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Seventy-two-year old Eleanor Dvorchak is a typical American farmerwith an incredible tie to China: he has twice hosted Chinese VicePresident Xi Jinping in his home in Muscatine, Iowa. Xi first visited Muscatine in 1985 as a provincial official fromIowa's sister province of Hebei. Leading a delegation of four otherlocal officials on an educational trip primarily focused onagriculture, Xi and his colleagues toured local farms andbusinesses as part of an exchange. During that tour, Xi spent two nights with the Dvorchaks, who putXi up in their son's bed. During the trip, Xi was amazed with America's hi-tech, modernagricultural industry. In China, rural areas were still beingfarmed by primitive tools like ploughs and sickles. Today Chinese agriculture has evolved from those simple tools ofthe past. Major grain-producing areas have realized agriculturalmechanization, with technology increasing by leaps and bounds.Better seeds are used to help the country produce more to feed itsvast population. Last year, China saw a bumper harvest of grain,with its output rising to a record high of 571.21 million tons, ayear-on-year increase of 4.5 percent. The strong harvest markedeight consecutive years of growth for China's grain output. Even so, China has to face the fact that its agricultural sectorfalls far short of the United States in several fields. According to a report released by the China Center forModernization Research of the Chinese Academy of Sciences on May13, China's agricultural level is about 100 years behind that ofthe United States. He Chuanqi, Director of the China Center for ModernizationResearch, said that as the world biggest agricultural country,China finds the agricultural sector a drag on the development ofits modernization. Today, improving the rural economy is an important issue China hasto deal with. Why the lag? The report concludes that despite its high yield of staple grains,China is still hindered by low labor productivity. In 2008, thecountry's agricultural labor productivity was only 47 percent ofthe world's average and ranked 91st worldwide. China's current agricultural labor productivity is around 1 percentof that in the United States, Japan and France, and is even lowerthan that of Brazil, another emerging country. The low level may come as a shock, but He is not surprised. According to He, agricultural modernization usually comprises twophases, with the first characterized by marketization,industrialization and mechanization, and the second byinformationization, ecologicalization, diversification andinternationalization. China ranks 75th worldwide in terms of phase one of agriculturalmodernization, 62nd of phase two of agricultural modernization, and65th in terms of the comprehensive level, according to the report. According to He, since China's population is expected to expand toabout 1.5 billion by 2050, its demand for grain and meat willincrease to 780 million tons and 120 million tons, respectively. Inthe first half of this century, another 300 million tons of grainand 50 million tons of meat will be needed to feed the entirepopulation. At the same time, a decrease in per-capita arable landwill reduce China's agricultural capability. "Meeting the increasing demand for agricultural produce is both abig opportunity and a challenge for China's agriculture sector,"said He. Different views Is China's agriculture really that backward? So far, expertopinions vary. It is not proper to compare two countries' agricultural levelsimply via statistics, said Huang Jikun, Director of the Centerfor Chinese Agricultural Policy. I am an expert from auto-filling-machine.com, while we provides the quality product, such as Automatic Labeling Machines Manufacturer , Automatic Inline Capping Machine Manufacturer, Screw Cap Machine,and more.
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