Heilongjiang Province Eco-agricultural Development Analysis

Li Shuan , and Zhang Xiao-mei

1 Heilongjiang Provincial Academy of Social Sciences, Harbin 150018, China

2 College of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

Abstract: Heilongjiang Province eco-agricultural development had distinctive characters in different areas. It depended on the development of circular agriculture and agricultural mechanization, with the new agricultural business as the main management model, and gradually became the trend of agricultural development. But there were some problems in the process, such as lacking of supervision, brand clutter, farmland quality decline,financial shortage, information and human resource shortage, and farmers' weak awareness on eco-agriculture. Some suggestions were provided to solve these problems.

Key words: Heilongjiang Province, eco-agriculture, analysis

Introduction

With the rapid development of urbanization and modern agriculture, agricultural production models have been constantly adjusted. Mechanization and scale-production has become the main trend (Chen et al., 2010; Huang et al., 2012). At the same time, the agricultural production environment is deteriorating,and the increase of products is over relying on chemical fertilizers and pesticides which makes the situation worse. For protecting agricultural environment and sustainable development, more and more experts give their views. Eco-agriculture has high comprehensive production capacity, diversified production mode and utilized technology, high efficiency of matter and energy, high quality of products and has few adverse effects on ecological environment (Johnston, 2003;Zheng et al., 2003; Wang, 2008; Liu et al., 2008). It is a kind of agricultural industry mode which coordinates the ecological benefit, social benefit and economic benefit (Li et al., 2008; Luo, 2010). In 2015, the central government put forward the No.1 document to realize the sustainable development of agriculture and eco-agriculture (Yu, 2016). In 2016, the central government No.1 document once again emphasized achieving green and healthy eco-agriculture developing circular agriculture, and effectively using agricultural resources. China Agriculture Outlook Report(2016-2025) expresses the next ten years of agricultural product market forecast analysis. It points out that in the next ten years, customers will increase healthy awareness. Organic food and disposable vegetables will boost the steady growth of vegetable consumption. The report indicates that it is necessary to speed up the structural reform of the agricultural supply, improve agricultural product quality, optimize planting structure, and take the market demand as guidance to develop modern agriculture.

In this paper, the author believes that in addition to reducing the use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides,eco-agriculture should also include reducing the waste,during agricultural production that may damage the environment.

Status of Eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province

As the largest province of grain production, Heilongjiang Province has unique black soil, gentle terrain slopes and large per capita arable land. So, it has a huge advantage to develop eco-agriculture. In 2015,the total grain output of Heilongjiang Province was 68 479 million kg, accounting for 11% of China(Heilongjiang Province Statistical Data, 2016). In 2016, Heilongjiang Province government discussed supply side reform and formulated the "implementation plan on promoting the supply side reform (Draft)".It pointed out that Heilongjiang Province should use green eco-agriculture advantage to promote the development of domestic agricultural product market.

Eco-agriculture development in different areas

Heilongjiang Province has the inherent advantage to develop eco-agriculture: huge per capita arable land and plain landscape which are convenient for mechanization and centralized management. The local citiesfind their own character to develop ecoagriculture. For example, Hailun City, according to the local soil rich in selenium, is developing selenium enrich grain products like rice, soybean, corn and cereals and vegetables are all rich in selenium which is the sale promotion point. They set up 20 selenium industry zones to enhance the industrial development chain. Qing'an County with the development goals,"green, organic and natural", takes a series of factory measures to develop rice production. Nursery, planting,production and processing all use modern agricultural methods, which promote local eco-agriculture development. Wuchang City, taking advantage of "Wuchang rice" brand, according to agricultural planting characteristics and market demand, guides farmers to adjust planting structure and plant organic rice.

By the end of 2015, Heilongjiang Province had 1 169 high standard demonstration zones, occupying 169 333 hm2. There were 870 green food zones occupying 138 667 hm2, 281 organic food zones occupying 29 333 hm2, and 18 EU standard organic planting zones occupying 1 026 hm2. This data presented eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province had begun to take shape and became a new trend of agricultural development.

Development of eco-agriculture with circular agriculture

An important measure of ecological agriculture development is the circular agriculture. Circular agriculture can reduce the production of waste,improve the utilization rate of resources, and has high ecological benefits, and it needs information,technology and capital to become a dynamic system.So, circular agricultural development needs governments, enterprises, farmers and other multilateral cooperations. In order to promote the development of circular agriculture, some cities in Heilongjiang Province carry out some low threshold projects.For example, the Great Northern Wilderness Shares Xinhua Branch, according to the "crab-rice symbiosis,rice-duck symbiosis and goose-jade symbiosis",develops planting and breeding together mode. This mode can not only reduce the use of pesticides and fertilizers, reduce agricultural non-point source pollution, increase soil fertility, improve the ecological environment, but also save the breeding cost, enhance the added value of agricultural products, and promote the local development of ecological agriculture to be a good trend. Zhaoyuan Farm Science and Technology Demonstration Rice Zone also adopts the modern agricultural technology, reduces fertilizer,pesticide and herbicide dosage. They use "recycling agriculture planting model of rice-duck symbiosis" to reduce agricultural pollution, improve the quality of green organic agricultural products, and promote the development of ecological agriculture.

