In 2014, the MoA implemented the requirements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council, focused on the goal of using legal methods to develop agriculture and protect farmers, and took efforts in aspects of improving legislation, standardizing enforcement, and conciliating disputes, which made great achievements.
1. Enhancing agricultural legislation The State Council's requirement of decentralizing administrative approval was implemented, and related clauses in regulations on protecting new plant varieties and managing veterinary drugs were revised. Symposiums and legislative hearing were held for the issue of pesticide business license. The legislation for pest and diseases prevention was advanced, and the draft was revised. The revision of seed law was carried out, and opinions were formed in aspects of major crop variety registration, germplasm bank resource use approval, and enforcement subjects, which were approved by the legislation department. The revisions of fishery law and livestock and poultry slaughtering regulation were initiated.
Three regulations were enacted on fodder safety management, import fodder and fodder additive management, and fishing crew management. Based on the State Council’s requirement of decentralizing administrative approval, the MoA issued a document on revising five regulations, such as the approval and management of meadow acquisition. A catalog of all in-effect regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture was released.
Regional agricultural departments made progress in improving regional legislation. For example, a regulation on live poultry trading management was released in Zhejiang Province; a regulation on animal vaccination was issued in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region; a regulation on the fruit industry was enacted in Shaanxi Province; a regulation on promoting farmers' specialized cooperatives was formulated in Tianjin; a regulation on agricultural product safety supervision was implemented in Shandong Province.
2. Standardizing the agriculture law enforcement In order to guide regional agricultural departments to improve the image of enforcement agencies, provide convenience for complaints, report and social supervision, the MoA enacted a regulation on the use of marks and signs for the comprehensive enforcement of agriculture laws, based on principles of simplicity, standardization, and consistency. Following the State Council's requirement of disclosing administrative punishment case information, the MoA released a document on information disclosure methods for administrative punishment cases. The program on developing comprehensive agriculture law enforcement demonstration units was carried on. 10 comprehensive law enforcement units were selected to demonstrate a good image of agriculture law enforcement. The enforcement was reinforced. 48,700 cases of violation of laws were investigated, among which 336 cases were transferred to the judiciary; 13,000 agricultural disputes were conciliated, retrieving 1.57 billion yuan of economic loss for farmers, which effectively protected farmers5 rights.
3. Legally conciliating agricultural disputes Administrative reconsideration was enhanced to better conciliate administrative disputes. In 2014, the MoA handled 35 administrative reconsideration cases. The number had been increased for two consecutive years. The cases were handled based on the principle of protecting people's rights, and the supervision and regulation function of the administrative reconsideration system was effectively used. The ministry released several documents to urge certain administrative units to regulate their conducts. The popularization of legal knowledge was promoted. Three departments including the Hunan Provincial Agricultural Department, along with four individuals including Hu Zhongming were publicly recognized by the National Law Popularization Office.
