Leisure agriculture as a whole has entered the growth period, and market competition has gradually intensified, facing transformation and upgrading. At present, leisure agriculture has shown a comprehensive development trend in the mainland, with increasingly abundant products, continuous expansion of scale, and accelerated profit growth. However, the market is far from saturated, and there is still a lot of room for future development. It is expected that the national leisure tourism market will exceed 8 billion person-times, far higher than the current annual reception of 2.2 billion passengers.
With the participation of more and more subjects, the competition of leisure agriculture will gradually intensify, and in the surrounding areas of some large and medium-sized cities that start early and develop faster, the transformation and upgrading of leisure agriculture development has become urgent.
2. Exhibition agriculture
Agricultural exhibitions are exhibitions and conferences related to agriculture. Exhibition refers to a variety of agricultural fairs, trade fairs, order fairs, exhibitions, conferences include a variety of agricultural forums, business fairs, exchange meetings and so on.
The growth rate of exhibition agriculture has slowed down, the market tends to mature, and the overall competition integration stage has entered. From the perspective of growth potential, the growth rate of the number of newly developed agricultural exhibitions and agricultural festivals will slow down in the future, and the overall competition integration stage will enter the stage of competition integration, and the future development will be more to build exhibition brands, enhance exhibitions, festival derivative product development and explore market-oriented operation models.
3. Creative agriculture
Creative agriculture is in its infancy, and at present, it is mostly integrated into the development of leisure tourism products in the form of creative elements, and its market share is small. Creative agriculture includes product creativity, service creativity, environmental creativity and activity creativity, etc., and is currently mainly based on product creativity and activity creativity.
In terms of product creativity, it is mainly through the product function and shape to innovate or give cultural novelty, so that ordinary agricultural products become souvenirs, and even works of art, so as to double the value. In terms of event creativity, it mainly refers to improving the value of consumer experience by holding creative activities on a regular or irregular basis.
Creative agriculture does not yet have a large-scale market share, from creating ideas to forming industries, there is still a long way to go.
4. Balcony agriculture
Balcony agriculture is literally to engage in agricultural production on the balcony space, which has all the roles associated with the ground soil space, but from a technical point of view, the technology involved in balcony agriculture is more high-tech, the cultivation mode is more soilless, and the production products tend to be appreciative and self-sufficient.
Balcony agriculture began to enter the city, the implementation of cultivation of soilless, intelligent equipment, space intensification, some large cities developed more rapidly, some areas of the market has appeared dwarf tomatoes, apples, peaches and potted vegetables, etc., showing the new form of urban modern agriculture, to meet the needs of citizens for a beautiful environment and leisure life, is gradually becoming a way of life for citizens.
Balcony agriculture is still in the initial stage of promotion, and to form an industry, it is necessary to solve key problems such as balcony microclimate constraints and adaptive equipment and technology development.
Second, innovative new agricultural formats
High-tech represented by modern biotechnology and information technology has penetrated into agriculture, and innovative new agricultural formats such as biological agriculture, smart agriculture, and agricultural big data applications have been derived.
1. Biological agriculture
Bio-agriculture refers to the agricultural production method of cultivating various crops using advanced biotechnology and production technology. These include production projects such as planting, forestry, microbial fermentation engineering industry, and animal husbandry.
Biological agriculture as a whole has entered the initial stage of large-scale industrialization and has broad prospects for development. Modern biotechnology is popularized and applied in the field of agriculture, thus forming biological agriculture covering the fields of biological breeding, biological pesticides, biological fertilizers, biological feed, biological vaccines and preparations.
In recent years, the scale of biological agriculture has been expanding, and the industry has been continuously optimized and upgraded. For example, the size of the biological vaccine market increased from 5.8 billion yuan in 2009 to 15.1 billion yuan in 2015, with an average annual growth rate of 22%. It is estimated that by 2020, the total output value of biological agriculture on the mainland will reach 1 trillion yuan.
2. Smart agriculture
Smart agriculture is to apply the Internet of Things technology to traditional agriculture, using sensors and software to control agricultural production through mobile platforms or computer platforms, so that traditional agriculture has more "wisdom".
In addition to accurate perception, control and decision management, in a broad sense, smart agriculture also includes agricultural e-commerce, food traceability and anti-counterfeiting, logistics and transportation, agricultural leisure tourism, agricultural information services and other aspects.