New agricultural mechanization promoting development of eco-agriculture

The rapid development of ecological agriculture needs large-scale management and standardized production,all of which need the support of agricultural mechanization. Some farms take their own mechanical advantages to develop eco-agriculture. Binjiang Farm No. 9 zone plants organic rice with mulching cultivation machine. This machine can transplant and mulch at the same time. This technique not only kills weeds and pests, but also increases the rice quantity. It is a new model for cultivation of organic rice planting.In addition, high performance side deep fertilization translators, large wheeled tractors, GPS navigation autopilot system and other mechanical advantages all promote the development of ecological agriculture in Heilongjiang Province.

Problems in Development of Ecoagriculture

Eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province was developing with good trend. However, there were some problems in cultivation, production, management and sales process, due to social economic conditions,technology, capital, personnel and other factors.

Adverse supervision system

According to Heilongjiang Province Statistics, in 2016 Heilongjiang Province green organic food certification area was 4.93 million hm2, accounting for about 1/4 of that in China. But according to the field investigation, it could be found that many farmers (retail) were not fully in accordance with the requirements of green organic food planting. In order to improve the production, they used chemical fertilizers and pesticides, and they sold their products with green organic brands. This cheating led to green agricultural products that were difficult to distinguish and affect market demand. For example, some rice processing factories sell their products with "Wuchang rice" brands which was actually not. Small retail management has increased the difficulty of supervision.Guaranteeing the quality of green organic products could not rely on farmers' con-scientiousness. It needed a perfect supervision system and suitable punishments. Then, they could ensure the quality of green organic products and promote eco-agriculture development.

Lacking of big brands

There were 82 registrations of geographic eco-agriculture brands in Heilongjiang Province. But, there were only a few well-known brands, such as "the great Northern Wilderness", "Wuchang rice" and "Feihe".The eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province mainly depended on farmers' cooperative modes. This cooperative mode normally set up their own brands. This smallscale, decentralized production mode had often led to a short industrial chain, lacking of deep processing and low value-added agricultural products. They seldom cooperated to set up a big brand, so there were lots of small brands which lacked effective management skills and were hard to develop. Although small brands were easy to manage, they lacked strong competition and risk tolerance, all affected their economic benefits.

Declining of cultivated land quality

In recent years, because of pursuit of food production,more and more farmers relyed on chemical fertilizers and pesticides aimed to increase production. The average chemical fertilizer consumption was above 500 kg • hm-2, and the organic fertilizer consumption was 25% of the chemical fertilizer amount. This deteriorated the soil fertility. This caused farmland heavy metal pollution, soil compaction, and declined agricultural production and quality, which was bad to human health.In 2015, during investigation in Baiquan County, it could be found that some of the black soil depth were only 10 cm, and the color was changing to yellow.The formation of 1 cm mature black soil layer took about 50 years, and the loss of black soil was 0.3-1 cm annual in Heilongjiang Province. Soil conservation was urgent, and effective measures should be put forward.

Lacking offinancial support

The development of eco-agriculture is the embodiment of sustainable development and in line with the long-term interests of humanity. But, the shortterm economic benefits are low and need lots of human and material resource investment. The subsidy mechanism of eco-agriculture could not meet all the requirements,especially the general small-scale farmers. Their enthusiasm for eco-agriculture development was not high. Although the Ministry of Agriculture issued the "comprehensive agricultural zones development of ecological cycle agricultural projects guidelines(2017-2020)" which expressed providing subsidies for planting eco-agriculture and circular agriculture,the applicants must be leading enterprises, farmer cooperatives and should be in comprehensive agriculture zones. The national policy was supporting eco-agriculture in large-scale management. So, for those general retail farmers, there was not too manyfinancial supports to develop eco-agriculture.

Lacking of effective information support

In recent years, people paid more attention to food safety, and the demand for green organic food was increasing year by year. However, due to the uneven quality of green organic food sold on the market, many consumers had doubts about the quality of the product affecting the sales of green organic food market.How to establish the credibility of products was the key link. Green organic food lacked traceability in production, processing, circulation, etc. The consumers could not get the information of food quality. Farms,food products and consumers could not get each other needs and information. The food source information could not be sent to consumers, which affected the market of eco-agriculture.

