撰写[Talent is the First Resource, Written Talk]
Author: Dong Wenbing Zhang Zhiguo (Associate Professor and Professor of Shandong Institute of Ecological Civilization)
The key to agricultural and rural modernization lies in science and technology and talents. In October, 2021, when General Secretary of Supreme Leader visited the Yellow River Delta agricultural high-tech industrial demonstration zone in Dongying City, Shandong Province, he put forward a major agricultural scientific and technological innovation proposition of "changing the concept of breeding, from controlling saline-alkali land to breeding saline-alkali tolerant plants to adapting to saline-alkali land". To solve this proposition, it depends fundamentally on agricultural scientific and technological talents.
Rural revitalization, talent first. Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, all localities have actively innovated systems, optimized service guarantees, and maximized the development space of rural talents. However, the problems in reality can not be avoided, such as the total number of agricultural scientific and technological talents is still insufficient to meet the needs of the current reform and development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, as of November 2022, the total number of scientific research personnel in agricultural research institutions nationwide was only over 72,000. Moreover, agricultural science and technology talents, especially high-end agricultural science and technology talents, are basically concentrated in higher-level agricultural universities or research institutes, and the problem of "staying high" is very prominent.
At the same time, with the deep integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, the "agriculture+"format has been iteratively upgraded, and the traditional training and use mode of agricultural technicians according to disciplines, departments and fields has been challenged. The cross-industry, cross-field and cross-format compound scientific and technological talents urgently needed for the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers are very scarce.
The author believes that in order to make scientific and technological talents become the wisdom engine of rural revitalization and stimulate the vitality of talents in modern agricultural development, we must do a good job in the "three combinations" article.
Combining attracting and cultivating to solve the problem of "having talents"
In the cornfield of Longju Town, Dongying District, Dongying City, a youthful figure often flashes. He is Zhou Jingbo, a staff member of the agricultural technology extension station in this town. Five years ago, he was admitted to Qingdao Agricultural University with a score of 552 points, more than 30 points above the "one line", and became a publicly funded agricultural student. In 2022, he worked in the front line of agricultural science and technology according to the agreement, and now he has become a "good helper to get rich" for local farmers.
The system of agricultural students at public expense, which attracts high-quality students at public expense for agricultural training and sends them to the grass-roots line to carry out agricultural extension, is a typical practice of combining attracting and cultivating agricultural scientific and technological talents. In the future, to overcome the challenge of the shortage of agricultural science and technology talents, we must further broaden the way in attracting and cultivating talents. For example, support agricultural enterprises and vocational colleges to carry out joint training of college students; Set up a special post plan for first-line agricultural extension workers at the city and county levels to guide more agricultural graduates to face first-line employment.
Under the background of aging population, we should learn and popularize Guizhou’s experience, formulate and implement the plan of "silver age experts" in agriculture, introduce and retain a group of old professors and experts to settle in rural areas, give full play to the waste heat, and strengthen the talent team for rural revitalization.
The above-mentioned measures mainly solve the problem of the increment of agricultural science and technology talents, and must also pay attention to the problem of the stock of agricultural science and technology talents. To pay attention to the stock, we must face the problem that agricultural scientific and technological talents can’t stay. Nowadays, talent policies have been introduced in various places to attract people, and local governments can integrate agricultural science and technology talents into the local talent security system and honor the corresponding treatment. In view of the particularity of the field of agriculture, countryside and farmers, agricultural science and technology talents working at the grassroots level should be given certain work subsidies. In the aspect of evaluating the first tree, we should give appropriate tilt to agricultural scientific and technological talents. In addition, we should also pay attention to the continuing education of front-line agricultural science and technology talents, encourage them to study for a master’s degree in agriculture, sign a service agreement with the interested parties, and return to the grass-roots work to give tuition reimbursement and cost of living allowance after completing their studies.
Thus, to achieve "talented people", it is necessary to endow agricultural technology posts with full-fledged "gold content" in the links of "attracting talents" and "cultivating talents".
