Full text: Report on national economic, social development

2. The agricultural foundation was further consolidated.

Agriculture maintained steady development. Despite the impact of serious natural disasters, grain output rose for the sixth consecutive year and totaled 530.82 million tons in 2009, up 0.4% from the previous year, and 30.82 million tons more than planned. Cotton production was 6.4 million tons and did not meet the target; oilseed and sugar crop output was 31 million tons and 122 million tons respectively, 1 million tons and 2 million tons more than planned. The animal husbandry and fishery industries developed in the midst of structural adjustments. The downward trend of dairy cow farming was reversed. Meat production totaled 76.42 million tons, up 5%, and 2.42 million tons more than planned, and the output of aquatic products reached 51.2 million tons, up 4.6%, and 2.2 million tons more than planned.

We continued to improve policies that strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers. We issued the Guidelines on Promoting Steady Agricultural Development and Raising Rural Incomes in the Current Situation. We significantly raised minimum grain purchase prices, and the average floor prices for wheat and rice increased by 0.22 yuan and 0.26 yuan per kilogram respectively. We implemented a national policy for temporarily purchasing and stockpiling corn, soybeans and canola seeds, and increased our reserves of cotton and sugar. The amounts of corn, soybeans, canola seeds, cotton and sugar we stockpiled in 2009 reached 35.891 million tons, 6.863 million tons, 5.569 million tons, 2.72 million tons, and 360,000 tons respectively. We formulated and promptly launched a contingency plan for preventing a precipitous drop in the price of hogs, and successfully implemented the outline for rectifying and reinvigorating the dairy industry. We applied various methods to strengthen regulation of the markets for important agricultural products, and thus solved farmers' difficulty in selling their products and kept prices stable for major agricultural products and agricultural supplies.

Investment in agriculture, rural areas and farmers increased dramatically. Central government spending on agriculture, rural areas and farmers was 725.31 billion yuan for the whole year, a year-on-year increase of 21.8%. This included 189 billion yuan of investment in capital construction, an increase of 150%, and 127.45 billion yuan for the four kinds of subsidies to farmers, an increase of 24.41 billion yuan. The outstanding balance of bank loans to agriculture, rural areas and farmers exceeded 9 trillion yuan at the end of 2009, up 34.8%. We began implementation of the Plan for Increasing National Grain Production Capacity by 50 Billion Kilograms (2009-2020). We intensified work to upgrade water-saving devices in large irrigated areas, renovate large pumping stations, reinforce dilapidated reservoirs, and develop production bases and storage and distribution facilities for important agricultural products, including grain, cotton, edible oil and sugar. We increased our support for the project to cultivate superior varieties and breeds; the large-scale, standardized hog and dairy cow farming; the crop protection project; the animal epidemic prevention system; the system for quality inspection and testing of agricultural products; and the project to improve grain yield through science and technology.

Working and living conditions continued to improve in rural areas. An additional 60.69 million rural residents benefited from the project to provide safe drinking water in the countryside, and the portion of the rural population with access to tap water increased by 3.2 percentage points over the previous year to reach 68.7%, and the target was met. We built 1,579 large and medium-sized methane facilities and smoothly achieved the objective set early last year of providing methane gas to an additional 5 million households. We newly built or renovated 380,000 kilometers of rural roads, and extended rural power grids by an additional 266,000 kilometers of power lines. A total of 800,000 dilapidated rural houses were renovated, and 92,000 nomadic families were moved into permanent homes. We made further progress in expanding IT application in rural areas. The telephone network was extended to 99.8% of the country's villages, and 99.5% of towns and townships now have access to the Internet. We also obtained new successes in the project to get retailers to open stores in more townships and villages, the system of scientific and technological services in rural areas, and the project to support 100 large wholesale markets for farm products and 100 large rural retail distributors.