Lacking of agricultural scientific and technical personnel

Heilongjiang Province is thefirst grain producing province in China. But it is mainly planting grain crops, and the economic benefits are low. Through the survey, it could be found that most farmers did not know how to develop modern agriculture and ecoagriculture, because there was not technical guidance for them. For instance, in 2015, Tongxiang Town Fuyuan County had corpo-rate loans to construct green organic agricultural greenhouses to develop ecoagriculture. Each green-house cost about 840 thousand Yuan, and the average annual income was about 200 thousand Yuan. This mode was environmental-friendly and had high econo-mic benefit. But there were not technical personnel of greenhouse construction and planting. The local government hired experts from Shandong Province. The experts guided them construct and use ecological greenhouse, and trained the local farmers how to manage during the planting.Solving this problem by introducing experts from other provinces, showed how serious the shortage of agricultural technical personnel was. Lacking agricultural scientific and technical personnel was negatively affecting the development of eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province.

Weakness of farmers' awareness of eco-agriculture

Heilongjiang per capita cultivated land area was 0.31 hm2, which was 3.1 times of that of the national,rankingfirst in China. However, due to the cold climate, the greenhouse cost was high, the loan recovery period was long, and there was high risk of investment. Most farmers could not take this risk, so they plant grain crops. For them to increase income the best way was to increase the quantity of products. Therefore, farmers usually used large amounts of chemical fertilizers and pesticides on farmland. If they did not use chemical fertilizer and pesticides, the average quantity of products was lower than 50%. This caused soil compaction, and decline of farmland quality, which led to products decline.Then, farmers would use more chemical fertilizer and pesticides to increase product quantity. All of these formated a vicious cycle. The other reason was there was no professional eco-agriculture support service.For example, as available resources straw could be used as ecological fertilizer and raw material of bio pharmaceutical. But due to lacking of funding and policy support, lots of straw was burned. This not only destructed farmland, but also caused air pollution.Some of the farmers were willing to collect straw for resource re-using, but each labor of collection cost at least 150 Yuan per day, and they needed hire truck to transport. The cost was too high to dispel their enthusiasm.

Suggestions on Developing Ecoagriculture in Heilongjiang Province

The above problems in the development of eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province could be classified to human resources, material resources, capital, technology, information, management, etc. According to direct participants, indirect managers, policy makers and market environment factors analyses, the following suggestions and measures to solve those problems were put forward.

Developing circular agricultural economy

The development of circular agriculture in Heilongjiang Province mainly depended on the primary breeding mode, which had low threshold, but the overall efficiency was not high. The effective resources coming from planting and breeding industry could be used as manure, bio fertilizer and biogas.If adjusted these resources to suitable proportion that could produce the lowest agriculture waste,they could not only maximize the use of resources,but also protect the ecological environment. Using agriculture sideline processing industry chain, it could improve ecological agricultural product processing.For instance, liquor, vinegar, pickled tofu, starch,protein powder, vegetable oil and other product raw materials were grain crop. In addition, establishing agricultural waste disposal centers, introducing advance technology could turn waste into treasure.For example, Gannan County introduced a biopharmaceutical company which used animal offal as raw materials to do biomedical research and production. Agricultural production waste could be used as raw materials. This could not only reduce the environmental pollution, but also improve economic efficiency. Therefore, developing a circular economy was an effective measure to promote eco-agriculture in Heilongjiang Province.

Expand farmland protection measures

In April 2016, Heilongjiang Province promulgated the regulations of Heilongjiang Province on cultivated land protection, emphasizing the importance of farmland protection. The development of ecological agriculture was an effective way to protect cultivated land resources. As farmland quality was decreasing,the key problem was how to change planting modes to improve farmland quality. In addition to rotary tillage,deep tillage, soil testing formula, adjusting planting structure, etc., controlling the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizer was a key measure. Water and fertilizer integration technology integrated water and fertilizer, according to crop growth characteristics and soil nutrient to adjust the ratio of irrigation water and fertilizer, using pipeline dripping irrigation methods to meet the crop demand. This technology could improve the efficiency of fertilizer utilization, which not only saved resources, but also reduced non-point source pollution. It could also improve the soil microbial environment and improve the quality of cultivated land.

Internet+agricultural marketing strategy

Electronic business had formed a relatively perfect sales system, and was an effective way to expand agricultural products. Heilongjiang Province ecoagriculture could make full use of the internet information to establish eco-agricultural brands and brands awareness. Using modern marketing skills,multimedia advertising and realizing the importance of culture dissemination, could help sale high quality products at higher prices. Although there were plenty of eco-agricultural brands in Heilongjiang Province,most of them were small scale. Their managements,capital, equipment and personnel didn't work well compared with famous brands. Integrating small brands resources to establish big scale enterprise which had strong marketing energies and strategies might be a useful way to solve those problems. Playing full use of product packaging role in internet business marketing and adding ideological value to ecoagricultural products was an effective marketing tool.Making full use of the internet platform and marketing tools to create well-known eco-agricultural brands and expand the channels of eco-agricultural products sales could better promote the development of ecoagriculture in Heilongjiang Province.

