How Should Rural Land Circulation Be Regulated? Investigation and Reflections

Building modern agriculture requires innovating agricultural management models, transforming agricultural management methods, and improving land use efficiency and comprehensive agricultural benefits. How to activate rural land factors and promote the transformation of rural land resources into land capital, advance modern agriculture, and coordinate urban-rural development under the premise of adhering to the long-term stability of the basic rural management system is a major topic requiring continuous study. This article takes Suining City, Sichuan Province as an example to analyze the main characteristics and main problems of rural land circulation, and on this basis explores feasible paths for promoting the regulated circulation of rural land.

I. Basic Overview of Rural Land Circulation in Suining City

In recent years, Suining City, Sichuan Province has continuously innovated its land circulation mechanisms around modern agricultural development, and the scope and scale of rural land circulation have continued to expand, with economic and social benefits continuously improving. As of March 2015, the city had circulated 950,000 mu of land through subcontracting, leasing, shareholding, exchange, and transfer, accounting for 27% of the cultivated land area. Of this, subcontracting accounted for 450,000 mu, or 48% of the total circulation; leasing accounted for 370,000 mu, or 39%; shareholding accounted for 30,000 mu, or 3%; transfer accounted for 10,000 mu, or 1%; and exchange accounted for 90,000 mu, or 9%. Rural land circulation in the city presents four prominent characteristics:

First, circulation channels have shifted from spontaneous to organized. Stimulated by national policies to strengthen agriculture, benefit farmers, and enrich rural areas, farmers' reluctance to part with land has increased, and land circulation has gradually shifted from disorderly spontaneous circulation among farmers to organized and orderly flow. Organized circulation generally involves establishing land circulation cooperatives to gather together land that farmers are willing to circulate, and conducting production and operations through share cooperation, unified contracting, and other forms, or circulation uniformly organized by villagers' committees on the basis of obtaining farmers' consent. At present, the city has established 360 land circulation cooperatives, with an organized circulation area of 390,000 mu, accounting for 41% of the total circulation. Organized circulation has government guidance, a relatively high degree of standardization, and the land is mostly contiguous with a certain scale and relatively uniform prices, which is conducive to better promoting the optimal allocation of production factors and promoting the development of agricultural resources.

Second, circulation entities have shifted from individuals to diversification. With agricultural structural adjustment and the development of profitable agriculture, some former large-scale farming and breeding households have expanded their land planting scale, and new types of operating entities have continuously emerged. The rural land operating entities in Suining City have shifted from being dominated by farmers in the past to extensive participation by enterprises, individual industrial and commercial households, and others, and agricultural operations are gradually shifting from single family operations to multi-entity operations. Operating projects have also shifted from being mainly grain cultivation to diversified characteristic industries such as breeding, vegetables, forestry and fruit. At present, the city has more than 5,300 new types of operating entities, including specialized large households, family farms, farmer cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises, which have circulated and operated nearly 400,000 mu of rural land, accounting for 42% of the total circulation.

Third, circulation area has shifted from scattered to concentrated and contiguous. In recent years, the central government has continuously increased investment in “agriculture, rural areas, and farmers,” effectively mobilizing the enthusiasm of specialized large households, farmer cooperatives, and leading enterprises to participate in large-scale agricultural operations. Land circulation has expanded from single seasonal subcontracting circulation among farmers within villages and groups to concentrated contiguous circulation across villages and groups, across townships, and even across counties (districts), achieving the agglomeration of land from scattered to moderately scaled. At present, the city's large-scale circulation area of more than 10 mu has reached 420,000 mu, accounting for 45% of the total circulation. Through methods such as “company + cooperative + base + farmers,” 34 modern agriculture ten-thousand-mu demonstration zones have been built cumulatively, along with five major characteristic industry bases of more than 1.5 million mu, including high-quality grain, high-quality oil crops, high-quality citrus, green vegetables, and characteristic Chinese medicinal materials, and 92 ten-thousand-head pig farms; 5 modern agricultural parks have built 160,000 mu of advantageous characteristic planting bases, with the proportion of facility agriculture reaching 33%, the comprehensive mechanization rate 5 percentage points higher than that of large areas, and grain yield per unit area 5% higher than that of large areas.