Combining evaluation with carrier to solve the problem of "using talents"
According to statistics, since the pilot in 2018, as of March 2023, 9,063 people in Shandong Province have obtained the title of new professional farmers. In recent years, in addition to Shandong, Zhejiang, Gansu, Ningxia, Hubei, Guangdong and other places have also carried out the evaluation of professional farmers’ professional titles. By identifying professional farmers’ professional titles and combining talent evaluation with the use of carriers, it is conducive to further activating the potential of grassroots agricultural science and technology talents and making the title of farmers truly change from identity orientation to career orientation.
Evaluation is a baton. The evaluation of agricultural scientific and technological talents depends not only on how many topics have been written and how many papers have been published, but also on how many agricultural technical problems have been solved and how many people have been served. Agriculture is a real business, and you can’t eat if you play with flowers and gestures and talk. Only by writing papers on the motherland and putting scientific research into agricultural production can the value of agricultural science and technology be reflected. This requires that in talent evaluation, we must further establish production orientation, performance orientation and demand orientation, not just hats, academic qualifications and papers, so that agricultural scientific and technological talents can be recognized in solving front-line problems.
While optimizing the evaluation, we should pay attention to the carrier empowerment and mobilize the scientific research enthusiasm of agricultural scientific and technological talents to the maximum extent. The carriers such as project establishment, team building, and R&D platform should be closely linked to the practical problems of the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, so as to break the institutional barriers of deep integration in Industry-University-Research and reshape the soft environment for the use of agricultural scientific and technological talents. It is necessary to deepen the reform of the property right system of agricultural scientific and technological achievements, adhere to the income distribution policy oriented by knowledge value, and effectively stimulate the vitality of innovation. To realize "using talents", we must set up a stage for talents, make clear the direction while letting go of their hands and feet, and give full play to their intelligence.
The combination of "upper hanging" and "lower dispatching" can solve the problem of "strong talents"
Recently, Shandong Province launched the recommendation of candidates for on-the-job training for young and middle-aged business backbones at the grass-roots level in 2023, in which 60 people were arranged by the agricultural and rural system, and the training funds were allocated according to the standard of 30,000 yuan per person after the selected personnel arrived at their posts.
It is an effective way to promote the growth of agricultural science and technology talents at the grass-roots level by sending outstanding young and middle-aged backbones at the grass-roots level to the relevant units at higher levels for attachment training. It is suggested to further strengthen financial support, increase the number of grassroots participants, and optimize the way of recommending candidates. For example, the candidates can be selected by applying with questions and introducing the defense link, leaving opportunities for those who really need them, so that trainees can really improve their ability to solve practical problems during their attachment.
However, it is still difficult to solve the problem that many agricultural science and technology talents become stronger and upgraded by "hanging up" alone. How can more agricultural science and technology talents benefit? The system of special commissioners for science and technology, which has been popularized all over the country, is a good answer. Since the implementation of this system in Zhejiang for 20 years, 39,000 science and technology commissioners have gone from the laboratory to the field, and 13.16 million people have been trained. It can be seen that it is a good way to improve the ability of grass-roots agricultural talents to send agricultural scientific and technological talents from the institute to the fields. In this process, we must strengthen the protection and support for the dispatched agricultural scientific and technological talents and stimulate the motivation of talents to "go down".
There are also channels for dispatching agricultural scientific and technological talents, as well as the mode of small scientific and technological colleges that originated in Quzhou, Hebei Province. Whether it is the system of science and technology commissioners or the mode of science and technology small courtyard, the essence is to sink high-quality agricultural science and technology resources to the front line of "agriculture, countryside and farmers" After careful combing, we can find that some agricultural and rural departments are doing it, some scientific and technological management departments are doing it, some human and social departments are doing it, and some scientific research institutes are doing it. There are many departments to do, which shows that everyone attaches importance to this issue. This is a good thing, but it will also bring disadvantages such as scattered resources and formalism. Therefore, in the process of promoting the distribution of agricultural science and technology talents, we must fully consider the reality of agricultural technology talents themselves and the receiving places, and coordinate resources, funds and personnel on the basis of full investigation, so as to really do a good job.
In a word, to realize "strong talents", we must further aggregate the strength of agricultural science and technology talents and ensure the unimpeded channels.