How to build a new type of agricultural management system? Delegates and committee members speak out
From new-type professional farmers to family farms, from large-scale growers to specialized farmer cooperatives and then to leading agricultural enterprises, in recent years, the pace of building new-type agricultural management entities and the agricultural management system in China has clearly accelerated, and this has become a major force in agricultural transformation and upgrading, increasing grain output, and improving agricultural efficiency.
Operating models must break through
⟦NL> “Small-scale household operations cannot achieve agricultural efficiency gains and farmers' income growth, nor can they ensure China's food security. For agriculture to achieve a breakthrough today, it is necessary, on the basis of stabilizing household contracted operations, to appropriately expand the scale of operations and vigorously cultivate new-type agricultural management entities.” said delegate Xie Deti, director of the Southwest University Library.
“To develop modern agriculture, in addition to breaking through the constraints of traditional agriculture in terms of ideas, breakthroughs must also be achieved in operating models, systems, and methods. We must shift from the past dispersed household-by-household operation to new-type, diversified operating models, give greater play to the role of new-type agricultural management entities, and at the same time do more work on the agricultural socialized service system.” believed delegate Yu Yong, secretary of the Fuyang Municipal Party Committee of Anhui Province.
Services drive “small farmers”
“Do not forget that China still has more than 200 million small-scale part-time farming households. In the future, agriculture will certainly be a diversified, mixed situation in which traditional agriculture and modern agriculture coexist, and new-type agricultural management entities and traditional management entities coexist.” believed delegate Zhang Xiaoshan, a member of the Agriculture and Rural Affairs Committee of the National People's Congress. China's basic national condition is that there is little land and many people. Even if more than 200 million farming households are reduced by half in the future, there will still be more than 100 million farming households. It is impossible in the short term to form several million large farm owners and solve all agricultural production. At present, on the one hand, the development of new-type management entities should be encouraged to raise labor productivity, and at the same time these small-scale part-time farming households should, through cooperatives, a strengthened socialized service system, and the integration of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, be able to avoid being left behind by the development of modern agriculture.
Delegate Zhao Yafu, former director of the Zhenjiang Institute of Agricultural Sciences in Jiangsu Province, held the same view: “How can we shoulder the burden of agricultural modernization on the basis of household operations? It is necessary to carry out appropriately scaled operations and organize ordinary farmers and specialized large-scale growers through cooperatives.” He believed that cooperatives should become the mainstream of new-type management entities and gradually bring ordinary farmers and family farms into the modernization process.
Cultivate new-type professional farmers
In Xie Deti's view, the development of new-type agricultural management entities faces three major problems: difficulty in land transfer and fundraising, difficulty in supporting facilities and service delivery, and difficulty in expanding and strengthening operations and in hiring workers. To solve these problems, it is necessary to increase the cultivation of new-type shareholding cooperatives, increase the cultivation of new-type professional farmers, accelerate the integration of agricultural factors, increase policy support, and improve the agricultural management system and mechanisms.
“Whether it is a family farm or a cooperative, it cannot work without the participation of professional farmers.” believed delegate Wu Peiliang, director of the Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Commission. Professional farmers are the main source of new-type agricultural management entities. This year Jiangsu became a pilot province for province-wide advancement of new-type professional farmer training and will focus on advancing this work.
Delegate Feng Leping, chairman of the Beijing Leping Watermelon and Muskmelon Professional Cooperative, suggested speeding up training for new-type agricultural management entities and new-type professional farmers, effectively raising the capacity and level of agricultural practitioners, and enabling them to have technical skills and understand management so as to meet the needs of modern agriculture.
Entities + carriers + systems
“On the premise of adhering to the law, voluntariness, and compensation, efforts should be made to explore forms for realizing the household contract responsibility system under new historical conditions, innovate mechanisms as soon as possible, actively try land transfer forms such as land shareholding cooperation, lease development, and household-to-household joint operation, issue land transfer plans and supporting policies, accelerate the pace of land transfer, promote specialized production, improve the utilization rate of land resources, and create conditions for large-scale, standardized, and intensive modern agricultural production and operation.” emphasized committee member Chen Shaojun, director of the Fujian Department of Agriculture. The land transfer system must conform to local actual conditions, and transfer forms should be diversified.
“To solve the problems, new-type agricultural management organizational forms should be standardized and guided, and modern agriculture should be developed through the trinity of ‘entities + carriers + systems.’ With innovating management organizations as the core, develop family farms, specialized farmer cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises to solve the ‘entities’ problem; with building agricultural bases as the platform, let the market lead the leading enterprises, leading enterprises drive the bases, and bases connect farmers, to solve the ‘carriers’ problem; with building industrial consortiums as the lever, integrate the resources of various entities and establish modern agricultural industrial consortiums to solve the ‘systems’ problem.” suggested delegate Zhang Shuguang, secretary of the Suzhou Municipal Party Committee of Anhui. On the basis of inclusive agricultural policy insurance, support for new-type agricultural industrial consortiums should be increased, investment in rural infrastructure should be increased, and exploration should be made to carry out paired grain cooperation between major grain-producing areas and major grain-selling areas.