Should the entry threshold for farmers be raised?

Recently, Shaanxi Province issued "new-type senior professional farmer" certification qualification certificates to the second batch of 182 people, which aroused widespread public attention. There were those who praised it, believing it to be an effective measure to raise farmers' social status; there were also critics, who believed that farmers should not be given a threshold, and even more so, that this should not be used as a pretext for transferring benefits.

In my view, it is very normal for there to be controversy over a newly emerging thing. The problem lies in the fact that society still has many deviations and misunderstandings in its understanding of agriculture and new-type professional farmers. If we cannot reach consensus in our understanding, it will be difficult to form an environment for cultivating new-type professional farmers. And the question of who will farm the land in the future will be difficult to resolve.

First, it is necessary to fully recognize the irreplaceable significance of cultivating new-type professional farmers. This is a commonplace topic, but it still must be discussed. As young and middle-aged rural labor shifts to cities and towns, the trends of aging and hollowing out in rural areas are intensifying. The impact on agriculture is prominently shown in abandoned farmland, a reduction in the multiple cropping index, a decline in farmers' contribution rate to the agricultural product market, and obstacles to the promotion of agricultural science and technology due to insufficient demand. In order to satisfy people's ever-growing demand for agricultural products, some areas pursue predatory high output, while more areas engage in extensive management because the elderly are unable to do what they want and because there is a lack of successors in the agricultural labor force. It is precisely against this background that "who will farm the land in the future?" has become an issue of common concern to the government and society.

The proposal of new-type professional farmers is a strategic choice to solve the problem of "who will farm the land in the future." The benefits of new-type professional farmers can be listed in great number, and several points are widely agreed upon: for example, new-type professional farmers are the basic constituent units and cells for cultivating various new-type business entities; whether cooperatives, agricultural enterprises, family farms, or large contract holders, all must take new-type professional farmers as their main body. New-type professional farmers are also the main force for transforming the mode of agricultural development. Neither the traditional agricultural production mode nor the industrial-thinking agricultural production mode can adapt to the requirements of sustainable agriculture. The current environmental pollution and concerns about the quality of agricultural products must all be addressed by cultivating new-type professional farmers. Old farmers, traditional farmers, and part-time farmers are difficult to make into the main body of modern agriculture. In addition, new agricultural technologies, new varieties, new forms of organization, and excellent agricultural culture, without new-type professional farmers, will all become castles in the air.

Second, let us talk about the agricultural qualification access system. There is a view that farmers have farmed the land for generation after generation, so are they now not even qualified to be farmers? Does being a farmer require a threshold? Some of these doubts come from misunderstandings of the concept of new-type professional farmers, and some come from a lack of understanding of the state of agricultural production. The cultivation of new-type professional farmers is the foundation of modern agriculture; it does not exclude or ignore the existence of traditional farmers. However, we must see that new-type professional farmers bear more social responsibility than traditional farmers. For example, traditional farmers only need to be responsible to their families, while new-type professional farmers are required to be responsible to consumers, to ecology, to the land, and to future generations. In today's world where destructive means are extremely powerful, if there is no stable special group responsible for the sustainable construction and protection of cultivated land and the environment, the consequences are unimaginable. Today's agriculture and farmers cannot be understood with traditional agricultural thinking. Consumers need agricultural product safety, society needs ecological protection, and humanity needs the present generation to leave a piece of land for sustainable use to future generations. These responsibilities cannot be borne by old farmers or by industrial and commercial capital engaging in short-term behavior; rather, they are new responsibilities assigned to new-type professional farmers. It can be said that today's farmers, especially market-oriented farmers undertaking large-scale operations, bear more social responsibility than other groups. Therefore, it is very important to care for them, provide a suitable social environment for their growth, and enhance their social status and the effectiveness of government support through certification. Future farmers must not only have certificates and thresholds, but as science and technology develop and responsibilities expand, the threshold will become higher and higher.

In traditional society anyone could be a farmer, while in modern society being a farmer must have conditions. This is determined by the characteristics of today's society. The current trends of land transfer and large-scale agriculture make it especially urgent to implement an agricultural access system. As long as one pays attention to agriculture, one will find that in reality most people who contract farmers' land on a large scale for large-scale operations do not have agricultural professional qualifications. They are unfamiliar with agriculture, lack the basic concept of sustainable development, plunder soil fertility, pollute the environment, engage in non-grain and non-agricultural uses, and arbitrarily change the use of agricultural land. Some places follow the behavioral principle of "whoever gives milk is the mother," and the combination of power and capital creates large areas of scaled-up abandoned land, posing a great threat to national agricultural security. Therefore, it is urgent to implement a qualification access system for large-scale agriculture, which is what people often mean by "not just anyone can be a farmer." An important condition of the agricultural qualification access system is that one must have the qualifications of a new-type professional farmer. By defining new-type professional farmers, it not only provides business entity qualifications for land transfer and large-scale operations, but also provides an accurate target for government support of agriculture. At present, the effectiveness of the use of agricultural support funds is mainly affected by the ambiguity of the supported entities. Some people who have neither the ability nor the willingness to operate agriculture obtain agricultural support funds under various names, and some agricultural benefit projects often have their effectiveness limited because the agricultural operating entities are unclear.