The 2015 China Agricultural Outlook Conference was held in Beijing from April 20th to 21st, 2015. The MOA Market Early Warning Expert Committee released the China Agricultural Outlook Report (2015-2024), forecasting the trends for agro-product production, consumption, price and trade of the next decade in China. Totally over 400 participants from related ministries and international organizations attended the Conference. Chen Xiaohua, Vice Minister of Agriculture and head of the MOA Market Early Warning Expert Committee attended the opening ceremony and delivered a keynote speech.
According to the Report, in the next decade China's agriculture will adapt to the New Normal Economic Development context and accelerate the transformation of development mode. The increase of yield will become the major factor of grain output growth, and the agricultural industry chain will further expand. The output of major agricultural products including grain, cotton, oil-bearing crops, sugar, meat, eggs and dairy products will witness steady progress, and the supply and demand at agro-product markets will maintain balanced.
It is believed that the strategic target, highlighting basic self-efficiency of cereals and absolute security of grains for food can be achieved. The agro-product consumption will continue a relatively fast growth, while the cost-push agro-product prices will show a rising trend in general. The agricultural import and export trade will maintain a sustainable growth, and the interaction and integration between domestic and overseas agriculture will be enhanced remarkably.
The Conference agreed that this 2015 event will be beneficial for improving the agro-product market regulation system, as an innovative attempt to upgrade agricultural management. The Report forecasted the general situation of agro-product market in the next decade, underlining the importance of leveraging the role of market mechanism, guiding the transformation of agricultural mode, and facilitating structural adjustment.
Participants of the Conference suggested that we should accelerate the establishment of an agricultural information monitoring and early warning system with Chinese characteristics, constantly improve agricultural management and service, and promote the sustained and healthy development of agriculture and rural economy: firstly, to improve the market information collection standards for major agricultural products, ensure the data resources available, widely shared and extensively expanded, and build up an agricultural information collection system covering the processes before, during and post production; secondly, to make the analysis and early warning practices more standard, specialized and science-based, and improve the agricultural information analysis and early warning system at an early date; thirdly, to intensify joint collection and sharing of information resources, and develop an information release pattern featuring fixed information providers, time, channels and components; and fourthly, to meet the needs of agricultural production and management entities, make use of modern communication means and create a new agricultural information service mechanism to enhance the complementarity of government and market and step up their interaction.