To ensure the food supply, the first problem to be solved is how to breed a new generation of professional farmers, said Xia Zuxiang, a senior agricultural official in Chongqing.

The key, according to Xia, lies in making agriculture profitable, and that is a question of scale.

The household farming model in which individual households make small profits from small pieces of land contrasts unfavorably with one or two months' income from a job in a city.

The time has come to complement the traditional structure with new rural production bodies, such as big specialized farms, cooperatives and industrialized enterprises, to increase farm income.

These will be the major forces in agricultural production, said Han Yijun, professor at China Agricultural University.

By the end of 2012, the number of specialized and big household farms with a farming area of more than 100 mu (6.67 hectares) exceeded 2.7 million, according to the Ministry of Agriculture.