Full text: Report on China's economic, social development plan(11)

3. We will earnestly carry out our work on agriculture, rural areas, and farmers.

1) We will ensure stable production of major agricultural products. We will continue to implement the plan to increase national grain production capacity by 50 million tons, and carry out activities to steadily increase grain production. We will accelerate innovation and dissemination of agricultural science and technology, promote agricultural mechanization, develop a modern seed industry, promote unified and specialized prevention and control measures for crop diseases and pests, conduct soil testing to determine appropriate fertilizer formulas, optimize the structure of crop varieties, and increase yield per unit area. We will enforce and improve the policy of supporting production of cotton, oilseed, and sugar crops; promote construction of large-scale standardized farms for hogs, dairy cattle, beef cattle, and mutton sheep as well as vegetable production bases in key areas; and support upgrading of sea fishing boats and development of fishery administration and fishing ports. We will improve the quality inspection and testing system for agricultural products. In 2013, the sown area for grain is expected to exceed 106.7 million hectares, total grain output will surpass 500 million tons, and production of cotton, oilseed, sugar crops, and meat will grow steadily.

2) We will strengthen infrastructure of agriculture and rural areas. We will build more high-yield croplands and water conservancy projects to a high standard, and advance transformation and development of such key projects as large and medium-size irrigated areas, upgrading and retrofitting of large irrigation and drainage pumping stations, and model water-efficient irrigation projects. We will step up efforts to harness major rivers and shore up weak links in flood prevention and control by bringing small and medium-sized rivers under control, reinforcing aging reservoirs and sluices, and preventing geological disasters brought about by mountain torrents. We will continue to advance the project to provide safe drinking water in rural areas; upgrade rural power grids and extend them to areas without electricity; build rural roads; renovate dilapidated houses in rural areas, land reclamation zones, and forest regions; and build permanent homes for nomadic families. In 2013, we plan to provide safe drinking water for another 60 million rural people, making safe drinking water available to 87% of the rural population, and build or upgrade 200,000 kilometers of rural roads.

3) We will promote a steady increase in farmers' incomes. We will further raise the minimum purchase prices of wheat and rice by 10 yuan and 10.7 yuan per 50 kilograms, respectively; temporarily purchase and stockpile corn, soybeans, rapeseed, cotton, and sugar; and earnestly carry out the contingency plan of regulating the market price for hogs. We will work to ensure direct subsidies to grain growers, raise the subsidies for purchasing superior crop varieties, improve the dynamic mechanism of adjusting general subsidies for purchasing agricultural supplies, and increase the amount and scope of subsidies for purchasing agricultural machinery and tools. We will improve the reward and encouragement system for major counties producing grain, oilseed, and hogs; and the methods of subsidizing major grain-growing areas and providing compensation for farmland protection and ecological damage. We will develop rural secondary and tertiary industries, especially industries that process agricultural products, to increase the wage incomes of rural residents.

4) We will make solid progress in the reform of rural areas. We will uphold and improve the basic management system of rural areas, guide the transfer of contracted rural land-use rights in an orderly manner, and promote appropriately large-scale operations of land. We will create a new agricultural production management system, and offer more policy support to farmer cooperatives, service organizations in rural areas, and leading industrialized agricultural production enterprises. We will accelerate reform of the land expropriation system, and quickly formulate regulations on compensating for expropriation of rural collective land. We will reform and improve the system of rural land used for private housing, and standardize the transfer of rural land used by collective businesses.

5) We will promote integration of urban and rural development. We will build a new countryside and advance urbanization at the same time, robustly develop infrastructure and social programs in rural areas, promote equitable exchanges of factors of production and balanced distribution of public resources between urban and rural areas, improve rural governance, achieve equal access to basic public services between urban and rural areas in due course, and build a new socialist countryside at a faster pace.