Labor shortage makes hiring difficult in grain farming, how can efficiency be improved?

Recently, at the wheat field of Zhang Junbao, a major grain grower in the 11th Company of the 49th Regiment of the Third Division of the Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps, this writer saw that with the roar of the combine harvester, the tasks of feeding the heads, threshing and loading were completed in one go, while the baler quickly pressed the wheat stalks into neat rectangular stacks.

Zhang Junbao said: “I no longer have to worry about not being able to hire labor to harvest 150 mu of wheat.” In recent years, the regiment has cultivated a team of brokers, advanced mechanization and strengthened socialized services to resolve the agricultural hiring problem. Today, these measures have also been innovated and promoted in other divisions and regiments, and agricultural efficiency has improved year by year.

Past years: few hands and high wages led to a “labor shortage”

—— spending 300 yuan a day to hire someone was already considered good

Back in 2012, Wang Xianggui, a worker in the 4th Company of the regiment, was not as relaxed as Zhang Junbao. That year, because he could not hire harvest workers, two-thirds of his 80 mu of wheat was knocked to the ground by hail, and after a season of hard work there was hardly any harvest.

At that time, although the regiment’s nearly 230,000 mu of land had achieved mechanized farming to a certain extent, crop management and harvesting still required a large amount of manpower. But hiring seasonal workers was very difficult. Wang Lizhi, deputy regimental commander in charge of agriculture, said: “The reason is that with the acceleration of social industrialization, jobs in various places have continued to increase, and the channels for diverting surplus labor in society have increased; in addition, the regiment is located in remote southern Xinjiang, social development is relatively lagging, and as social living conditions get better and better, many migrant workers are unwilling to come. At that time, seeing large areas of land roughly cultivated and poorly managed, output showed a downward trend.”

Another practical problem caused by the labor shortage was rising wages. Before 2011, the daily wage for seasonal workers in the regiment was within 100 yuan, but now the daily wage for seasonal workers in the regiment is about 250 yuan. Li Hui, a worker in the 5th Company of the regiment, said: “During the harvest period when workers are needed most, being able to hire workers for 300 yuan is already very good. But after deducting the cost of agricultural materials and wages, not much money can be made from one mu of land.” Two years ago, some workers in the regiment gave up farming and looked for other ways out.

Now: “three-pronged approach” resolves hiring difficulties

—— raising the mechanization rate, cultivating business-savvy brokers, and improving the level of agricultural socialized services

In the past two years, in response to the difficult and expensive hiring of agricultural labor, the regiment has solved the problem by vigorously advancing agricultural mechanization, training labor brokers and doing a good job in service guarantees to create an environment that attracts and keeps people, while also saving agricultural costs.

Raising the level of mechanization solved the problem of insufficient labor. In 2013, the regiment invested funds to purchase 18 wheat combine harvesters, 60 various types of planting and sowing machines and 15 corn harvesters; in 2014, it purchased 10 cotton pickers and supporting cotton loading and module-making machines; at the beginning of this year it purchased another 15 red date brushing and impurity-removing machines. Up to now, the regiment already has more than 260 large and small agricultural vehicles and farm implements of various types. The introduction of machines has reduced the labor needed each year to 80%.

Yang Yong, a worker in the 10th Company of the regiment, introduced: “Before there were planting and sowing machines and cotton pickers, my 60 mu of cotton needed at least 20 people hired to handle it. At 80 yuan per person per day, with about 50 days of work, more than 80,000 yuan was gone. After deducting costs such as agricultural materials, annual income at that time was only more than 30,000 yuan. After basically achieving mechanization, hiring only 5 or 6 people during the busiest time is enough.”

Training labor brokers revitalized the labor resource. Although the regiment has a large number of modern farm machines and tools, crop management still requires a large amount of manpower for tasks such as thinning seedlings, topping, pruning, bud removal and bagging. In order to hire workers in time for rushed planting and harvesting, the regiment trained 6 labor brokers. Usually the brokers contact and register surplus labor in the regiment and surrounding counties and cities, establish basic information files such as age, work direction and skills, and sign labor contracts. Once contract households in the regiment need to hire workers, they only need to tell them the number of people, and the brokers immediately coordinate and dispatch them in place, and also manage the hired workers and coordinate to resolve disputes.

Maimaiti·Tusun, a farmer from Bachu County bordering the regiment, said: “Before, after finishing my own work, I either stayed idle at home or asked around everywhere for work. But after registering last year with Nurmaimaiti·Sidike, a broker in the 49th Regiment, he would call as soon as there was work, and I no longer had to go looking for work. After finishing, I got paid immediately. I feel very at ease working here.”

Doing a good job in service guarantees and creating an environment that attracts and keeps people. The regiment educated and mobilized growers to keep workers through sincerity. Once employers and workers establish deep feelings, they basically form a long-term cooperative relationship. Three years ago, Kerimu·Rouzi, who lives in Shule County and picked cotton at Zhang Weiqiang’s home in the 7th Company of the regiment, came to his home every year to pick cotton. Kerimu·Rouzi said the boss’s family treated him very well. If he had no money at home, he could get wages in advance; renting a room cost nothing; water, electricity and gas were also covered by the boss; and from time to time the boss even bought a few skewers of roast mutton, yet not a cent of his wages was reduced, so he kept working for Zhang Weiqiang. At the same time, workers were also given skills training. For work requiring certain skills, such as jujube tree pruning and bud removal and shoot pinching, the regiment insisted that new workers receive training before taking up their posts, and wages were paid during training.

From now on: solving hiring difficulties still needs policy support

⟧ —— improve the agricultural labor market, increase skills training, and implement classified industrial subsidies to offset rising costs

At present, although with the rapid development of science and technology many advanced agricultural machines have been put into use and labor has been reduced to a certain extent, there is still a lot of work that requires a large labor force, such as apple bagging, cotton topping, and jujube tree pruning and bud removal. These can only be done manually, not only requiring hired workers but also requiring a certain level of technical skill.

“In today’s acceleration of modern large-scale agricultural development, to solve the seasonal shortage of agricultural labor, it is still necessary to improve and perfect the agricultural labor market. The improvement of labor workers’ quality and the expansion of special agricultural services all cannot be separated from national policy support.” said Zheng Shengxue, Party secretary of the regiment.

Skills training is the key to improving the quality of hired workers. Chen Yong, chief of the regiment’s production section, said: “According to the needs of agricultural development, there must be specialized institutions to train hired workers by classification according to differences in age, education and gender. Young people learn agricultural machinery operation, older people learn agricultural management, and women learn pruning and seedling-setting techniques, and so on.”

The continuous rise in labor costs has also squeezed part of the profit margin of agricultural growers. “Resolving the rise in labor costs requires both market regulation and the introduction of classified subsidy policies for agriculture, subsidizing labor-intensive agricultural industries so that they maintain good development momentum and growers benefit.” said major grower Li Dafu.

“Large labor gap” forces mechanized rice planting to expand scale, Suibin Farm in Heilongjiang——

Rice farmers hope for increased subsidies for updating agricultural machinery

Today “difficult and expensive hiring” has become a major “bottleneck” restricting the improvement of agricultural economic efficiency. And compared with dry fields, paddy field production has the greatest labor demand.

Suibin Farm in the Heilongjiang Reclamation Area is a major paddy field farm, with a total rice planting area of 537,000 mu. Zhang Xinmin, head of the farm’s labor employment service center, said: “Because the labor demand for rice production is relatively concentrated, the demand is greatest during spring plowing production, and there is a certain shortage. But for the whole year, demand for migrant workers is declining, while the cost of hiring workers is trending upward.”