The phenomenon of breaking contracts and abandoning farmland must be guarded against, ensuring farmers' interests are not harmed
Guide industrial and commercial capital to enter agriculture in an orderly manner, ensuring farmers' interests are not harmed and agricultural production is not affected
Industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside can indeed bring capital, technology and advanced business models, accelerating the transformation of traditional agriculture and the construction of modern agriculture, but risks like “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” must be guarded against.
⟦NL> A food processing enterprise in a certain place in Hebei, in order to guarantee the supply of raw materials, last year transferred land in nearly 50 villages totaling more than 7,000 mu, agreeing to pay farmers a transfer fee of 1,680 yuan per mu. But in less than a year, before farmers had even received the full land rent, the enterprise proposed returning the land. Moreover, because the return of the land missed the farming season, some of the land was left abandoned. This situation of industrial and commercial capital transferring large areas of land and then “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” has not only appeared in Hebei; some central and eastern provinces have also seen similar phenomena. Land transferees unilaterally break contracts or even “run away”, land rent is difficult to realize, and the returned land either has no trace of boundaries or has severely damaged irrigation wells and pipes……
In the past two years, the investment prospects of modern agriculture have been widely favored, and industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside has been booming in many places. A “big crocodile” in such-and-such field has entered agriculture again, such-and-such enterprise has again promised farmers “sky-high” land rent - similar news frequently appears in the newspapers. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, in the past 3 years, the area of contracted land flowing into enterprises has grown at an average annual rate of more than 20%, reaching 38.825 million mu by the end of 2014, accounting for about 10% of the total area of farmers' contracted land transferred nationwide. In this surging tide, one wave higher than the last, the occurrence of the “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” phenomenon is nothing less than a “sobering agent”, reminding people to calmly think about the risks behind this boom.
On the surface, these industrial and commercial capital land returns all have their objective reasons, either tight capital chains making it difficult to pay land rent, or problems in production lines making it difficult to absorb large amounts of raw materials. But speaking more deeply, on the one hand, it is still that these capital going to the countryside have forgotten the “degree” of gradual progress and steady development, blindly seeking more and bigger, forming a new “diseconomies of scale”. The pace is too large, but the corresponding management personnel and management experience cannot keep up, so “throwing out one's back” is unavoidable. On the other hand, it must be said that these people who are not good at farming are fearless in their ignorance, underestimating the basic attributes of agriculture and the complexity, long-term nature and high risk of agricultural investment, and blindly following the trend. Once they encounter natural disasters or market changes, they respond in confusion. Many “old hands” at farming have questioned enterprises' daring to raise land rent again and again: “Can you really earn this much just by growing grain?”
Even if it is said that “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” is because the capital going to the countryside lost money, those more harmed are still agriculture and farmers. Facing harmed farmers and abandoned farmland, it must be said that behind “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” also exposes the current shortcomings in land transfer supervision. For quite a period, there were no upper limits on the time and area for capital going to the countryside to “acquire land”, there were no clear provisions on the transfer qualifications, project review and risk guarantee systems for capital going to the countryside, and the land transfer service systems in some places still remained at the stage of “hanging up a sign and issuing a document”, with their functional role yet to be further brought into play.
Only by walking steadily can one go far. In response to the problems prone to occur when industrial and commercial capital goes to the countryside, relevant departments should promptly guide and prescribe the right medicine. Recently, the Ministry of Agriculture and three other departments jointly issued a document to strengthen supervision and risk prevention for industrial and commercial capital leasing farmland. The document not only proposes upper limit controls on the time and area of industrial and commercial capital leasing farmland, but also encourages all localities to explore and establish qualification review and project review systems for industrial and commercial capital leasing farmland in accordance with the law, and requires the establishment of a tiered filing system. This is of no small significance for guiding industrial and commercial capital to enter agriculture in an orderly manner, ensuring farmers' interests are not harmed and agricultural production is not affected.
Modern agriculture says this: industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside is welcome, but please do your homework carefully before coming, and do not let “breaking contracts and abandoning farmland” happen again.