Industrial development should listen more to farmers' opinions

For a place, having good advantageous agricultural resources is a blessing; if support policies are on the right track and measures are appropriate, the advantageous resources will naturally be transformed into an industry that enriches the people, letting farmers benefit from it, which is even more of a blessing.

One agricultural product is a calling card, and one industry is a byword for a place. In many places in our country, it is often because of having one or two competitive landmark industries that a place's fame greatly increases, becoming the leader of a certain agricultural product and the bellwether determining that industry's development. For example, Hebei Xingtang jujubes, Lanzhou lilies, Dangshan pears, Yantai apples, Gannan navel oranges, and so on, too numerous to mention.

To develop local specialty industries and ensure they flourish for a long time, if the relevant local departments merely blindly “administer” while ignoring farmers' wishes and the current state of development, it will only lead to the outcome of “an unstable foundation shakes the earth and mountains.” One must listen more to farmers' opinions and heartfelt voices, so as to formulate support policies and development plans that truly conform to “public opinion.” Especially when an industry faces a development bottleneck, formulating support policies requires listening even more to farmers' heartfelt voices and drawing on the wisdom of “public opinion.”

Take Chongqing's late-maturing citrus industry as an example. While comprehensively considering natural conditions and production conditions, the local government fully respects farmers' planting habits. In popularizing planting techniques, it does not use “force-feeding” indoctrination with farmers; in introducing new varieties, it does not coerce or force farmers; in formulating supportive preferential policies, it does not apply a “one-size-fits-all” approach to farmers.

⟦NL> In applying new technologies, cultivating new varieties, and assessing industry trends, farmers are not “good at” these things. But for farmers who have long engaged in agricultural production, they are the most experienced and the most familiar with the local mountains and waters, and when it comes to the industry being “down-to-earth,” they have the most say.

Listening to farmers' opinions is in fact also safeguarding farmers' fundamental interests. Because farmers occupy a weak position in the entire industrial chain, especially in relation to business entities such as enterprises, establishing a healthy and fair interest-linkage mechanism that can achieve win-win outcomes for multiple parties is particularly important for safeguarding farmers' interests.

As for another “protagonist” in industrialized operation——enterprises, we also cannot focus only on one or two large leading enterprises. For those small and medium-sized enterprises whose interests are linked more directly and comprehensively with farmers, localities should increase support even more. After all, “leading enterprise + farming households” has become the main form of our country's industrialized agricultural operation, playing a main-channel role in solving the sales of agricultural products and promoting increases in farmers' incomes.

Many small and medium-sized enterprises are built right at the local front lines of planting, close to farming households, making it convenient for farmers to sell agricultural products. Because of the existence of these small and medium-sized enterprises, large numbers of scattered farming households can be quickly organized to participate in market competition, which is very suitable for the current national condition of our country's small-scale and scattered household agricultural operations.

Farmers very much welcome such enterprises. In Fuling District, Chongqing, 80% of the pickled mustard tubers grown by farming households are purchased and processed by small and medium-sized enterprises. When the locality attracts investment to build factories, it fully listens to farming households' opinions and considers farmers' “needs.” Under the premise of conforming to scientific planning, where an enterprise's raw material production base is built and where the factory workshop site is chosen must first be clarified with farmers' opinions, thereby ensuring these projects are built according to farmers' heartfelt wishes.