National food security ultimately depends on farmers

In 2015, China's grain production achieved “twelve consecutive increases”, yet grain prices kept falling steadily. Rising grain output and falling farmer incomes together formed a complex picture of China's agricultural development. In this harvest season, which stirs mixed feelings, people increasingly recognize one truth: national food security ultimately depends on farmers.

Stable grain means a stable world, and “stable grain” must be built on stable agricultural production capacity and on the stable enthusiasm for growing grain of China's 900 million farmers. Rural China in transition is undergoing a process of hollowing out and aging, agriculture's appeal to young and middle-aged people is steadily weakening, and if the situation of “low grain prices hurting farmers” recurs, the upheaval that could arise in the primary industry is easy to imagine. For one mu of rice, can it yield one thousand jin or one thousand two hundred jin of dry grain; for one jin of corn, can it sell for one yuan or one yuan ten; for a farmer household, can it calculate after the autumn harvest the money for next spring's seeds, fertilizer, land rent, and farm machinery? These small details of the fields write out, stroke by stroke, the four big characters “food security”.

We have seen that in addressing this year's fall in grain prices, some major grain-producing provinces, including Heilongjiang, have already adopted a tough-fight attitude in the autumn grain purchase, and in guaranteeing purchase and storage funds, guiding scientific grain storage and threshing, and upgrading storage hardware measures, they have carried out a series of measures to “make up” for farmers the losses caused by falling grain prices. But to protect farmers' core interests and make farming a prosperous, respectable occupation with stable expectations, ultimately it is still necessary to rely on transforming the mode of agricultural development and building modern large-scale agriculture.

⟦NL> Intensive production and professionalized farmers, and cultivating new types of agricultural operating entities, have already become the trend of modern agricultural development, and are also the direction that major grain-producing provinces like Heilongjiang are actively advancing. In this autumn grain purchase, it can be seen that the traditional farming model based on individual households is extremely vulnerable to fluctuations in grain prices, is almost the biggest loser when grain prices fall, and has no ability at all to resist market risks. By contrast, large-scale family farms and farmer cooperatives, because of diverse planting structures, diversified operating directions, or the production of high-end organic food, can better absorb market risks and stop losses on their own. Organizing large-scale and cooperative operations with a modern corporate system is the necessary path to raising agricultural production capacity, and also the long-term way to ensure that farmers increase production and income.

In addition to building an agricultural operating system, it is also necessary to extend the industrial chain and value chain of grain production and establish the industrial system of modern agriculture. If grain is sold only as raw grain or primary products, the added value of grain will of course be extremely low, and there will certainly be a very strong attachment between farmers' income and the purchase price of raw grain. Only by forming a chain of grain production, processing, storage, and sales, introducing modern production factors such as management, technology, and talent, building agricultural product processing enterprises, and cultivating high-quality agricultural product brands, can agriculture's value chain extend to the secondary industry and even the tertiary industry, so that farmer households will no longer be thrown to the bottom of life because of a single fall in raw grain prices.

It is worth noting that intensive and large-scale operation requires deepening the reform of the rural property rights system, and on the basis of stabilizing farmers' land contract rights, liberalizing land management rights. Land is the lifeblood of farmers and where farmers' most core rights lie, and the transfer of management rights must be carried out strictly in accordance with the law everywhere. If building a modern agricultural production and operation system is the positive direction indicated by “food security ultimately depends on farmers”, then fully protecting every farmer's rights and respecting every farmer's wishes in the reform of the rural property rights system is the bottom line set by this statement.