Agricultural science and technology should play a bigger role in increasing farmers' incomes.

Last year was a bumper harvest for China's agricultural sector. Total grain production grew by 9 per cent year-on-year to 469 million tons, ending five consecutive years of slump. Farmers' incomes increased by 6.8 per cent year-on-year, the biggest jump since 1997.

The central government's pro-agriculture policies, such as phasing out the farm tax, are the main reason behind this dramatic performance. And last year's generally good climate also helped.

But if this increase in incomes has been mostly generated by favourable policy initiatives, it may not be sustainable as the room for more favourable policies is limited. The rise in price of agricultural materials will easily offset such policy-generated income increases, which is the case this year. Farmers have already complained about rising farm material prices.

And relying on Mother Nature to deliver farming-friendly weather is not a good idea.

A long-term and fundamental solution to the problem of helping increase farmers' incomes may lie in advancing and promoting agricultural science and technology.

Currently, farmers do not know much about agricultural science and technology. And the active application of science and technology by farmers in their work is rarely heard of.

The effective utilization rate of fertilizers, for example, is only about 30 per cent in China due to farmers' poor technological know-how. The figure is about 60 per cent to 70 per cent in countries boasting a developed agricultural industry.

Such a situation not only results in a huge waste of resources, but also drastically increases farming costs, which underlines the need to promote agricultural science and technology among Chinese farmers.

As a country that only has 7 per cent of world's arable land but has to feed about 22 per cent of its population, China cannot afford to overlook the contribution of science and technology to agriculture.

And there is no lack of good news from the application of advanced technology in the world's most populous country.

For example, the widespread planting of the hybrid rice developed by a Chinesee scientist Yuan Longping has greatly increased the country's rice yield.

But although the importance of science and technology is widely acknowledged, the current pace of the application of technology is slow and on a small scale.

The government's input into agricultural science and technology only increased by 3.8 per cent on average year-on-year from 1985 to 2003, slower than the agricultural output's annual growth rate of 4 per cent during the same period.

And the percentage of spending on agricultural science and technology compared to the country's overall revenue has slipped from 0.51 per cent in 1985 to 0.39 per cent in 2003.

Besides the inadequate spending, there are other hurdles to developing science and technology in agriculture and promoting its application among farmers.

Farmers' generally poor educational level is one of those hurdles.

The illiteracy rate in China as a whole is about 7.6 per cent, with 92 per cent of illiterate and semi-illiterate people living in rural areas.

This has seriously hindered their ability to adopt new technical developments, and has become a major drag on progress in the rural economy.

Another major problem is the lack of an efficient network to promote new research.

Currently, only 40 per cent of agricultural science and technology achievements are utilized.

The old networks of agricultural science and technology promotion stations created during the planned economy period do not work well any more now that the country has moved to a market economy.

The problem is more acute in stations at grass-roots level, where most of them are staffed by poorly trained technicians operating under tight budget constraints.

The dilapidated grass-roots level promotion stations are a barrier preventing agricultural science and technology from reaching their most desired targets - the farmers themselves. These stations are the closest outlets to farmers, where they can get help with new farming techniques.

"The government should set up a mechanism in which spending on agricultural science and technology undertakings is legally guaranteed and increased in a steady manner," said Chen Yingxu, a professor with Zhejiang University.

In this way, he said, the current problem of inadequate funding would be resolved.

He also proposed that a law on agricultural science and technology application should be put on legislators' agenda.

Besides the funding issue, attention should also be paid to the crumbling network of science promotion stations.

Setting up a network that is viable in a market economy is an urgent requirement.

"Such a network is the main channel to carry out the government's policy of boosting agriculture through science and technology," said Huang Dafang, a research fellow with the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences

"The government should increase its financial support by building up such facilities," Huang said.

Also, education funding for rural areas and training programmes for farmers, Huang said, should be initiated to help farmers get rich.

There are some who say that the current model of farming, in which farmers toil on their tiny plots of land, is a major hurdle for the wide application of agricultural science and technology in China.

Only when the currently scattered plots of land owned by various farmers are concentrated in large farms, can the wide application of agricultural science and technology be possible in China.

(China Daily June 8, 2005)