Reform and Innovation Inspire Greater Vitality in Agricultural and Rural Development
Looking at the course of our country's agricultural development, every good situation and every step up has been driven by reform and innovation. Reform is the master key to solving the “three rural” issues. Since the 18th National Congress, the central leadership has attached great importance to agricultural and rural reform from an overall perspective, carried out top-level design, and made comprehensive arrangements. The agricultural departments, together with other systems, earnestly organized and implemented these measures, and localities actively explored and practiced them, greatly unleashing agricultural productivity and activating the development potential of rural areas.
Taking appropriate scale operations as the breakthrough point, innovate the agricultural operation system
25 years ago, Comrade Deng Xiaoping put forward the great vision of two leaps in rural reform and development. The “first leap” of implementing the household contract responsibility system was already achieved long ago, while the “second leap” of developing appropriate scale operations is still underway, “of course, this is a very long process.” General Secretary Xi Jinping concluded that “land transfer and various forms of appropriate scale operations are the only way to develop modern agriculture, and also the basic direction of rural reform.”
With the direction of reform locked in, land confirmation and transfer became the focus. As foundational work, land confirmation, registration, and certification are the prerequisites for whether various reforms can be implemented smoothly. Since last year, the Ministry of Agriculture has steadily carried out pilot programs in 12 entire provinces (regions) including Shandong, Sichuan, and Anhui, as well as 2,160 counties (cities, districts), 18,000 townships, and 290,000 villages, actually measuring 350 million mu of contracted land and confirming rights over 260 million mu. In addition, a transfer service system with service stations in villages, transfer centers in townships, and trading markets in counties and cities has gradually taken shape, and land is being transferred in an orderly manner. The latest data show that the transferred area of household contracted cultivated land nationwide is 430 million mu, an increase of 6.4% over the end of 2014, with the transferred area accounting for 32.3% of household contracted cultivated land.
On this basis, localities actively explored various forms of appropriate scale operations and cultivated various new types of operating entities: the Renfa Modern Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Keshan County, Heilongjiang, attracts farmers to join the cooperative with their land, maximizing land output benefits. At present, more than 2,600 farming households have joined the cooperative, farming more than 50,000 mu of land; through land trusteeship, Shandong concentrates scattered plots of land, increasing grain crop yields by 20%-30% per mu and raising efficiency by 400 yuan to 800 yuan... At the same time, new agricultural operating entities have gradually become leaders. Nationwide, there are 3.41 million scaled farming households with more than 50 mu of land, and more than 870,000 family farms; there are 1.4 million farmers' cooperatives, with participating households accounting for 38.1% of all farming households; and various agricultural social service organizations exceed 1.15 million.
Having grasped the “bull's nose,” the dilemmas of “who will farm the land” and “how to farm the land” have gradually been resolved, and land output rate, labor productivity, and resource utilization rate have improved significantly, becoming a powerful weapon for improving comprehensive grain and agricultural production capacity and better safeguarding national food security.
Taking reform pilot zones as the entry point, comprehensively advance all rural reforms
Since last year, breakthrough progress has been made in multiple reforms, including the rural land system, property rights system, and financial system. Last October, the central leadership reviewed and approved the pilot plan concerning farmers' share cooperation and reform of the share rights and capacities of rural collective assets; the “Opinions on Guiding the Orderly Transfer of Rural Land Operation Rights to Develop Appropriate Scale Agricultural Operations” and the “Opinions on Pilot Work for Reform of Rural Land Expropriation, Market Entry of Collective Operating Construction Land, and the Homestead System” were successively issued by the State Council General Office and the Central Committee General Office. These are all major institutional innovations in rural reform, marking the gradual implementation of multiple reforms and their entry into the pilot stage.
As a comprehensive platform for the central leadership to advance rural reform pilot experiments, the rural reform pilot zones expanded and accelerated last November. The Ministry of Agriculture led the launch of the second batch of rural reform pilot zones, designating 34 areas including Tongzhou District in Beijing, which together with the first batch of 24 pilot zones respectively undertake 14 reform pilot tasks, focusing on piloting first in areas such as the rural land system, agricultural support and protection system, rural financial system, rural collective property rights system, and rural governance, achieving breakthroughs in key areas, crucial links, and institutional mechanisms, and exploring replicable and promotable experience.
In the process of exploration and practice, the pilot zones based themselves on local practice, improved institutional design, and some explorations have already achieved notable results, while some practices have already played a demonstrative role.
As a comprehensive supporting reform for urban-rural integration, Suzhou, Jiangsu, deeply advanced the reform of the rural collective economic property rights system, accelerated the consolidation of share rights and the separation of government and economy, encouraged and guided members to increase capital and expand shares and develop jointly in groups, expanded the coverage of share dividends, and strove to achieve four fundamental transformations: from community-based to enterprise-based, from closed to open, from resource-led to innovation-led, and from traditional collective economic organizations to a modern enterprise system.
Taking the protection of farmers' interests as the focal point, steadily deepen reform
Without reform, rural areas have no way out, and agricultural modernization will remain only a vision. But many reforms concern farmers' vital interests, future generations, and the country's long-term stability, so they must be cautious and carried out step by step. In recent years, localities and departments have attached importance to respecting farmers' wishes, proceeded from protecting farmers' interests, sought progress while maintaining stability through innovative reform, and advanced work in a standardized and orderly manner.
In rural land transfer and appropriate scale operations, attention has been paid to adapting to the pace of urbanization and the scale of rural labor transfer, adhering to the bottom line of not harming farmers' rights and interests, not resorting to coercive orders, not engaging in arbitrary administrative direction, and not one-sidedly pursuing speed and size.
In launching the pilot reform of the share rights and capacities of rural collective assets, it was emphasized that erosion of farmers' interests must be prevented, with the focus on enabling farmers to obtain more property rights; in rural financial reform, the focus is on solving farmers' problems of “difficulty in obtaining loans and high cost of loans.”
In order to explore and advance reform to decouple the agricultural product price formation mechanism from government subsidies, gradually establish a target price system for agricultural products, and effectively ensure farmers' income, the state launched pilot reforms on target prices for soybeans in Northeast China and Inner Mongolia and for cotton in Xinjiang. In improving the agricultural product price formation mechanism, the Ministry of Agriculture focused on studying how to operate specifically so that farmers can receive tangible benefits.
Among the 50 specific tasks for this year's agricultural and rural reform concentrated advancement deployed by the Ministry of Agriculture, almost every one is advanced with a view to increasing farmers' income. It can be said that it is precisely by considering both agricultural development and farmers' issues, and by continuously deepening reform while grasping the “degree,” that courage was combined with steady steps, the direction of reform did not deviate, and ultimately a good situation for agriculture and rural areas was won, promoting healthy economic and social development and overall stability.