Rural income and agriculture grow steadily in H1

In the first half of 2019, farmers’ income grew at a rate of 6.6 percent in China, and revenue of the processing industry for agricultural products above a designated scale reached 7.2 trillion yuan ($1.02 trillion), according to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA).

China's agriculture and rural economy have been growing with stability, with the production of grain and other major agricultural products holding steady. And supply-side structural reform in agriculture continued further and deeper.

The total number of green foods, organic agricultural products and local specialty agricultural products exceeded 40,000, a step forward for green agricultural production.

Agricultural structure continued to optimize as the quality and efficiency of rural industries increased. The wheat quality this year was distinctly better than last year, for example, the coverage of good medium wheat reaching 33 percent, 3 percentage points higher, and soybean is projected to gain more than 10 million acres.

In the first half, processing industries for agricultural products above designated size received 3.4 percent more revenue year-on-year, indicating an upward momentum. Tourism and e-commerce for agricultural products were also booming.

Building high-quality agricultural development platforms is a means to consolidate supply-side structural reform. By the end of the first half, 114 state-level modern agricultural industrial parks had been established, followed by more than 1,000 provincial ones and a huge batch of city and county-level industrial parks.

And 552 towns capable of agricultural industries provided good examples for rural industries and city-industry integrations.

The 62 state-level modern agricultural industrial parks established in 2017 and 2018 have an average output value of more than 6 billion yuan, said Wei Baigang, a top MARA official.

He also said a total of 142,000 entrepreneurs were attracted to the parks to start businesses in rural areas, and more than 180 billion yuan in social capital were leveraged, adding that disposable income per capita in the parks was 34 percent higher than in the counties where the parks are located.

Agricultural products are gaining more quality. MARA inspection results showed China’s overall rate of qualified agricultural products edged up 0.1 percentage point year-on-year, to 97.2 percent.

The quality rate was above 99 percent for 64 out of all 108 monitored species, with vegetables at its highest quality rate in history.

Both production and sales of agricultural products were prospering. Supply of poultry, dairy and aquatic products was plentiful. Production of beef and lamb rose by 4.3 percent, to 14.42 million tons; milk gained 1.7 percent; aquatic products edged up 1.1 percent to 27.7 million tons.

Wei said agricultural products’ prices in China were overall stable, which consolidated grounds for the national economy.

Consumption in rural areas was continuously active. Retail sales of consumer goods in rural areas increased 9.1 percent year-on-year, 0.8 percentage points higher than urban growth.

Consumption expenditure for rural residents per capita was 6,310 yuan, a rising rate of 6.4 percent, 2.3 percentage points higher than for urban residents.

The structure of major agricultural import sources has changed, and the market mechanism for agricultural trade has been strengthened.

In the first half, total import and export volume of agricultural products climbed 8.5 percent year-on-year, to 751.28 billion yuan. Import volume gained 11 percent to 496.76 billion yuan, while export volume hit 254.52 billion yuan, up 4 percent.

Export markets in the European Union and ASEAN countries maintained a good momentum, with agricultural exports rising 11 percent and 6.5 percent, respectively. China’s agricultural cooperation and investment in the Belt and Road countries also increased this year.

Senior MARA official Ma Hongtao said agricultural enterprises funded by Chinese investment in participating countries have shouldered social responsibilities proactively, where a total of 100,000 local workers were employed and enterprises contributed to the construction of local public facilities.

He added that China’s projects for agricultural technology cooperation and technique training and promotion have been widely welcomed in the Belt and Road countries.