The problem of who will farm the land has been solved
In April in Jilin, the ice on the rivers loosens, the willows and poplars sprout green, and the roar of machinery is everywhere. The Jilin investigation team walked through the fields, entered farm households, and visited factory areas, checking soil moisture and holding in-depth conversations with farmers and with agricultural input producers and sellers.
Jilin Province is not only a main corn-producing area, but also a main producing area for rice, sorghum, and other crops. At the Yutian Farmers' Professional Cooperative in Jiutai District, Changchun City, Li Yutian, who served as village Party branch secretary for 21 years in Zhenkaipao Village, Jiutai District, and is the cooperative's chairman, said: "We farmers know how to farm, and we also know how to farm well, but how to make the land create higher returns and make farmers' wallets fatter is a problem." Li Yutian explained that he began building basic farmland in 2002 and established the cooperative in 2008. The main approach was to contract farmers' land, connect it into contiguous plots, and manage it intensively, fully using mechanized planting, processing, and so on.
Li Yutian, who came from a military background, was especially able to endure hardship. He went to Jilin Agricultural University, Jilin University, and other institutions of higher learning to find relevant researchers to conduct research and experiments, and finally their organic rice experiment succeeded. "Let me do the math for you. Our current organic rice sells for up to 60 yuan per jin, and demand still exceeds supply, while ordinary rice is far behind and cannot compare. Six jin of ordinary rice is not even worth the price of one jin of organic rice. Ordinary rice yields about 14,000 jin per hao of land, while organic rice yields 6,000 jin per hao, and every stage is very labor- and resource-intensive," Li Yutian said. But after costs, one hao of organic rice can leave 30,000 yuan, while ordinary rice leaves only 10,000 yuan.
At present, the Yutian Cooperative has consolidated more than 1,000 hao of land from more than 1,500 farming households. There are now more than 200 farmers working at the Yutian Cooperative. The average monthly wage per person has reached 3,500 yuan, with wages paid for 11 months a year, and the highest income can reach nearly 40,000 yuan.
"How much land we plant each year in the future depends on the market. However big the market is, that is how much land we will plant," Li Yutian said. From the current situation, demand is growing every year, so agriculture is an industry with great promise. He called for the state to provide support in grain storage.
"Now corn is more than one yuan per jin, so no one at all will contract the land to you," an agricultural input store owner said when the investigation team visited the agricultural input market in Jiutai District. One farmer said: "For one hao of land (15 mu), I would not rent it to you even if you gave me 10,000 yuan a year." Another farmer said: "In recent years, grain has sold well, prices have kept rising, there are subsidies, the prices of seeds, chemical fertilizers, and pesticides are stable, and going out to work is so hard. We are not willing to rent the land to others."
In recent years, with the continuous improvement of the central government's policies to strengthen agriculture and benefit farmers, agricultural production returns have steadily increased, and agriculture has become a new hot spot for social capital investment. Some members of the "post-70s" and "post-80s" new generation of farmers, who earned funds and learned skills by working elsewhere, have returned to their hometowns to establish family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and other new types of production and operation entities, injecting new vitality into agricultural production. The question of "who will farm the land" is being solved in Jiutai District, Jilin Province. The Qingshan Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Sitai Village, Shanghewan Town, Jiutai District, operates 4,600 mu of cultivated land. Chairman Liu Qingshan said: "I have already raised the rent for transferred land to 11,000 yuan per hao, but I still cannot rent more cultivated land."
"New types of production and operation entities also face problems such as shortages of funds, few financing channels, and unstable land transfer relationships," said Ye Jiming, head of the investigation group. In the future, agricultural departments should focus on cultivating new types of agricultural operation entities, build a new type of agricultural operation system, and solve problems constraining the agricultural operation system, so as to provide strong policy, legal, and technical support and services for "who will farm the land well" and "how to farm the land well."