Pilot program for mortgaging rural contracted land management rights, Wang Yang calls for steady implementation

Vigorously Advance Agricultural Modernization with New Development Concepts (Study and Implement the Spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee)

Wang Yang

People's Daily (November 16, 2015   page 06)

The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Formulating the Thirteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (hereinafter referred to as the Recommendations), adopted at the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, set out clear requirements for vigorously advancing agricultural modernization. This is an important deployment made from the overall perspective of our country's economic and social development, with an eye to achieving the grand goal of building a moderately prosperous society in all respects. General Secretary Xi Jinping has pointed out on many occasions that whether a society is moderately prosperous or not depends on the fellow countrymen. To build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, the most arduous and heaviest tasks lie in rural areas; in synchronously advancing the new type of industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization, the weak link is agricultural modernization. Without agricultural modernization, without prosperous and strong rural areas, and without farmers living and working in contentment, the country's modernization will be incomplete, not comprehensive and not solid. Agriculture is the foundation for building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and achieving modernization. We must consistently make solving the “three rural issues” a top priority in the work of the whole Party, intensify policies to strengthen agriculture, benefit farmers and enrich rural areas, and vigorously advance agricultural modernization.

In recent years, the level of our country's agricultural modernization has steadily improved, effectively promoting the stable development of agriculture and the continued increase of farmers' incomes, and laying a solid foundation for overcoming various difficulties and risks and maintaining overall social stability. As our country's economic development enters a new normal, with economic growth shifting from high speed to medium-high speed and downward pressure on the economy increasing, new and higher requirements have been placed on agricultural modernization. It is necessary not only to stabilize agricultural production and ensure the supply of agricultural products, creating a favorable environment for economic and social development, but also to tap the consumption potential of rural residents and make good use of the investment space in agriculture and rural areas, adding new impetus to stabilizing growth. From the perspective of agriculture itself, resource and environmental constraints are becoming stronger and international competition is becoming increasingly fierce, so vigorously advancing agricultural modernization is also an inherent requirement for the sustainable development of agriculture.

To advance agricultural modernization under new historical conditions, we must, in accordance with the requirements of the Recommendations, “firmly establish the development concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing”, solve development difficulties, cultivate development advantages, “strive to build a modern agricultural industrial system, production system and management system, and improve the quality, efficiency and competitiveness of agriculture”, and accelerate the transformation of our country from a large agricultural country into a strong agricultural country.

I. Actively Innovate and Improve the Institutions and Mechanisms for Modern Agricultural Development

Innovation is the primary driving force for development. To vigorously advance agricultural modernization, we must intensify innovation and strive to form institutions and mechanisms that adapt to modern agricultural development and meet the requirements of the market economy.

We need to innovate agricultural management methods. This is an objective need of agricultural modernization. The Recommendations stress that we should “accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model, develop appropriate-scale operations in multiple forms, and give play to their leading role in modern agricultural development”. An overly small scale is the biggest constraint on our country's agricultural modernization. Expanding the scale of agricultural operations can bring more modern production factors, business models and development concepts into agriculture, promote the application of agricultural machinery and scientific and technological achievements, open up markets for agricultural products, and raise the level of organization, industrialization and marketization of agriculture. We should actively use various forms such as professional cooperation, shareholding cooperation, land transfer, land equity participation and land trusteeship to develop appropriate-scale agricultural operations. We should focus on cultivating new types of business entities and guide and support large growers and breeders, family farms, farmers' cooperatives and agricultural enterprises to develop and grow. Given our country's national conditions, household management will occupy a foundational position for a fairly long period. We should accelerate the development of commercial services, do a good job in public-benefit services, and improve the agricultural socialized service system, which is also an effective way to develop scale operations.

We need to innovate the rural property rights system. This is an important safeguard for agricultural modernization. The rural property rights system covers a wide range of areas, the most important being land property rights. The Recommendations propose to “stabilize rural land contracting relationships, improve the method of separating land ownership rights, contract rights and management rights, advance the orderly transfer of land management rights in accordance with the law, and build a policy system for cultivating new types of agricultural business entities”, and to “deepen the reform of the rural land system. Improve the powers and functions of rural collective property rights”. This further clarifies the main tasks of rural property rights system reform and is of great significance for activating factors such as rural land and promoting the optimal allocation of resources. We must adhere to collective ownership of rural land, uphold the basic rural management system unwaveringly, and safeguard farmers' land contract and management rights in accordance with the law. We must coordinate the pilot reforms of rural land expropriation, market entry of collective for-profit construction land, and the homestead system, and steadily and orderly carry out pilot programs for mortgaging rural contracted land management rights and farmers' housing property rights. Actively develop and strengthen the collective economy, and explore effective forms for realizing the rural collective economy. We must safeguard the rights of farmers as members of collective economic organizations, grant farmers the rights to possession, income, paid withdrawal, mortgage, guarantee and inheritance of collective asset shares, establish markets for the transfer and trading of rural property rights, and stimulate the vitality of rural development.

