January 26-News from the conference on mechanized rice seedling breeding and transplanting has confirmed that in 2010 the Ministry of Agriculture will have 132 national demonstration counties for mechanized rice seedling breeding and transplanting, with 100,000 yuan of subsidies to each county. The fund will mainly be used for demonstration, training and publicity, and operation subsidies. The cap for operation subsidies is not more than 40% of the total, and the fund should not be used to cover management expenditure.
The Ministry requires that local authorities should: first, work on their own for early arrangement on the selection of demonstration sites to prepare for the work of the coming year; second, fully use the subsidies for agro-machinery, while prioritizing the subsidies to rice seedling breeding and transplanting machines. Meanwhile, local resources should be tapped for more financial support to extend mechanized rice transplanting; third, explore appropriate cost-effective seedling breeding technology and matching mechanized planting technology, to identify proper local plans in order to improve the effectiveness of the application of the technology; fourth, make use of other policies concerning technology extension in rural areas, the new rural construction and promotion of subsidy policies to the purchase of agro-machinery, so that the public awareness to this issue can be enhanced, and; fifth, implement the projects according to relevant guidance of the Ministry, with appropriate use of the fund.
In 2009, the Ministry had 145 counties for demonstration in the producing areas for rice, adding 10,000 seedling transplanting machines to the project areas, increasing 2.15 million mu of land for mechanized transplanting and 3.36 million mu of mechanized harvest, resulting in cost cut and efficiency increase worth 620 million yuan, 96 million yuan of matching fund from the local governments and 390 million yuan of private investment of the farmers. The technology has been matured with good development in machinery production and selling, becoming a highlight in the development of agricultural mechanization.
