Analysis of China's Agricultural Policy: Agricultural Modernization amid Rural Hollowing Out and Poverty

There was originally no cultivated land in the world. Humanity, in order to survive, continuously reclaimed land and water surfaces to obtain agricultural products. Land that can reach high yields through land consolidation and irrigation construction is called usable land; land with high reclamation costs is called difficult-to-use land; land where crop cultivation has reached the world average yield is called utilized land. The ratio of utilized land to usable land is called agricultural land utilization rate, which reflects a country's land use situation and reserve potential. Tourism agriculture, factory assembly-line agriculture, or artificial synthesis have high technological content and little dependence on land, and many countries classify them as industry. Below, some government platitudes about agriculture are analyzed.

I. The Government's Excuse: Lots of Land but Little Cultivated Land, with Reserve Cultivated Land in the Northwest

Lots of Construction Land but Little Reserve Cultivated Land

China's land used for industry, agriculture, commerce, mining, and residential construction and production is 33.7 million hectares, accounting for 3.47% of the national territory, occupying 130 million mu of high-quality farmland in the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta river valleys, and other areas. Ecological land (high-cold desert, glaciers + rivers + rocky mountains + natural forests + protected areas) accounts for 25.53% of the national territory. Usable land accounts for 63.3% of the national territory, totaling 9 billion mu. Sixty-six percent of China's cultivated land is distributed in mountains, hills, and plateaus; 61% is distributed in the arid and extremely arid regions of the north. The south has more water and less land with good water and heat conditions, and the multiple cropping index reaches as high as 180% to 250%, with all cultivated land under ultra-intensive use. The north has more land and less water; the Huang-Huai-Hai Plain's cultivated land accounts for 41.8% of the national total, while its water volume is less than 5.7% of the national total. China's total cultivated land area is 1.82 billion mu, with per capita cultivated land of 1.4 mu, only 1/3 of the world average of 5.5 mu, ranking third from the bottom. Non-high-standard farmland accounts for 70%; low-quality cultivated land has high cultivation costs and low yields, and farmers have abandoned nearly 200 million mu. The government, in order to protect cultivated land, strictly controls land supply, leading to high land prices and high housing prices. Agriculture competes on high-standard fertile farmland and technology; technology's potential for increasing yields is not great. In an era of advanced mechanical equipment and construction technology plus abundant financial resources, only occupying without transforming or replenishing high-standard fertile farmland is a betrayal of the deceased and still-living pioneers who once used sweat and primitive tools. The North China Plain is nearly exhausted; the northwest needs the South-to-North Water Diversion to solve irrigation, otherwise ecological pressure is great and development is a disaster. Before reform and opening up, due to limitations in mechanical equipment and construction technology, the southern hilly regions reclaimed river valley plains accounting for about 8% of usable agricultural land, far below India's 50% at the same latitude and the world's 30%. By the lowest standard, the south could add at least 500 million mu of high-standard farmland, with annual unit yield development costs comparable to the cost of building irrigation systems in the northwest. China's south is larger than India's territory and has the same water and heat conditions. The saying "when Huguang has a good harvest, the whole empire has enough" refers to the south's three harvests a year being able to feed the entire country. Land occupation and replenishment have not proceeded in sync; it is simply that they fear spending money and do not want to replenish cultivated land, causing major grain-producing areas to become major grain-selling areas. This is caused by being an "iron rooster that won't pluck a feather." Reclaiming 100 mu of high-standard farmland in the south costs 1 million yuan. The south can reclaim entire villages one by one; reclaiming one village increases that village's cultivated land by 90%. Please look at what kind of farmland the government is replenishing.