In the stage from the embryonic stage to the growth stage, most of them belong to pilot demonstrations, and large-scale commercial applications still need time. From the perspective of productivity, commodity, profit and organization, due to the high cost of technology and equipment, the immature market, the low degree of scale and standardization, etc., smart agriculture has not yet truly realized industrialization.
3. Agricultural big data
Agricultural big data is a collection of data with a wide range of sources, diverse types, complex structures, potential value, and difficult to apply the usual methods to process and analyze after integrating the characteristics of agriculture, such as regionality, seasonality, diversity, and periodicity.
Agricultural big data resources have not yet found an effective development and application model, and the whole is in its infancy. At present, the more typical application of big data in agricultural products is JD.com and Taobao.
JD.com launched the "JD Brain", which brings personalized and regionalized recommendation results to consumers, which can help people in different regions and different consumption habits to obtain the most suitable high-quality recommended products for themselves.
Taobao launched an e-commerce consumption analysis platform for agricultural products, which allows merchants to display rankings, transaction indexes, etc. to users in the form of visual charts based on past sales information and "Taobao Index".
At present, the opening and trading of big data has not yet formed the mainstream form of the market, coupled with the fact that the law and data trading mechanism need to be improved, Jingdong, Taobao and other trading platforms are cautious in opening up transaction data to the outside world.
4. E-commerce of agricultural products
Agricultural products e-commerce referred to as agricultural products e-commerce, refers to the use of e-commerce means on the Internet direct sales of agricultural products and fresh products, such as grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, organic food, local specialties, fresh meat, etc., agricultural products e-commerce with the rapid development of the Internet, will effectively promote the pace of agricultural industrialization, promote the development of agricultural economy, and finally realize the global village, change the way of agricultural products trading.
E-commerce of agricultural products has entered the rapid promotion stage of the growth period, while various bottlenecks are emerging, and there are still breakthroughs in platform operation, agricultural product standardization, warehousing and logistics. E-commerce of agricultural products has developed rapidly in recent years, but the profitability of e-commerce trading enterprises is generally not high, and most enterprises are in the cash-burning market.
Third, the new format of socialized agriculture
The refinement of the social division of labor and the reform of social organization methods have derived new socialized agricultural formats such as agricultural crowdfunding, order agriculture, community-supported agriculture, rural old-age service industry, agricultural productive service industry, and private customization of agricultural products.
1. Order agriculture
Order agriculture, also known as contract agriculture, contract agriculture, is a new type of agricultural production and operation model that has emerged in recent years, and farmers organize and arrange the production of agricultural products according to the orders signed between themselves or the rural organizations where they are located and the purchasers of agricultural products. Order agriculture adapts well to market needs and avoids blind production.
At present, there are two main types of new forms of order agriculture, one is the circulation and catering service enterprises extending the industrial chain forward to establish a direct supply base for raw materials; The other type is that enterprises establish a cooperation model with agricultural product bases, using the base as a place for the company's employees to purchase agricultural products and leisure experiences, and provide internal benefits for the company's employees.
2. Community support for agriculture
Community-supported agriculture is also known as the citizen vegetable garden, consumers pay the reservation in advance, and the farm supplies them with agricultural products according to demand, which is a new model of urban-rural cooperation between producers and consumers sharing risks and benefits.
Community-supported agriculture creates a direct link between farmers and consumers, and also provides a reliable way for consumers to access healthy and safe agricultural products, and there are certain business opportunities that need to be explored and improved.
4. Agricultural productive services
Agricultural productive services refer to socialized services that run through the agricultural production operation chain and directly complete or assist in the completion of agricultural pre-production, production and post-production operations.
At present, in the agricultural productive service industry, through the development of agricultural machinery services, agricultural technology services, land trusteeship, animal and plant disease prevention and control, etc., to guide farmers to achieve "service outsourcing", to solve the problems of "who will plant the land" and "how to plant the land" and other issues to provide a way out.
Agricultural crowdfunding, private customization of agricultural products, etc. are in their infancy. These types of new formats mainly serve specific consumer groups, and the yield is higher, which is a new trend in the diversification of agriculture.
Plant factory is an advanced stage of modern facility agricultural development, is a high-input, high-tech, fine equipment production system, set biotechnology, engineering technology and system management in one, so that agricultural production from the natural ecological shackles out of the planned annual production of plant products in the factory agricultural system.
The integrated application of modern technology has derived a new format of factory agriculture, and the plant factory is an advanced stage of factory agriculture, which is still in its infancy and is currently mainly used as a test demonstration. Judging from the development of Austria, Denmark, the United States, Japan and other countries, factory agriculture has great potential and good prospects.
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