What Path Should Innovation in Agricultural Management Organizations Take?
Accelerating innovation in agricultural management organizations to provide the main-body support and institutional foundation for building modern agriculture in Hunan Province is one of the key tasks in our province's current rural reform and development. To this end, we take the innovative practice of agricultural management organizations in Chenzhou City as an example and conduct an in-depth study of the current situation and trends, difficulties and problems of innovation in agricultural management organizations in our province, in an attempt to answer the question of how agricultural management organizations can innovate and develop.
Development Trends
With the deepening advance of rural reform and modern agriculture construction, agricultural management organizations in our province have innovated and developed on the basis of household contract management, showing the following new trends.
Trend of specialized division of labor: household management has begun to develop from the division of labor in which different members within a household engage in labor of different natures and the product division in which different households produce different agricultural products, into a specialized division of labor in which different households shift from producing different products to completing only the work of a certain link in the formation process of a certain product. This has not only produced large numbers of specialized planting households, specialized breeding households, specialized transport households, specialized processing households, and specialized commercial households, but has also given rise to distinctive agriculture of considerable scale in various places.
Trend of joint operation: household contract operators have begun to develop from joint households to cooperatives and then to cooperative unions, evolving from pre-production cooperation to mid-production cooperation and then to post-production cooperation, and leaping from the cooperation of a single production factor to the cooperation of comprehensive factors and then to capital cooperation, giving rise to farmers' professional cooperatives and cooperative unions.
Trend of share cooperation: the agricultural share cooperative system converts the factors invested by different households into a certain number of shares, providing a unified measure for defining the rights and interests of farming households participating in cooperation, and also providing cooperatives with a governance mechanism of equal rights for equal shares, equal responsibilities for equal shares, equal profits for equal shares, shared benefits, and shared risks. It further builds a free and open platform for the concentration and clustering of production factors among cooperatives, as well as for the conversion of various social capitals into agricultural capital.
Reasons for the Lag
Although innovation in agricultural management organizations in our province shows an encouraging momentum, it still lags behind compared with developed regions. Apart from objective factors such as natural geography and transportation, the main reasons are as follows:
Economic development factors. Hunan has always been a major agricultural province, and its industrialization, urbanization and marketization are all below the national average. This is the result of the incomplete development and weak innovation of agricultural management organizations in our province, and also the cause of the incomplete development and weak innovation of agricultural management organizations in our province.
Institutional and mechanism factors. First, the property rights relationship of rural collective land ownership is unclear. Whether the subject of land ownership is the township collective, the village collective, or the group collective, no one has yet explained clearly. There is also a lack of clear definition of property rights between the collective and the farmers who constitute the collective, and collective land ownership does not give farmers a visible and tangible sense of gain. Second, rural collective land cannot be traded on the market like state-owned land; its value has no market assessment, its rights and interests have no market realization, and its transfer has no market channel, which hinders cooperation and joint operation among farmers. Third, household contract management remains unchanged for a long time, which has solidified the fragmentation of land management. Some farmers would even rather leave land idle than transfer it, and would rather let it lie unused than join together.
Policy measure factors. In our country, agricultural subsidies formed on the basis of industry compensating agriculture, cities promoting the countryside, and giving more while taking less are to a considerable extent directly subsidized to households and individuals. Although the amount is large, the coverage is too broad, and there is especially a lack of strong support for new types of agricultural management organizations. The maximum support fund from the Ministry of Agriculture for a single farmers' professional cooperative organization does not exceed 200,000 yuan, and only just over 100 across the country can enjoy support funds, so grassroots units can only quench their thirst by gazing at plums; agriculture is a weak industry that depends on the weather for its living, farmers' professional cooperatives are relatively loose management organizations, and land contractual management rights are restricted economic rights, with high operational risks, low comparative returns, and no substantive mortgaged assets, making them not ideal targets for credit loans, so obtaining credit support is difficult; in addition, the agricultural insurance system and policies lag behind, the project funds supporting farmers' cooperatives are fragmented by departmental and regional divisions, and there are too many rules and restrictions such as industrial and commercial registration, applying for licenses and certificates, land adjustment, and conversion of operational use, so innovating agricultural management organizations remains very difficult.
Countermeasures for Innovation
To accelerate innovation in agricultural management organizations in our province, we must focus on the long term while grounding ourselves in the present, and devote efforts to institutional arrangements, mechanism design, and policy responses.
Explore “dual transfer”. The so-called “dual transfer” means exploring the implementation of the transfer of rural land ownership rights and the transfer of management rights. Through the transfer of ownership shares among farmers within the collective, realize the concentration and clustering of land factors and form scale operation; through the transfer of ownership rights among collectives, as well as between collectives and the state, form an openly competitive land trading market, regulate the relationship between land supply and demand, coordinate the interest relationships among different subjects, and realize the optimized allocation of land resources; through the transfer of management rights in forms such as contracting, leasing, sub contracting, and mutual concession, realize the concentration of land resource management rights and the specialized and scaled operation of agriculture.
Focus on “dual effectiveness”. To accelerate innovation in agricultural management organizations, it is necessary to reduce the cost of innovation in agricultural management organizations as much as possible and increase its returns, so that agricultural management subjects can see the benefits of specialized division of labor, cooperative operation, and share cooperation in the process of innovating management organizations, taste the sweetness of specialization, scale, and marketization, and feel the actual results of lowering costs and increasing returns. For example, the Tianma Mushroom Cooperative in Liangtian Town, Suxian District, Chenzhou City, needs to purchase its raw materials from other places, and it is very uneconomical for farmers to purchase individually. After the cooperative was established, unified purchasing saved 20% of costs; the cultivation of tianma and mushroom seedlings is highly technological, and hiring a technician costs as much as 1,000 yuan per day, which ordinary farmers cannot afford, but when arranged uniformly by the cooperative, expenditures are greatly reduced; the products of cooperative members are uniformly packaged by the cooperative and sold to outside markets, with prices 25% higher than the local market. In 2014, the cooperative's sales revenue exceeded 40 million yuan, and the average income of participating farmers reached 100,000 yuan.
Realize “dual drive”. That is, realize the “dual drive” of integrated policy resources providing support and external social resources providing assistance. To integrate policy resources, it is necessary to realize the transformation of agricultural subsidy targets from mainly individuals and households to mainly cooperatives, the transformation of agricultural subsidy channels from following people and households to following fields and business activities, and the transformation of agricultural subsidy methods from dispersed special subsidies to concentrated comprehensive subsidies, focusing on solving the problems of diminishing marginal subsidy effects, those who enjoy subsidies not farming and those who farm not receiving subsidies, and weak support for new types of management organizations; actively broaden agricultural investment channels, form a pattern of government leadership, diversified investment, and market operation, and through government policy guidance, enterprise participation, and operation by new types of agricultural management organizations, gather social capital into agricultural capital, turn transfer payments into direct investment, and transform traditional agriculture into modern agriculture, focusing on solving the problem of insufficient investment in agricultural management organizations; actively develop distinctive agriculture, ecological agriculture, fine agriculture, and leisure agriculture, form a win-win interaction between innovating agricultural management organizations and developing modern agriculture, and focus on solving the problem of industrial support for agricultural management organizations; actively explore mortgage financing using the right to use collective construction land, mortgage financing using rural houses, mortgage financing using rural land contractual management rights, and mortgage financing using forest right certificates, attempt to explore mortgage financing using rural collective land ownership, cautiously explore raising funds through shares, improve the agricultural guarantee and agricultural insurance systems, explore the development of specialized agricultural finance cooperatives, and focus on solving the problem of difficult financing for agricultural management organizations.