Grain subsidies hard to deliver: large-scale farmers entitled to 160 yuan per mu receive only 10 yuan
“Large-scale grain-growing subsidy of 160 yuan, only 10 yuan actually received”
To stabilize grain production and reduce the negative impact of rising costs on large-scale grain growers, Chongqing stipulates that large-scale growers with a grain-planting area of 50 to 100 mu can receive a subsidy of 160 yuan per mu; those with an area of over 100 mu receive a subsidy of 230 yuan per mu. However, this preferential agricultural policy encountered considerable confusion when it was implemented.
“In recent years the state has introduced many subsidy policies, and grain farmers welcome them from the bottom of their hearts. But the subsidy is based on the contracted area and paid to the land contractor, not to us who actually cultivate the land.” Hu Yonggang, a large-scale grain grower in Renxian Township, Liangping County, Chongqing, has transferred over 200 mu of land for grain growing. He said that when villagers subcontract their land to them, in addition to collecting rent, a portion of the subsidy money must also be returned to the farmers. “Those who don't grow grain can get 150 yuan, while those who do grow grain get only 10 yuan per mu. This has somewhat dampened the enthusiasm of those of us who persist in farming.”
In land transfer, although land use and management rights are transferred to large-scale growers, smallholder farmers still retain land contracting rights. Against the current backdrop of weak contract enforcement in rural areas, if large-scale growers cannot satisfy the interests of smallholders, the smallholders are very likely to take back the land. Liu Baofan, deputy director of the Agricultural Committee of Dianjiang County, Chongqing, said the government requires that “whoever grows grain gets the subsidy,” but this is very difficult to implement at the grassroots level. In the process of land transfer, there is in fact an interest game between the large-scale growers who take in land and the smallholders; for large-scale growers to rent land, they usually must return part of the subsidy funds as a precondition. Localities often resort to “workarounds,” implementing subsidies according to contracted area, so that even those who do not grow grain can receive subsidies.
Grassroots cadres also have their own troubles when it comes to why national policies cannot be implemented. “Rural areas are vast and farmers live scattered; some households have one or two dozen field plots of different sizes and extremely irregular shapes. Who can say clearly how large the specific area is? How much subsidy should be paid?” said Chen Ming, Party branch secretary of Wanle Village, Gulu Township, Wuxi County. The village has over 1,400 people and over 1,800 mu of cultivated land, yet the village Party branch and village committee have only a few people; how could they possibly get all the basic subsidy data straight? Calculating subsidies based on the contracted area on land certificates is the lowest-cost, simplest and easiest method, and it is also a last resort.
“Direct grain subsidy is 2.1 yuan per mu, but the work cost alone is 1 yuan”
Because direct grain subsidy programs are fragmented, and some subsidy programs involve small amounts of funds but high work costs, this has also become a prominent problem in the implementation of subsidy policies. In Tongnan, a major agricultural county in western Chongqing, Zhang Jianguo, director of the seed station of the county agricultural committee, gave a Ban Yue Tan reporter an example. Among the three types of direct grain subsidy programs, the direct grain subsidy has the smallest amount of funds, about more than 1.4 million yuan for the whole county for a year, which works out to 2.1 yuan per mu. Some households with little land can receive only three or four yuan a year for the whole family. But in order to distribute this subsidy, the supporting work costs invested by relevant government departments and villages and communities average more than 1 yuan per mu.
Zhang Jianguo said these supporting costs mainly include staff salaries, transportation fees, paper costs and so on. Subsidy programs go through villagers' groups, village committees and townships for data entry, reporting, public announcement and review level by level, and only then are they directly subsidized by banks into farmers' accounts. The entire workflow takes an average of two to three months.
Hu Sigang, director of the agricultural technology station of the Agricultural Committee of Wushan County, Chongqing, introduced that the county's direct grain subsidy is only 1.18 million yuan but must cover 131,000 farming households. The subsidy money has become a “drizzle” that “won't even wet the ground.” But the direct grain subsidy is an independent subsidy program and cannot be merged with other subsidies. This forces grassroots cadres to repeatedly collect statistics, repeatedly create forms and repeatedly make public announcements for subsidy distribution, which is no small workload.
In the view of Liu Baoguo, chief agronomist of the Chongqing Municipal Agricultural Committee, at present, because each agriculture-related subsidy has a different type, different distribution time and different application form, and each subsidy requires three levels of review and two public announcements, and only after there are no objections can the subsidy funds be delivered to banks for payment, the workload is large and wide-ranging, the materials are numerous, and some places do not even have the necessary supporting work funds.
Grassroots cadres believe that multi-channel management and “sprinkling pepper powder”-style grain subsidies do not meet the new requirements of agricultural development. Smaller subsidies such as direct grain subsidies can be integrated into comprehensive agricultural input subsidies for concentrated subsidy support.
Improving subsidy effectiveness through multiple channels
This year's central “No. 1 Document” proposed improving the effectiveness of agricultural subsidy policies and “carrying out pilot projects in places where conditions permit to subsidize producers according to actual grain sown area or output.” This is a further adjustment of agricultural subsidy policy as the situation changes.
To implement the policy of linking grain subsidies to farmers' actual planting area, it is necessary to promptly carry out pilot projects, establish and improve a basic data information management system for agricultural subsidies, and gather basic information data such as farmland area, plot distribution and boundary lines, so that the grassroots level can truly implement and identify farmers' planting areas and grain output.
The adjustment of agricultural policy pursues efficiency while also taking fairness into account. Since at present most farmers regard grain subsidies as an inclusive income benefit, the existing subsidy stock should not be greatly changed, while new subsidies should mainly be directed to new types of business entities such as large-scale agricultural growers and family farms, while avoiding smallholder farmers “competing” with large-scale growers for subsidies, ensuring that national preferential agricultural policies can truly be implemented. Grassroots cadres suggest that by introducing land transfer rent subsidies, subsidies for socialized services such as centralized seedling raising and mechanized operations, and increasing varieties of agricultural insurance, the support for large-scale agricultural growers can be systematically increased, land idleness reduced, and cultivated land further concentrated among large-scale grain growers, so that grain production can achieve scale and benefits.