[The direction of China's agricultural modernization should be one that provides services to the tens of millions of ordinary farming households; the “three rural” policy should take into account both agricultural and farmer issues]
These past two days everyone has been discussing agricultural modernization. Not long ago, the author went to Sheyang County, Jiangsu Province to conduct field research, and found that the “joint ploughing and joint sowing” they have been promoting in recent years has fairly well solved the problem of agricultural modernization under smallholder conditions, and truly took into account the resolution of both the agricultural problem and the farmer problem.
From the agricultural side, China has a large population and little land, and relatively few resources; how to ensure that the Chinese people eat their fill and eat well means agriculture has a heavy and long road ahead. From the farmer side, China currently still has close to 700 million rural residents, more than 200 million farming households and more than 200 million agricultural laborers, and most of the 200 million migrant workers who go to the cities to work or do business have not been able to settle down in the cities; their parents still remain in the villages farming, and they themselves work in the cities when young and may return to farming in the villages when they are older. In other words, China still has close to 900 million people closely tied to agriculture and rural areas, and farming households still need to obtain income and employment opportunities from agriculture.
To solve the agricultural problem, agriculture must be equipped with modern equipment and technology, and agricultural modernization must be achieved. But the situation that China has a huge agricultural population, very little arable land per rural laborer, and scattered, fragmented plots must also be taken into account. Against this background, how can the level of agricultural equipment and technology be raised? How can agricultural modernization be achieved while protecting farmers? This is indeed the focus and the difficulty of China's current “three rural” policy.
Let us see how Sheyang did it. Sheyang is a major agricultural county, with 2.02 million mu of arable land in the whole county, mainly planted with rice and wheat. When land was allocated to households, in order to be fair, “good fields were divided among every household, poor fields were shared by every household,” so the scale of farming per household was very small and the plots were scattered, forming a widespread pattern of fine fragmentation in which “one field has many households” and “one household has many fields.” This was not conducive to large agricultural machinery entering the fields to work, and because of scattered management and the tens of millions of households each planting their own crops, the varieties were not unified, the sowing times were not unified, and even the sowing methods were not unified, making it hard for agricultural technical services to reach the fields and households. Then, because the returns from farming were limited, large numbers of young and middle-aged rural laborers went to the cities to work, and those who stayed in the villages to farm were mostly elderly farmers over 55 years old. Because elderly farmers are not strong in labor power and relatively poor at absorbing new agricultural technologies, agricultural production became more and more extensive, which in turn affected agricultural output and lowered agricultural returns.
In response to this situation, Sheyang County, through “joint ploughing and joint sowing,” took the existing strip fields of about 30 mu each that were “one field with many households,” broke down the field ridges, and joined them into contiguous blocks; through consultation a unified variety was determined, cooperatives ploughed and sowed in a unified way, and farming households were responsible for field management steps such as water and fertilizer management and pest and disease control, thereby changing the previous pattern of scattered land management and severe fragmentation.
And because high-horsepower machinery could thereby enter the fields to work, returning straw to the field became possible. Through joint ploughing and joint sowing, without excluding farmers and without transferring farming households' land, the level of agricultural equipment and technology was raised, farmers' agricultural expenses were reduced, farmers' incomes were increased, agricultural output was raised, and agricultural productive forces were truly unleashed.
Since the promotion of “joint ploughing and joint sowing” began in August 2013, several hundred thousand mu of arable land in the county have joined “joint ploughing and joint sowing,” the degree of agricultural mechanization has risen sharply in a short period, and advanced agricultural production technologies represented by machine transplanting of rice and strip sowing of wheat have spread rapidly. “Joint ploughing and joint sowing” has been especially welcomed by the elderly and by women, whose household labor power is relatively weak.
The most important thing about Sheyang County's practice of “joint ploughing and joint sowing” is that, without excluding farmers, especially the elderly and women whose labor power is weaker, it broke down field ridges, advanced mechanization, and organically combined agricultural machinery with agronomy, rapidly raising agricultural production capacity and achieving the modernization of agriculture.
China's agricultural productive forces are currently undergoing tremendous change, with three main points: first, the rapid advance of agricultural mechanization; second, the large-scale movement of young and middle-aged rural laborers into the cities; and third, the separation of land contractors from land operators.
The rapid change in productive forces requires corresponding adjustments in rural production relations. Sheyang County, by breaking down field ridges, made it convenient for large machinery to work. Large machinery operations not only lowered the cost of machinery operations, but also made it possible to return straw to the field, accommodated new agronomic practices such as machine transplanting of seedlings and strip sowing of wheat, and, through unified seed and unified ploughing and sowing, made joint prevention and joint control of pests and diseases, water and fertilizer management for rice and wheat, and the implementation of various socialized services all easier.
Unlike Sheyang County, Shayang County in Hubei Province is mainly hilly terrain, and each plot of land is not large. When land was allocated to households, in order to be fair, Shayang County divided the land even more finely, often with one household's ten mu of land split among the four directions of east, south, west and north, into seven or eight plots of various sizes. In the past, rural labor was surplus and the degree of mechanization was not high, with people carrying loads on their shoulders and backs, so it did not matter much if contracted land was scattered. By now, after young and middle-aged rural laborers have gone to the cities to work or do business, the elderly and women whose labor power is weaker find farming very tiring, and farmers hope to concentrate their scattered, fragmented land in one area, preferably one plot. Shayang County therefore took advantage of the ongoing confirmation of rural land rights to guide farming households in contiguous farming by household.
According to what farmers in Shayang County say, if the contracted land previously scattered in different directions is concentrated contiguously into one plot by household, labor input and production costs can be reduced by more than 1/3. Most importantly, when land is concentrated in one area, it is convenient for machinery to enter the fields to work, so that the physically weaker elderly and women in rural areas can still farm their fields well.
Whether it is “joint ploughing and joint sowing” or “contiguous farming by household,” only a slight adjustment to land relations is needed to unleash enormous agricultural productive forces, and the agricultural productive forces thus unleashed do not exclude at all the physically weaker elderly and women who have become the main body of agriculture, so that both agricultural development and farmers' farming and income can be taken into account.
The author believes that the direction of China's agricultural modernization should not be an approach that excludes farmers, makes farmers withdraw from agriculture, and supports new-type agricultural operators, but rather an approach that provides services to the tens of millions of ordinary farming households, and the “three rural” policy should take into account both agricultural and farmer issues.