How much income does farming 1 mu of land bring? The Central Rural Work Leading Group Office: roughly equal to one week of working in the city
The State Council Information Office holds a press conference on the Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform
International Online News The State Council Information Office held a press conference on November 4, 2015 in the press conference hall of the State Council Information Office, inviting Chen Xiwen, deputy head and office director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, and Han Jun, deputy office director of the Central Rural Work Leading Group, to interpret the spirit of the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee, introduce the "Comprehensive Implementation Plan for Deepening Rural Reform" and other aspects, and answer questions from reporters.
Reporter from China National Radio Voice of China:Our "Plan" mentions the need to cultivate a professional farmer workforce, and yesterday the "13th Five-Year Plan" proposal also proposed cultivating a new type of farmers, but in our interviews we learned that among the main labor force now farming in rural areas, the elderly and women still make up the majority. How will we solve the problem of who will farm the land in the coming years, and how will we cultivate a new type of professional farmer? Thank you.
Han Jun:Agriculture can now be said in many regions to have a main labor force that some describe as the "3861" army. The aging of rural agriculture can be said to be faster than in cities, women are increasingly becoming middle-aged and elderly women, and middle-aged and elderly farmers are increasingly becoming the main force of our agricultural labor force. In Japan, for example, farmers over 65 now account for more than 60%.
Chen Xiwen:The average age is 67.
Han Jun:Compared with Japan, the age of farmers engaged in farming is still relatively young, but it can be foreseen that in the future the aging of the farming labor force may advance very quickly, and indeed in many regions agriculture will face a severe situation of a lack of successors. In the proposal of the Fifth Plenary Session and the comprehensive implementation plan for rural reform, it was specifically proposed that cultivating a new type of professional farmer should be a strategic measure for vigorously advancing agricultural modernization. This policy is very clear. In recent years, many of our regions have also been exploring how to solve the difficult problem of who will farm the land. Most importantly, we must keep some young people in rural areas, especially keep middle-aged people in rural areas. If in the future rural areas are all people in their seventies and eighties, rural areas may very likely become desolate rural areas, rural areas may become left-behind rural areas, and may become a homeland in memory. This is something we do not want to see. How can agriculture truly become, and farming truly become, an attractive occupation, so that people engaged in agricultural production and operation can also live a decent life. This is a major difficult problem that our "three rural" policies must solve.
First, we must, for example, combine the cultivation of new agricultural entities with the training of our new type of professional farmers, and create conditions so that some farmers who work in cities, and even some students who graduate from agricultural vocational schools, are willing to return to rural areas to farm. I recently saw a survey done by Jiangsu Province, in which 5%-6% of university students were willing to return to rural areas to farm. I was quite pleasantly surprised to see this figure. At least among university students, 5%-6% are willing to farm. If this number were less than even 1%, it would be a big problem. In developed countries, farmers are professionalized, and many farm owners are university graduates. First, we must create conditions so that more people are willing to farm. In the past two years when I conducted research in rural areas, I often saw some migrant workers and even some university students who had returned to farm. They used to work in factories in the city. If you ask them what their greatest feeling is, when they worked in a factory in the city they became part of an assembly line and were managed by others; when they return to rural areas and face nature, they feel a strong sense of achievement. And in this regard, another key lever is that we must combine the cultivation of new type of professional farmers with the development of appropriately scaled agricultural operations. Now most farming households in our rural areas have just seven or eight mu of land, or a dozen mu of land. One household farms just this little bit of land. The money earned from this one mu of land is about the same as the money earned from working one week in the city. If you farm six or seven mu of grain, the money earned is about the same as working one month in the city. That is to say, if you want agriculture to become an attractive occupation, you must achieve appropriate scale. Everyone noticed that in the plenary resolution there is a sentence of very heavy weight: "Develop various forms of appropriately scaled agricultural operations, give play to their leading role in modern agricultural construction, and build a policy system for cultivating new agricultural operation entities." Only when it is a new type of professional farmer farming the land - not necessarily all farming land, they can also provide services, or engage in some tourism in rural areas - if farming land, reaching one or two hundred mu may only, in the Central Plains region, allow for a decent income, possibly about the same as income from working.
The Fifth Plenary Session proposed building a policy system for cultivating new agricultural operation entities. What is this system? The plenary proposal mentions deepening rural financial reform, improving the agricultural insurance system, and so on. These new type of professional farmers, if they want to engage in agriculture, cannot get loans, and agriculture has natural risks and market risks, with very great risk. A hailstorm comes, and there is no harvest at all; that will not do either. Supporting institutional development must also keep up.
Furthermore, our agricultural vocational education is still backward, and our agricultural vocational education still lacks attractiveness. If we want to cultivate professional farmers, our agricultural vocational education must keep up, and we must give play to the role of our agricultural colleges and many vocational colleges. We must adopt targeted methods to cultivate more and more new type of farmers who meet the needs of modern agricultural development. This is a very arduous task.
Chen Xiwen:I will add two points. Director Han just spoke very comprehensively. I just said that many farmers' contracted land is neither transferred nor farmed by themselves. For example, it may be entrusted or contributed as shares, and others farm it for them. In many places it appears that the elderly and women are farming there, but in fact the most important links are provided to them by the socialized service system. So if this system is further improved, frankly speaking, age and gender are not the main obstacles.
Comrade Han Jun just mentioned Japanese agriculture. A couple of days ago I met some people from Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries and talked about this matter. Now among Japan's 2 million farmers, the average age is 67, more than two-thirds are over 70, and one-third are already over 75. A very important reason is also socialized services, agricultural machinery, and so on. Of course this is not a good phenomenon, and efforts must be made to change it. The reason it seems that more and more young and strong people are leaving, yet grain output is still increasing and agriculture is still developing, is that the socialized service system plays an important role in it.
Second, agriculture has a characteristic of its own. Agriculture is a life industry. Crops grow in the field, and they do not need to be tended 24 hours a day, nor 365 days a year. Therefore Marx believed that a major characteristic of the field of agriculture is that production time and labor time are not consistent. Crops are growing in the field, and people do not need to labor there every day. Among farmers this has formed a characteristic. Because the average operating scale of farm households in our country is small, especially in major grain-producing areas, farmers have a saying: one month for the New Year. The New Year starts on the fifteenth of the twelfth lunar month and does not end until the fifteenth of the first lunar month. So "one month for the New Year, two months for farming." The work in this bit of land is of course sporadic, but added up it does not take two months, and there are still nine months to go out and earn money.
Our media reporter friends may also need to pay attention to what season it is when going to the countryside. If it is not the busy season, when crops are growing in the fields, there are very few young and strong rural people, as they have all gone out to work and earn money. At first glance it seems the countryside has become "hollowed out," with only the elderly, children, and women left, but when you go during the busy season it is different, and many young and strong people come back from outside. Therefore, the characteristics of agriculture and the characteristics of China's rural areas must also be viewed realistically.
Our urbanization rate last year was 54.8%, which means more than 45% of the population still lived in rural areas. More than 600 million people still lived in rural areas. What does that mean? It is far more than the total number of farmers before liberation, or in the early period after the founding of the PRC. But these more than 600 million people are not all the elderly, nor all women and children. So the social changes taking place in rural areas are very profound, but one must pay attention to the farming season, pay attention to the season, and pay attention to when to go and look. When crops are growing normally in the fields, you go and indeed there are very few rural people, but where are these more than 600 million people? As soon as the busy season comes, you will see many people go back to farm the crops. So you have raised a very important question, namely how China will gradually develop professional farmers. Director Han just mentioned scaled operations, socialized services, and professional training and vocational education for farmers, all of which are very important.