Requisition-Compensation Balance

Industry, agriculture, commerce, mining, and transportation require construction to produce and develop the economy. Per capita construction land is the lowest in the world. As long as it is construction land used to generate benefits, the more the better. But however much fertile farmland is taken from farmers, that much must be replenished locally to the land-lost farmers, and it must be replenished in places with good water and heat conditions. Land transfer fee expenditures are: first, expropriation compensation; second, development costs; third, urban construction; fourth, agricultural land development. Occupy one, replenish one. Transfer fees are used by local governments; selling state land enriches local finances and urban construction. Selling land makes money, selling houses makes money; the more sold, the faster the development. Since reform and opening up, 130 million mu of farmland has disappeared. Farmers still alive over 50 years old once used primitive tools, went hungry, and with sweat and life reclaimed farmland. The government uses modern equipment to fake it. In the image below, the left side is fertile farmland currently being replenished; the right side is fertile farmland replenished a few years earlier. This is absolutely not an isolated case. Is this not utterly unconscionable?

Occupying farmland to replenish with terraces; when people leave, the terraces are too large

My dear government, the south occupies and the northeast and northwest replenish; three harvests a year become one harvest a year; paddy fields become dry land. Fertile farmland in the south is replenished with terraces. Is this cultivated land? Replenished cultivated land in southern hilly areas should be at least 200 mu or more, all leveled, with tractor roads built, field ridges constructed, planting soil backfilled, river water diverted for irrigation or reservoirs built at higher elevations for irrigation, creating high-standard contiguous farmland. At present, with advanced mechanical equipment, land transfer fees that are not low, and ample financial resources, not replenishing cultivated land but plundering agricultural resources to develop cities and support finances, causing a food crisis and making agriculture unsustainable, how can this be worthy of citizens who buy houses and the people who lost their land? How can it be worthy of future generations? Do government departments at all levels not know what is being replenished? Where is the government's credibility? Where is the governing philosophy? People are watching, and heaven is watching.

Population and Per-Laborer Cultivated Area

In the early Ming Dynasty, there were 850 million mu of cultivated land and 66 million people, with per-laborer cultivated area of 35 mu, 3 times that of Japan, the US, and Europe. In 2013, China's population was 1.389 billion, with 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land and 680 million rural population, giving per-laborer cultivated area of 7.05 mu, 1/30 of Japan and South Korea, 1/40 of the EU, and 1/400 of the US. Historically, China's agricultural production efficiency was far higher than Japan, Europe, and the US, and it was globally recognized as a strong agricultural civilization. From the present perspective, we are far behind Japan, Europe, and the US, and are globally recognized as an agriculturally backward country, mainly due to severely insufficient land investment and population growth eating into past gains.

Many Excuses for Agricultural Backwardness

China has 6% of the world's water resources and 7.2% of the world's land area. Water resources are not scarce, but rainfall is uneven: floods in the south and drought in the north. The north and northwest are arid and severely short of water; low rainfall has formed 750 million mu of desert and desertified land. The northeast and north China are short of water. In short, they blame uneven rainfall. China's hilly and mountainous areas account for 62% of the national territory, mainly distributed in tropical and subtropical regions with superior water and heat conditions but high development costs. Leveling and fertilizing in units of 100 mu, building water conservancy and tractor roads, costs an average of 5,000 yuan per mu for reclamation. The Loess Plateau and northern arid plains have high costs for water conservancy construction. In short, one phrase: useless land is plentiful, useful land is scarce; blame the land. In the 30 years after liberation, land reclamation was done in the wrong places, causing mismatched water and heat conditions and low land quality; blame history. In 2014, 4,000 villages still had no electricity; the average education of those engaged in farming was 7 years; per capita investable liquid funds were 6,000 yuan. In short, one phrase: blame people. When 500 million people were in rural collective economic cooperatives, 1/10 starved to death; blame disasters. In 2013, domestic prices compared to import prices were higher by: rice 66.88%, wheat 21.14%, corn 58.14%, pork 98.35%, soybeans 15.79%, sugar 108.72%, cotton 38.31%. In 2014, China imported 114 million tons of genetically modified grain, oil, and grain products, and over 2 million tons of meat, eggs, and milk, an increase of 40%. The price ceiling and cost floor are rising; blame the small-scale peasant economy. It is strikingly similar to the early days of the US, Japan, and Europe, and to today's agriculturally backward countries: the government's explanation to the people is that the sky is unhelpful, the land is poor, the people are incapable, the inheritance is bad, and there are many disasters. There are even absurd claims that cultivated land is only this much and that grain cannot grow on concrete, diverting people's dissatisfaction with agriculture. There was originally no cultivated land or water conservancy in the world; all were reclaimed and built by humanity to fill their stomachs. To protect the environment, as long as it is sufficient and high-yield, that is fine, because agricultural products are not worth much, and developing the economy through agriculture does not work. But agriculture is the foundation of the nation; if stomachs are not full, everything else is nonsense. The people blame the government: since reform and opening up, nothing has been done for agricultural land development or water conservancy construction, widening the gap between agriculture and developed countries.