⟦NL> We need to innovate the supporting system for science and technology and other modern factors. This is an inherent requirement of agricultural modernization. The Recommendations propose to improve the “modern agricultural science and technology innovation and extension system”, “develop the modern seed industry”, promote the development and growth of the agricultural machinery and equipment industry, “raise the level of agricultural mechanization”, and “advance agricultural standardization and informatization”. To promote agricultural science and technology innovation, we must deepen the reform of the agricultural science and technology system and improve incentive policies for researchers and grassroots agricultural technology extension personnel. We should focus on making breakthroughs in a number of common key technologies and accelerate the resolution of prominent problems such as upgrading the modern seed industry, full mechanization of major crop production, and agricultural informatization. The application of modern factors such as agricultural science and technology inevitably requires the modernization of workers. We should attach importance to improving the overall quality of farmers, cultivate new types of professional farmers, and shift agricultural development onto a track mainly relying on scientific and technological progress and the improvement of workers' quality. Advancing agricultural modernization is also inseparable from financial support. We should “deepen rural financial reform and improve the agricultural insurance system”, and through financial innovation improve the capacity of credit, insurance and other services for agriculture.

II. Promote Coordination and Improve the Quality of the Modern Agricultural Industry

Modernized agriculture is inevitably agriculture with a reasonable internal structure and one that adapts to economic and social development. Therefore, to vigorously advance agricultural modernization, we must adhere to coordinated development.

We need to promote coordinated development within agriculture and form a modern agricultural production structure. In a large developing country like ours with a population of more than 1.3 billion, safeguarding national food security has always been the primary task of agricultural modernization. To this end, the Recommendations stress that we should “adhere to the strictest farmland protection system, hold the red line for farmland, implement the strategy of storing grain in the land and storing grain in technology, improve grain production capacity, and ensure basic self-sufficiency in grains and absolute security of staple food. Comprehensively designate permanent basic farmland, vigorously advance farmland water conservancy, land consolidation, transformation of medium- and low-yield fields and high-standard farmland construction, strengthen the construction of main production areas for grain and other bulk agricultural products, and explore the establishment of grain production functional zones and important agricultural product production protection zones”. If grain production is stabilized, the overall situation of agriculture is stabilized, the supply of staple food is guaranteed, food security has a basic safeguard, and more resources can be devoted to developing diversified production. While emphasizing the improvement of grain production capacity, the Recommendations clearly point out that we should “promote the coordinated arrangement of grain, economic crops and feed, and the integration of agriculture, forestry, animal husbandry and fisheries”, which points the way for agricultural structural adjustment. We should encourage farmers to base themselves on resource endowments and face market demand, adjust the structure of crop planting and livestock and aquaculture breeding, strive to meet society's multifaceted demand for agricultural products, and continuously increase farmers' incomes. We should give play to regional comparative advantages, accelerate the creation of regionally distinctive leading agricultural products and pillar industries, and optimize the regional layout of agriculture.

We need to promote the coordinated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries in rural areas and form a modern agricultural industrial system. The Recommendations propose promoting “the integration of planting, breeding and processing, and the integrated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries”, “promoting intensive processing of agricultural products and the development of rural service industries”, and “advancing the construction of industrial chains and value chains, developing the multiple functions of agriculture, and improving the comprehensive benefits of agriculture”. The coordinated development of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries is a new connotation of agricultural modernization and also the key to improving agriculture's comprehensive benefits and promoting farmers' income growth. We should pay attention to introducing new technologies, new business forms and new models, actively promote the value-added processing of agricultural products, accelerate the development of modern circulation methods such as order-based direct sales, chain distribution and e-commerce, do everything possible to raise agriculture's added value, tap agriculture's ecological value, leisure value and cultural value, develop modern characteristic industries such as rural tourism, and continuously expand new areas of agricultural modernization.

We need to promote coordinated urban-rural development and form a pattern of integrated urban-rural development. The key is to achieve major breakthroughs in breaking the urban-rural dual structure and advancing equal exchange of urban and rural factors and balanced allocation of public resources. We should plan industry and agriculture, and cities and the countryside, as an integrated whole, and promote mutual integration and common development of urban and rural areas in planning layout, factor allocation, industrial development, public services and ecological protection. We should guide the flow of urban capital, technology, information, talent and management and other modern factors to agriculture and rural areas, form a new type of industry-agriculture and urban-rural relationship in which industry promotes agriculture, cities support the countryside, industry and agriculture benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated, fundamentally enhancing the development capacity of agriculture and rural areas so as to adapt to the new requirements that industrialization and urbanization place on agricultural modernization.