Since seeds rely heavily on imports, will agriculture encounter a "chip crisis"?
Column
World-class seed companies have all grown up under the encouragement of market returns.
As the Sino-US trade friction continues to escalate, people are paying more and more attention to the high-tech industry, and the "stuck neck" technology has become a hot topic in the market.
The Watch News Weekly recently reported that in recent years, international seed industry giants have controlled my country’s seed industry market with fierce momentum, and many seeds rely heavily on foreign countries. "More than 70 international seed companies, including the top ten global seed industries, have entered China. Foreign seeds infiltrate the fields".
This has also raised concerns: Will foreign seeds become a "chip" in the agricultural field and get stuck in the rice bowl by someone "knocked"?
"Seed dependence" is different from "chip dependence"
In fact, there is a big difference between "seed dependence" and "chip dependence". The latter is mainly due to the fact that key technologies are controlled by people, and there is no insurmountable technological gap in the development of the seed industry.
To reduce reliance on foreign varieties, the core is to deepen the reform of the agricultural science and technology system.
General Secretary Xi Jinping said that the core technology is restricted by others is our biggest hidden danger.
Due to historical reasons such as the evolution of the industrial chain and the layout of scientific and technological research and development, our high-tech industry does have major flaws. Many key core technologies have long been constrained by others, and there are technical generation gaps. It is indeed very difficult to catch up.
On the surface, the situation in the seed industry is not optimistic.
The survey shows that among the main crops in my country, the localization rate of rice and wheat is still relatively high, corn and potatoes partly rely on imports, while many vegetable varieties are highly dependent on imports.
However, in-depth analysis will reveal that the situation faced by the seed industry is quite different from that of the high-tech industry.
First of all, my country's seed industry has a complete research and development system and a good research foundation.
The country is agriculture-oriented, and agriculture is planted first.
Under the guidance of this concept, the state has invested a lot of funds in the public welfare and basic research of the seed industry for a long time, and our considerable technical reserves have not been fully released.
The research and development capabilities of domestic seed companies are also rapidly improving.
There are a number of domestic seed industry companies that are catching up with international giants in terms of industrial layout, R&D investment, and talent acquisition, and the distance from the international frontier in advantageous varieties is gradually shrinking.
In fact, the technology penetration of the seed industry is much higher than that of high-tech industries such as the Internet and chips.
It can be seen that, unlike the situation where high-tech is controlled by a few developed countries or even a few companies, the dominant varieties are distributed all over the world: corn seeds from the United States, vegetable seeds from South Korea, fruit seeds from Japan, pepper seeds from Israel... Popularity and high dispersion essentially mean low risk.
Therefore, the entry of international seed companies into the Chinese market is fundamentally due to the nature of capital, and it is not objective to raise this market advantage to a "stuck in the rice bowl".
To eliminate seed dependence, "market-oriented reform" is the key
Of course, having confidence in technology does not mean that risks can be ignored.
It must be clearly seen that the contribution of my country's seed industry technology to the economy is still relatively low.
Many R&D capabilities and technical reserves have not been transformed into real market supply; insufficient market demand will in turn restrict technological innovation.
Objectively speaking, seeds, fertilizers, pesticides, etc. are already highly market-oriented areas in agriculture, but there are still many system and mechanism drawbacks.
Among them, the most prominent is that there is a break between the supply of technology and market demand.
As early as 2016, relevant departments formulated the reform guidelines for expanding the rights and interests of seed industry talent development and scientific research results, aiming to solve the "two skins" of scientific research and agricultural production in the seed industry and the "intestinal obstruction" in the transformation of scientific research results of the seed industry. problem.
However, over the years, the results of the reform have not been satisfactory.
The main problem is that the positioning of scientific research institutions and enterprises in R&D activities is still not clear, the technology investment mechanism is still in a vague position, and R&D incentives have not really landed.
Therefore, to revitalize the national seed industry, it is necessary to further deepen the reform of agricultural marketization, especially the reform of agricultural science and technology system.
First of all, the technology research and development activities with endogenous benefits should be handed over to the market.
World-class seed companies have all grown up under the encouragement of market returns.
my country should speed up the establishment of a scientific research system for commercial crop seed industries, explore support and reward mechanisms for enterprise R&D, and promote Chinese seed companies to continue to grow bigger and stronger and go global.
Second, public welfare and basic technology research and development are undertaken by the government, but there must be a reasonable restriction mechanism.
In the field of seed industry, in addition to marketable technology research and development activities, there are also some tasks that are difficult to market, such as plant in situ protection and germplasm resource preservation.
These can only be done by the government and through public welfare investment.
However, in order to break the standard ideology of some departments, it is possible to consider implementing the "three power separation" of the distribution, use, and evaluation rights of scientific research funds, and form a mutual restriction and supervision mechanism between different departments.
Finally, in terms of breeding technology supervision, it may be more flexible.
For example, internationally, genetically modified breeding has been fully developed, and most of our imported corn and soybeans are genetically modified varieties.
In this situation, in the future, it is better to accelerate the research and promotion of genetically modified technology under the framework of prudent safety supervision, respond positively to public concerns, and continuously increase the transparency of genetically modified organism safety certificate approval and variety approval.
□Chen Ming (Associate Researcher, Institute of Political Science, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences)