How does farmland protection shore up the foundation of national food security
Farmland is a non-renewable resource and extremely precious. At the same time, land is also the foundation for all kinds of human activities. In particular, China is currently advancing urbanization rapidly, which inevitably requires converting agricultural land into construction land. Each year, newly added urban construction land amounts to millions of mu, so much so that people across the country have reached this consensus: urbanization's occupation of farmland will endanger China's red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland, and in the future there will be no land to farm, so who will feed China will become a problem. It is also for this reason that China has implemented the strictest farmland protection system in the world. In order to save and protect farmland, the state has issued many systems, and the whole society has also paid a high price to protect farmland.
However, the above consensus is, at least in some respects, based on misunderstanding, and some land protection systems and the high costs paid for them are obviously not very reasonable. Some systems or costs are even merely using farmland protection as a pretext.
From a macro perspective, China is currently in the middle stage of industrialization and is undergoing rapid industrialization and urbanization. Industrialization and urbanization inevitably require expropriating agricultural land as construction land to accommodate more and more urban population and an increasingly large economic aggregate. Once farmers enter the cities, they will naturally withdraw from their rural homesteads and various land used for production, living, and infrastructure construction in rural areas. China currently still has more than 200 million mu of rural homesteads. Even if farmers withdraw only 1/2 of their homesteads in the future, farmer urbanization can still withdraw more than 100 million mu of homesteads, enough for the current rapid urbanization in China to occupy agricultural land for 20 years. After another 20 years, China's urbanization will be nearly complete, and urban area expansion will also be complete, or in other words, urbanization will no longer need to occupy agricultural land. Calculated this way, urbanization has not occupied agricultural land, but has merely used the land previously used by farmers for production and living facilities in villages (homesteads) for urban construction.
Some people say that at present farmers are entering the cities, cities are expanding, and agricultural land is being occupied, while farmers have not withdrawn from their homesteads, thus causing serious waste of land. This statement obviously fails to understand why farmers who go to cities to work and do business have not withdrawn from their homesteads. Farmers now enter the cities, but most have not obtained stable employment and guaranteed income in the cities. They still need to keep their rural homesteads so that if they fail in the cities, they can return to the countryside. At China's current stage of economic development and its position in the international economic structure, it is impossible for all farmers who enter the cities to live in dignity in the cities. There will always be a considerable number of losers among them. Returning to their villages, to the acquaintance society of the village and the smallholder economy, they can solve the problem of food and clothing, obtain dignity, and find a place to belong. This is extremely important. This is their basic human right. As China's economy further develops and its position in the international division of labor improves, more and more farmers who enter the cities will be able to live in dignity in the cities, and they will no longer need to return to the countryside. Rural homesteads will then naturally be withdrawn and reclaimed as farmland.
From a micro perspective, China's land still has a very strong capacity to produce food, enough to feed China. China's grain output increasing for eleven consecutive years is proof. Not only that, but land abandonment has also generally appeared in rural areas across the country, especially a decline in the multiple cropping index of farmland. Previously two crops were grown, but now only one crop is grown. Even with widespread land abandonment and a not-high multiple cropping index, grain output has still maintained eleven consecutive years of increase, so much so that state grain depots are full, it is difficult to implement protective-price grain purchasing, and grain prices are weak. This shows that as long as grain output declines and market grain prices rise, farmers are fully capable of raising the multiple cropping index of land in the short term and bringing abandoned land back into cultivation, thereby rapidly increasing grain output in the short term. In this sense, the food security issue should not be understood as how much grain is concretely produced each year, but rather as how much grain production potential China's farmland has. Having potential is the key. How much grain is concretely produced each year depends on demand for grain and market prices.
At a time when China still has large amounts of abandoned land and an even larger area of farmland with a reduced multiple cropping index, China can still achieve eleven consecutive years of grain output increase and an ample grain supply. This shows that China's potential for increasing grain production is enormous, and there is no problem with food security.
Now let us look at land abandonment. Current land abandonment in China is not abandonment of arable land. In areas where land is arable, farmland is being carefully cultivated by farmers. It is not that no one farms the land, but that there is no land to farm. In almost all regions, farmers hope to expand the cultivated area to form appropriately scaled operations.
Is there abandonment? Of course there is. This abandonment is concentrated in two types of areas. One is mountainous areas, especially high and cold areas, where the land was originally unsuitable for cultivation and should be returned to forest. The other is arable land that, because the irrigation system built during the people's commune period was damaged, is difficult to irrigate effectively, so that drought occurs nine years out of ten, and farmers therefore abandon it and do not plant it. These two types of abandoned farmland amount to about 100 million mu. Concentrated in some areas, the abandonment leaves a deep impression.
For farmland in high and cold mountainous areas that should be returned to forest, it should simply be returned to forest, because ecology and food are equally important. For abandoned farmland in areas that are arable but merely inconvenient to irrigate or cultivate, land consolidation should be used to make it easier to farm. Not long ago, a survey was conducted in H Town, L County. Several mountainous villages in this town all have large areas of abandoned land. For example, Shi Village has a total of 360 mu of farmland (paddy fields and dry land), yet 180 mu are abandoned year-round; Zhu Village has 1035 mu of farmland, with about 400 mu abandoned; Wang Village has 2090 mu of farmland, with about 700 mu abandoned. Several remote villages in H Town at an altitude of about 500 m all have abandoned area accounting for more than 1/3 of total farmland. There are two reasons for the abandonment. First, the land is too scattered and inconvenient to cultivate. Second, the relatively complete irrigation system built during the people's commune period disintegrated, and drought occurs nine years out of ten, making cultivation impossible. This is especially true for valley fields and slope fields, which are small and difficult to irrigate. Village cadres in H Town estimate that if 3000 yuan per mu is invested to transform small plots into large plots and to maintain the previous irrigation system, the currently abandoned farmland should be made arable, farmers would be willing to cultivate it, and each mu could reach a yield of more than 1000 jin.
In other words, with only about 3000 yuan per mu, the tens of millions of mu of currently abandoned farmland can be reclaimed to produce grain, which means adding tens of millions of mu of farmland. Reclaiming tens of millions of mu of abandoned farmland at 3000 yuan/mu requires more than 100 billion yuan, which is only equivalent to the national funding invested in land consolidation for one year.
At present, to protect farmland, the state has adopted two specific measures. One is the balance of occupation and compensation, and the other is the linkage between increase and decrease. The so-called balance of occupation and compensation means that when provinces and cities across the country occupy farmland for construction, they must supplement newly added farmland of the same area. Generally there are three methods: first, opening wasteland; second, consolidation; third, reclamation. The so-called "linkage between increase and decrease" means linking urban construction land occupation with the area of rural construction land withdrawn by farmers. If the balance of occupation and compensation is strictly implemented, then in theory urban construction across the country will not affect the red line of 1.8 billion mu of farmland because of occupying farmland, since newly added farmland has already been supplemented before the farmland is occupied. Supplementing newly added farmland has costs, because opening wasteland, consolidation, and reclamation all have costs. At present, the price of supplementing farmland varies greatly across different regions of the country. In coastal areas it can reach more than 100,000 yuan per mu, while in central and western regions it ranges from several thousand yuan per mu.
Like the "balance of occupation and compensation," the "linkage between increase and decrease" also does not reduce farmland, because under this policy, only when rural construction land is reclaimed as farmland can cities add the same area of occupied farmland. The difference is that the collective construction land reclaimed under the "linkage between increase and decrease" is generally farmers' homesteads. Reclaiming homesteads inevitably requires first demolishing farmers' houses, and demolishing farmers' houses first requires building houses for farmers. In this way, with the linkage between increase and decrease, each mu of rural collective construction land reclaimed to obtain an equal one mu of construction land quota may cost more than 100,000 yuan or even several hundred thousand yuan, and in some areas may even reach an enormous cost of more than one million yuan. Moreover, this does not yet calculate the social costs generated, such as the governance difficulties brought by Shandong's village withdrawal and resettlement.
Whether it is the balance of occupation and compensation or the linkage between increase and decrease, the purpose is to protect farmland, and spending hundreds of thousands of yuan per mu to protect farmland is a cost that could fully be used to create land on the Gobi Desert. Yet in low-mountain and high-hill areas like L County there is a large amount of abandoned farmland. With only a little investment it could become high-yield grain fields, but it is left abandoned there with no one paying attention. Is this not very ironic!
What is even more ironic is that the current central policy of intensive and economical land use requires achieving the goal of saving land by transforming so-called urban inefficiently used land. In fact, so-called urban inefficiently used land has dense buildings on it, and the cost of demolition and reconstruction is as high as several million yuan/mu. To save land and produce such an astronomical price, under the current situation where China's economic development is still insufficient and building intensity is still inadequate, is not only a waste of resources but also unreasonable. China's precious resources should be used to develop high technology, rather than being wasted in vain under the name of protecting farmland. The value attached to China's land comes from economic development. Only by continuing to use land to support China's economic development, promote industrial upgrading, and develop high and new technology can China hope to escape the middle-income trap.
In recent years, under the context of protecting farmland, enormous resources have been wasted on land. It seems as if whether all of China can escape the middle-income trap and change from a country on the periphery of the world system into a country at the center of the world system depends only on China having 100-200 million mu less farmland, so much so that in order to protect farmland we have greatly wasted resources that should originally have been used for scientific and technological progress and industrial upgrading. This is truly a misunderstanding of the principal contradiction in China's current stage of development!