If You Want to Be Poor, Go Farm; If You Want Money Fast, Abandon Fields: 2014 agricultural land profits: high-quality fragrant rice 627 yuan/mu, ordinary rice 56.6 yuan/mu, high-quality wheat 478 yuan/mu, ordinary wheat 68 yuan/mu, sweet corn 678 yuan/mu, ordinary corn 77.52 yuan/mu, fruit cane 961 yuan/mu, ordinary sugarcane 116.81 yuan/mu, green-skinned soybeans 523 yuan/mu, soybeans -438 yuan/mu, natural pasture 28 yuan/mu, planted pasture 1,200 yuan/mu. Vegetables 400-2,852 yuan/mu, fruits 500-3,246 yuan/mu, aquatic products 700-2,825 yuan/mu, beef cattle 1,200 yuan/head, live pigs 103.91 yuan/head. Medicinal herbs 1,200 yuan/mu. In 2015, the Ministry of Finance imposed a heavy 17% VAT on chemical fertilizers and pesticides, which will lower agricultural product profits. Rural residents 680 million, those engaged in farming 260 million, per capita monthly income of farmers 924 yuan, large-scale agriculture cultivating 200 mu yields per capita monthly income of 3,100 yuan, vegetable farmers around cities average 3,600 yuan per month, herders average 4,800 yuan per month, specialty farmers average 6,000 yuan per month; if you want to be poor, go farm. In 2011, excluding rural people engaged in real estate development, mining, business, village industrialization, and other income groups earning over a million, the top 20% income group and the bottom 20% income group differed by 10 times. Over 90% of the high-income group worked off-farm; 90% of the low-income group farmed. If you want money fast, abandon fields and take non-farm work.

II. The Government's Many Worries: Rural Poverty, Hollowing Out, Agricultural Modernization

1. The Root Causes of Rural Poverty and Backwardness

Inferior environment, inferior land, weak industries, and prisoner policies are the root causes of China's rural poverty and backwardness

Inferior environment: scattered living, living areas not separated from production areas, dirty and messy, far from cities with poor access to employment information, poor sales information, poor access to professional knowledge, science and technology, poor rural education and training resources, poor healthy growth of left-behind children, heavy labor easily causing intergenerational poverty, poor transportation, poor power supply, poor logistics, poor water supply, most water heated and drunk directly causing various kidney stones and high cancer incidence, many life-threatening factors........ An inferior environment makes it hard to cultivate talent, hard for talent to have opportunities to prosper, hard to enter the upper class, and hard to have one's own policy voice.

Inferior land: 66% of cultivated land is distributed in mountains, hills, and plateaus; 61% in the north lacks irrigation, consisting of “rain-fed fields” and “desertified land.” Operating areas are small, land is fragmented and scattered, production efficiency is low, returns are low, infrastructure improvement is difficult, food safety is difficult, and agricultural ecological sustainability is difficult.

