Escaping the Farmland System Trap Is the Only Way to Agricultural Modernization
The "agricultural modernization for a moderately prosperous society in all respects" referred to in this article means the phased goal that agricultural modernization must reach by 2020, when a moderately prosperous society in all respects is achieved. Its specific content is what General Secretary Xi recently proposed at the symposium with the principal responsible comrades of the party committees of seven provinces and municipalities in East China: during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period, it is necessary to "while stabilizing the output of grain and important agricultural products and ensuring national food security and the effective supply of important agricultural products, accelerate the transformation of the agricultural development model, accelerate the pace of agricultural technological innovation, and embark on a path of intensive, efficient, safe and sustainable modern agricultural development" (Xinhua News Agency, Hangzhou, May 28).
The above important speech by General Secretary Xi marks that the formulation of the economic and social development plan during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period has officially been placed on the top level of decision-making of the Party Central Committee, and also marks that the agricultural modernization needed to accelerate the realization of a moderately prosperous society in all respects has entered the final sprint stage, with the situation pressing and no time to lose.
How can the agricultural modernization goal needed for a moderately prosperous society in all respects be achieved during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period? From the perspective of experience, one of the many problems that urgently need to be solved at present is to escape the trap of farmland system reform. The so-called "trap of farmland system reform" refers to the long-term predicament in discussions of agricultural theory and policy planning design of falling into the debate over whether agricultural land is "better public" or "better private," with no conclusion ever reached, making it difficult to extricate oneself and seriously hindering the improvement of the agricultural land system and the progress of agricultural modernization.
From the perspective of basic agricultural theory, some experts (Ding Zeji, Explorations in the Basic Theory of Agricultural Economics, China Agriculture Press, first edition, 2002) believe that whether agricultural economics should study the land system has different methods of argumentation under different theoretical frameworks, leading to different conclusions. The mainstream school of modern Western economics, from neoclassical economics to the neoclassical synthesis, excludes institutions (the land system) as an external factor, or assumes that institutions and their changes do not affect the analysis of economic effects. According to this theoretical framework, studying the land system is superfluous. Therefore, the content of modern agricultural economics, represented by American agricultural economics, does not include the issue of the land system. Marxist economics, however, takes the study of relations of production as its main object, and agricultural economics based on Marxist political economy as its theoretical foundation must study the land system.
From the practice of agricultural modernization, the existing practice of industrially developed countries in the world and of China both proves that agricultural modernization can be realized whether land is publicly owned or privately owned. When the author was studying farmland water conservancy technology in Western Europe, I saw that most of their farmland was privately owned, but public facilities such as water, electricity and roads could, as a rule, be provided publicly. China's practice over more than 30 years has also powerfully proved that modern agricultural projects such as the construction of public farmland facilities, the establishment of benefit compensation mechanisms, the advancement of agricultural scientific and technological innovation, the acceleration of the development of modern seed industries and agricultural mechanization, and the strengthening of the construction of agricultural product market systems have no inevitable connection with the farmland system. Originally, there was a view that small farmers were not conducive to the use of large agricultural machinery. When the author lived and farmed in a village several years earlier, I realized that small plots of farmland measuring a few fen or a few li were equally suitable for the use of farmland rotary tillers and rice combine harvesters. Various pre-production, mid-production and post-production socialized services have little to do with whether farmland is public or private, large or small, or the degree of agricultural professionalization of the operator; they are only related to cost and price.
Previously, one important reason why people, whenever agriculture was mentioned, were frozen by the farmland system, structure and mechanism was that China's rural reform and agricultural development over more than 30 years began with the separation of the three rights of farmland ownership, contracting rights and management rights, namely "collective ownership, household contracting, and free transfer," thereby forming a psychological mindset, even becoming an unshakable "dogma" and a formula: "when agricultural development is discussed, the land system must be invoked," unable to see the stability characteristics of the system.
In fact, farmers awakened earlier and faster than we did. Several years ago, when the author lived and farmed in a village, an old farmer of my father's generation from the same clan sometimes said to me: "Let me call you nephew. I often think that in the old society or during collectivization, if there had been as much chemical fertilizer, pesticide, machinery and high-yield seeds as now, grain would not have been a problem either."
Looking back over a thousand years, China's richest practical experience is none other than rural land management, from primitive communal ownership and the coexistence of different forms of public ownership and private ownership in feudal society, to the state ownership (state farms) and farmer privatization land reform at the beginning of New China and later complete state-owned and state-operated and collective-owned and collectively operated systems, and then to household operation under state or collective ownership. From property rights to contracting and management rights, practice and experience have already been quite rich, and there is no need to be burdened by a certain "dogma"; experiments can absolutely be opened up.
Some policy planning designers and scholars advocate reform to "propertize (privatize)" farmland, and they can absolutely be allowed to give it a try. Let them choose a land collective for propertization reform. How will membership rights be determined, and the distribution time point be set and remain permanently unchanged? How will it be ensured that farmland is effectively used and not left waste? How will population changes be resolved? How will inheritance work? How will public facilities be built? If these problems are solved well and farmers elsewhere are willing to imitate it, that is also permissible.
Some insist that the existing collective ownership of farmland and household contracting remain unchanged. The question of how to operate after a large population has moved into cities can also be solved. If all the people of a production team have moved into cities, it can be managed by the village committee, including determining membership rights, income distribution and contracting out cultivation. If all the people of the whole village (administrative village) have moved into cities, then it can be managed by the township government; there is nothing difficult about it.
As for non-agricultural land, whether requisitioned by towns or occupied for public use, what remains is only the membership right to share in the money, so there will be even fewer difficulties. In farmers' words, "if you don't make it difficult, it isn't difficult."
It can be said that after the "Decision" of the Third Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the farmland system has already become quite complete. The general approach is to classify by category and make decisions separately, and what remains is only one word: do. The real problem is that either dogmatism prevails or inaction runs rampant, and this must be changed if the agricultural modernization needed for a moderately prosperous society in all respects is to be realized.