Professionalizing farmers does not mean certifying farmers; don't make a simple thing complicated
Recently, Shaanxi Province issued "new-type senior professional farmer" certification qualification certificates to the second batch of 182 people, which is the highest "professional title" for the occupation of "farmer" in Shaanxi Province. Since the cultivation and certification of "new-type professional farmers" began last year, over the past two consecutive years, among the more than ten million farmers in the province, only 266 people have obtained the title of "senior professional farmer." A "professional farmer" is not something one can become just by having done farm work for a few years; eligible farmers must pass layer-by-layer screening, review and training by county, city and provincial agricultural departments before they can take the final qualification examination.
Objectively speaking, at a time when agriculture relies increasingly on modern scientific knowledge and farming technology, and after more and more young people have been swept up in the tide of urbanization and lost their farming skills, the professionalization of farmers is an effective way to promote the transformation of the small-scale family peasant economy into a family farm or estate economy. It can liberate the backward productive forces of rural areas and also promote the modernization of agricultural production. In recent years, the term "professional farmer" has also been mentioned by successive Three Rural Issues conferences and Central Document No. 1. Therefore, promoting the professionalization of farmers is itself not a bad thing.
However, the certification of professional farmers carried out in some places can make many people sigh with this feeling -- China has hundreds of millions of farmers, and there are plenty of people who have farmed for generations, yet when they open their eyes today they find themselves no longer "professional." Indeed, many people have farmed all their lives only to find that they are now not qualified to be a farmer, and cannot even get a certificate to practice the occupation of agriculture. Some people have also raised all kinds of doubts about the annual income requirements for professional farmer certification: if income can reach several hundred thousand or even over a million, then such people are more like Western farm owners or landlords of the past -- are they still like farmers?
⟦NL> Professionalizing farmers is not certifying farmers, and it is even less the case that relevant departments can make farmers professional by setting up a few rules and regulations and doing some training work. For thousands of years, China has always been an agrarian society. As an occupation, farming has no threshold requirements, no educational requirements, no income floor, and certainly no need for a government department to issue a certificate. Now, many places, under the pretext of professionalizing farmers, certify professional farmers and issue a certificate, which neither conforms to the central government's reform approach of streamlining administration and delegating power, nor is it likely to conform to the laws of agriculture's own development.
This government has consistently emphasized "streamlining administration, delegating power, and combining decentralization with management." On the issue of relevant occupational certification, since the 18th National Congress, the State Council has been vigorously pushing to cancel relevant occupational qualification certifications. In August 2014, the State Council, in two batches, cancelled 58 occupational qualification licensing and recognition items set by central departments; in March this year, the State Council decided to cancel 67 occupational qualification licensing and recognition items...... In many fields of many industries, we have seen the thorough liberation of the labor force, and we have seen some occupations remove examinations, remove professional titles, and remove occupational registration. In such a context, training, examining and certifying professional farmers appears very out of step with the times.
Professionalizing farmers should not mean making a simple thing complicated, and it should even less mean turning fairness into unfairness. The author notes that if professional farmers are certified as intermediate or senior professional title holders, they will enjoy many policy preferences such as land circulation, financing and loan procedures, and project support. Obviously, the professional farmer certification work carried out in some places now looks very much like the delivery of privileges. More agricultural policies should treat everyone equally. The practice of using certified occupational certificates to seek special channels, and setting up one restriction and threshold after another for farmers' development, will inevitably violate the laws of reform and development.
On one side, the central government is striving to implement streamlined administration and delegated power and working hard to let the market play a dominant role in resource allocation; on the other side, in some new fields the government is working to tighten power and add new approval powers and new procedures. Such dissonance shows that the spirit of streamlining administration and delegating power has not truly been absorbed, understood and applied by all officials, and that ingrained bureaucracy and formalism are still deeply rooted in the officialdom.