Fourth, circulation returns have shifted from low income to high efficiency. Initially, farmers circulated land to avoid taxes and fees, and much land was left abandoned and uncultivated. With the continuous deepening of rural reform, farmers' land circulation returns have risen year by year, and circulation prices have gone from unpaid substitute cultivation and low-price subcontracting at the beginning to the current 400-1,000 yuan per mu, with higher circulation prices in places with superior planting conditions and better transportation conditions. From the investigation, concentrated contiguous land circulation is mostly used to develop high value-added agriculture such as high-quality cash crops, off-season crops, livestock and poultry breeding, and leisure and sightseeing, and the land value-added benefits are relatively high. With the continuous deepening of land circulation, large grain-growing households have continuously emerged, and the city now has 763 grain-growing households with more than 30 mu, with a grain-growing area of 68,000 mu.

II. Main Practices for Regulating Rural Land Circulation

Suining City regards land circulation as a breakthrough point for advancing agricultural modernization, adheres to the principle of “stabilizing the system, separating rights, and invigorating,” and, in accordance with the approach of “rational layout, forming scale, and standardized management,” actively innovates land circulation mechanisms and continuously explores new methods of land circulation, promoting the agglomeration of rural land toward moderately scaled operations and promoting the transformation of agricultural management methods.

(1) Consolidating the foundation and guiding lawful land circulation. Comprehensive work has been carried out to confirm, register, and certify rural land contractual management rights, and land contracting archives have been well organized and managed. The city has basically achieved the “four consistencies” and “four deliveries to households” of contracted plot area, contracts, rights certificates, and ledgers, and townships have centrally and uniformly standardized the safekeeping of land contracting archives. At present, the city has completed confirmation and registration of 2.125 million mu. Among this, Anju District, as Sichuan Province's first county-level confirmation, registration, and certification acceptance unit, has passed provincial-level acceptance as a whole, while other counties (districts) are, in accordance with the city's unified deployment, solidly carrying out follow-up work related to confirmation, registration, and certification, accelerating the construction of a comprehensive information platform, and realizing information system management of land contracting archives, laying a solid foundation for the lawful and orderly circulation of land contractual management rights.

(2) Building platforms and promoting orderly land circulation. The Municipal Agriculture Bureau and 5 counties (districts), 64 townships, and 172 villages established land circulation service institutions, initially building a land circulation service system centered on city and county (district) land circulation management institutions, with township land circulation service centers as platforms and village land circulation information officers as the foundation. At the same time, the Suining City Rural Property Rights Trading Service Center was formally established; the first land circulation trading market, the Pengxi County Rural Land Contractual Management Right Circulation Trading Center, was established, and a land circulation information network platform was built. Through township circulation centers, information on farmers' land circulation needs is collected, and the county trading center uniformly publishes, trades, and signs contracts, providing “one-stop” services for farmers circulating land.

(3) Establishing mechanisms and safeguarding regulated land circulation. First, strengthening standardized management. A complete set of work procedures and rules and regulations has been established for all links, from the collection, registration, aggregation, and release of circulation information, qualification review of parties, to contract signing, dispute mediation, and archive construction and management. Some counties (districts) have established mechanisms for qualification review of operators, circulation price guidance, risk protection, land reclamation, and work services, and have implemented registration and record-filing, contract authentication, and performance bond systems for large-scale land circulation; for temporary land occupation for the construction of production service facilities, a cultivated land reclamation bond is paid according to the area of temporary facilities and a certain standard, reducing the potential risks of land circulation. Second, strengthening dispute mediation. Land contracting arbitration committees have been established in 5 counties (districts), arbitration tribunals have been set up, and a “three-in-one” land dispute mediation mechanism of township and village mediation, county-level arbitration, and judicial protection has been explored and established, receiving affirmation from National People's Congress leaders and support from national infrastructure construction projects. Since last year, a total of 4,459 land disputes have been mediated, with a mediation resolution rate of 99%, providing strong guarantees for protecting the lawful rights and interests of both parties in circulation and promoting lawful and orderly circulation.