Cooperation with enterprises to develop ecoagriculture scale management

Eco-agricultural products are not easy to be identified which might affect their sales and economic benefits. Scale management mode could better solve this problem. First scale management could reduce cost. Second standard production mode could guarantee the products quality. Thus, eco-agricultural scale management was a good way to develop new agricultural business entities. It was also convenient for the authorities to supervise samples at any time.In addition, it had more opportunities to cooperate with enterprises. In 2015, Fujin City introduced a company investing 1.4 billion Yuan to establish corn storage and deep processing factory. It had an entire set of dry storage equipment to avoid crop stale which often occurred with traditional methods.Collaboration with the local farmers' cooperatives,enterprise provided seeds and fertilizer and remote control guidance. Farmers' cooperatives planted according to enterprises' requirements and rules.Enterprise did regular monitoring to meet the development of eco-agricultural standard. It controlled ecoagricultural products safety from sources, and bought their products to process and saled at a higher price than market average price. This mode could take the advantage of enterprises' processing and marketing skill, increase added value of agricultural products,and bring more economic benefits to the local farmers.

Improving comprehensive utilization rate of straw

In 2014, the total amount of straw resources in Heilongjiang Province (air dried) was 90 million tons.Only about 10% of the straw was utilized as fertilizer,industrial raw materials and fungi, and about 30%of the straw was used for feed processing. While the remaining 60% of straw, half was directly burned and half was for household heating. It meant that 5.4 million tons of straw was burned annually, which not only wasted lots of resources, but also deteriorated air environment and soil compaction. Straw as an available resource could be used for straw power generation, straw ethanol, bio natural gas, organic fertilizer, bio diesel, building materials and so on.Heilongjiang Province had huge numbers of straw resources, if adopting effective measures to comprehensive utilize, it could reduce environmental pollution and promote the development of emerging industries. Firstly, the government should improve the enthusiasm of farmers to recycle straw, or establish a specialized straw recycling system; secondly, they should introduce straw utilization technology and promote straw comprehensive utilization. Due to the large investment and high technical personnel, this measure needed the government encouragement and support. Straw utilization could reduce agricultural waste emissions, promote new industrial development and extend industrial chain. This was in line with the long-term development of comprehensive interests.

Extendfinancial resources

Scale management was an effective way to develop eco-agriculture. This kind of mode required a large amount of pre-investment, which was difficult for general farmers' cooperatives to corporate. The agricultural loans for retail investors were usually low with high interest rates, and in short repayment cycle,which was not conducive to long-term development of eco-agriculture. First it was recommended to encourage enterprises to participate in eco-agriculture processing. Took full advantage of its strongfinancial capabilities and managed eco-agriculture with enterprises ways. Farmers and enterprises could sign a contract to transfer or lease land management rights.Enterprises must promise to do land consolidation,build irrigation system, monitoring system and modern agriculture facilities for the contracted land. They also undertook the agricultural product processing,storage and circulation and employed the local farmers to create a long industrial chain for eco-agriculture.Secondly, the government should encourage big scale farmers' cooperatives to produce eco-agriculture products by giving subsidy and attractive loan policies,such as reducing interest rate, increasing loan amount,providing government guarantees, etc. Thirdly, it was recommended to apply specialized fund of ecoagriculture, and enhance central government transfer payments to re flect the cost of arable land protection and scarify economic development in Heilongjiang Province.

Training farmers' new eco-agricultural technology

With the development of agricultural modernization,the development of eco-agriculture could not only rely on the traditional way of planting and should develop efficient modern, mechanized and precision ecological agriculture. Heilongjiang Province is a big agricultural province, but it is not a strong agricultural province. It was suggested that the rural government organizations should learn from the advanced areas experience and improve the local farmers planting and breeding techniques. For instance, by introducing experts from Shandong Province, local governments established modern agricultural facilities and contracted to the local farmers who were trained by experts and had advanced planting and breeding techniques. With high economic benefits, vegetables, fruits, herbs all needed specialized planting skills. Meet, eggs and milk industry standardization also required specialists to guide them. These modern eco-agriculture industries comparing with traditional agriculture could not only have higher economic benefits and increase farmers'income, but also reduce agricultural waste and improve ecological environment quality. It was recommended that the government could build scientific research zones for colleges and universities. The research would be applied to the field, and establish long-term communication feedback mechanism, where farmers could be guided by experts. Only the agricultural producers mastered the modern eco-agricultural technology, could the development of eco-agriculture be promoted directly in Heilongjiang Province.