Weak industries: The Industrial Revolution unprecedentedly developed humanity's productive forces. When it came to agriculture, it could not be revolutionized further, and agriculture became the abandoned child of capitalists. The profit from the same investment in a farm is far lower than that from industrial and commercial enterprises. 95% of agricultural products are bulk commodities, homogenized, competing on cost, marketing, safety, and predicting supply and demand. When supply is less than demand, a little profit is made; when supply exceeds demand and goods do not sell, one immediately falls back into poverty. No country has capitalists ranked in the top 2,000 of national wealth who mainly operate farms. China's thousands of years of feudal history prove that agricultural capitalists never formed. In an open market economy society, it also cannot arouse farmers' interest. If it does not work, reform it. Rural areas are always the experimental field of politicians. Marx was short-sighted, seeing only the slums and exploitation of capitalist modern agriculture but not the dictatorship and political exploitation of public ownership. Chinese socialism realized the rural collective economy, and 37 million people starved to death. In the same period, other countries underwent great social changes. Deng Xiaoping saw the self-rescue nature of the small-scale peasant economy and divided land to households; China solved its food crisis in 1993. Ten years later, food shortages appeared again, and land transfer came again. A tea oil production enterprise rented 20,000 mu of barren hills at 5 yuan/mu; after the trees bore fruit, it demanded a rent increase to 100 yuan/mu. The mediator said, "At 5 yuan/mu the farmers' interests have been harmed; rent should be increased." Mediation failed and the project failed. If you want to be poor, go farm; the residual value of investment is zero. Most grain-producing areas are the poorest; Guangdong and Jiangsu, which do not emphasize agriculture, are the richest. After state-owned land is developed and appreciates, national interests are harmed and not shared. Supporting farmers in sharing the profits and wealth of small agricultural capitalists through rent, this reform joke has gone too far. Developed countries subsidize modern agriculture by 40%; China must pay 50% rent. I hope there are such business geniuses and pillars of the nation.

Prisoner policies: Rulers of every dynasty imprisoned farmers on the land, providing soldiers and grain, emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce. After liberation, China was no exception, using the village as a unit, not allowing mobility, not allowing business, not allowing land transfer, unified purchase and sale, labor conscription, a prison without walls. After reform and opening up, it is still based on the village as a unit, no mobility allowed, no land transfer allowed, agricultural land for agricultural use only, cutting off any non-agricultural income for farmers from the land. Prisoners without walls are not given food, and whatever they buy contributes taxes. Agricultural product middlemen, farmers' markets, and slaughterhouses take 90% of the profits. Five mu of agricultural land only receives the fuel consumption tax subsidy for one mu of farmland. Farmers are poor! If you want money fast, abandon fields and escape the land, but sorry, "divorce the countryside with nothing." Rural land and housing cannot be taken away. After being stripped clean, high housing prices await farmers here, professional workers compete with you, and after being stripped clean, industrial and commercial capital competes with you in business. The capable become white-collar workers, buy houses, and settle their whole families in cities or start enterprises, truly breaking through the cage. Otherwise, they dedicate their youth to the city, return to the cage in old age, and leave land to farmers to play a residual role. There are also brainwashing advertisements: "Land is the lifeblood of farmers: farmers' land is farmed by farmers: land confirmation: urbanization, farmers entering cities (which city they enter is definitely not Beijing, Shanghai, or Guangzhou)........" Even more tempting is Huaxi Village's farmers getting rich, which is village urbanization; how many farmers actually live in cities.

Open all shackles around farmers' necks, allowing farmers to sell assets and land, move from inferior environments to wealthy rural areas to buy land and houses, or migrate freely to cities. A tree moved dies; a person moved lives. According to planning, transform or add high-standard cultivated land to raise farmers' production efficiency; separate production areas from living areas; concentrate living areas or move them into nearby cities so future generations have better education and farmers have a better quality of life; build production facilities in production areas.