Family Farm Development Makes Farming a Respectable Profession

Songjiang District is a historically famous major agricultural county. After the reform and opening up, Songjiang's industrialization and urbanization entered the fast lane, achieving the transformation from a traditional major agricultural county to a major industrial district, with comprehensive economic strength and urban functions significantly enhanced, and the district's agricultural output value and grain production level continuously improved, initially achieving coordinated development of urban-rural relations.

Since 2007, through extensive research at the grassroots level, we formed a consensus on accelerating the development of modern agriculture, focusing on the "double reduction" and "double increase." "Double reduction" means resolving to reduce the number of farmers and the number of part-time farming households, solving the problem of agriculture being marginalized due to part-time farming. "Double increase" means increasing the amount of contracted land held by professional farmers, increasing the income of farming households, and cultivating professional farmers into family farms of appropriate scale. In August of that year, Comrade Xi Jinping, then Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, came to Songjiang for research. After hearing the report from the Songjiang District Party Committee on cultivating grain family farms and developing modern agriculture, he explicitly stated that Songjiang should promote scale operation, do a good job in land transfer, and take the lead in piloting family-based operation.

In the second half of 2007, we began exploring and promoting the grain family farm, a new agricultural production and operation model, forming family farms mainly in the forms of "combining planting and breeding" and "integrating machinery and farming." Songjiang's grain family farms numbered only 597 in 2007, with an operating area of 90,500 mu, accounting for 56.2% of the grain planting area. By the end of 2014, they had grown to 1,240 households, with an operating area of 152,800 mu, accounting for 90.9% of the grain planting area. Through years of practice, we have deeply realized that grain family farms conform to the development trend of agricultural modernization and are the fundamental way to solve the "three rural issues."

The so-called grain family farm refers to an agricultural production and operation entity that takes farmer households with local household registration as the production unit, mainly relies on family members' own cultivation, and specializes in growing grain crops on land of appropriate scale. The prominent features of this operation method are scale operation, specialized production, socialized services, and mechanized operations. In promoting the development of family farms, we boldly broke through traditional thinking patterns, focused on improving institutional mechanisms, and accumulated useful experience.

Planning-guided, coordinating urban-rural development. We actively promoted coordinated urban-rural development, strictly distinguished the functional positioning and morphological characteristics of urban and rural areas, and scientifically formulated integrated urban-rural development plans. Punan is Songjiang's agricultural area. According to its functional positioning, it mainly protects cultivated land, farms the fields well, safeguards forests, protects the ecology, builds rural areas well, and builds livable small towns mainly for accepting the transfer of local rural population. Relying on scientific planning, we set out to deepen rural reform and comprehensively advance urban-rural coordination. In 2008, we launched the reform of the property rights system of rural collective economic organizations. At present, 14 agriculture-related towns and streets have established new two-tier collective economic organizations at the town and village levels, further clarifying land property rights and farmers' property rights. Urban-rural coordination has created conditions for the development of family farms.

Selecting good operators and promoting land transfer in an orderly manner. First, clarifying access conditions and selecting in an open and transparent manner. We stipulated that family farm operators should mainly be drawn from within the same collective economic organization, and land subcontracting or changing land use was prohibited. On the basis of farmers' voluntary applications, operators were initially determined by drawing lots, and after several years this transitioned to democratic evaluation by the village's veteran cadres, veteran Party members, and veteran team leaders, selecting the best operators. Second, standardizing land transfer and balancing the interests of all parties. Following the principles of legality, voluntariness, and compensation, we promoted the unified transfer of farmers' contracted land entrusted to village-level collective economic organizations. For land transferors, the district government implemented a guiding price for land transfer, which fluctuates with changes in grain prices. For family farm operators, on top of relevant agricultural subsidies from the central and municipal governments, we additionally provided policy support such as subsidized loans. Third, strengthening professionalization and stabilizing the operator team. Every year, we regularly train family farm operators, conduct three production and operation management assessments, and implement a elimination and exit mechanism. For those operating well, we gradually extend the family farm contract period. At present, 1,031 households in the district have contract periods of 3 years or more, accounting for 83.1%.

Strengthening social services to achieve specialized production and mechanized farming. First, strengthening social services. Centering on the needs of agricultural production, we established a specialized service system covering quality seed supply, agricultural materials distribution, agricultural technology guidance, and agricultural finance, providing family farms with full services before, during, and after production. Second, promoting the "company + farmer" model. We encourage "combining planting and breeding," that is, the organic combination of grain planting and pig raising, implementing unified seedling supply, unified feed supply, unified epidemic prevention, unified management, unified purchasing, and unified settlement. This not only guarantees the quality of live pigs, but also enables organic fertilizer to be returned to the fields and increases farmers' income. By the end of 2014, there were 73 "combining planting and breeding" family farms, with 78,000 live pigs marketed annually, usually more than 50% higher in income than pure grain-planting family farms. Third, promoting "integrating machinery and farming." We advocate "mutual aid for large machinery, self-owned small machinery," letting farmers cultivate their own fields and operate their own agricultural machinery, improving agricultural labor productivity through mechanization. At present, the district's "integrating machinery and farming" family farms have grown to 405 households, accounting for 32.66% of the total number of family farms.

In practice, Songjiang family farms have adhered to the "two basic systems" and "three basic principles." The "two basic systems": first, adhering to the rural basic economic system of collective ownership of cultivated land; second, adhering to the rural basic operation system based on farmer household operation. The "three basic principles": first, adhering to voluntary and standardized land transfer; second, adhering to appropriate operation scale, appropriate transfer fees, and appropriate farming subsidies; third, adhering to "grain-based and self-cultivation-based," not allowing contract operators to engage in non-agricultural industries, and not allowing contract operators to rely mainly on hired labor to farm the land. Through unremitting efforts, the advantages of family farms have gradually emerged, with remarkable results in agricultural efficiency, farmers' income growth, and ecological improvement.

Agricultural labor productivity has increased substantially, and the level of agricultural modernization has significantly improved. Grain family farms have achieved rational allocation of labor and cultivated land and scale operation under existing production conditions and mechanization levels. The district's grain planting households decreased from 14,900 in 2007 to the current 1,392, the average operating area per household rose from 11.1 mu to 121 mu, the average grain output per household increased to 70,200 kg, and the average agricultural labor productivity per household increased 12-fold. Practice has proven that family farms conform to the essential requirements of developing modern agriculture and have provided a good answer to the important question of "how to farm the land" in the process of agricultural modernization.

Farmers' income has increased substantially, and farming has become a respectable profession. Promoting agricultural modernization requires retaining high-quality agricultural labor. The key to retaining people is to give farmers sufficient income and make high-quality young and middle-aged agricultural labor want to become farmers. At present, the average net income per household of Songjiang grain family farms has exceeded 120,000 yuan, more than double the income of ordinary wage work. Rural young people were initially hesitant and watching, and now they are rushing to join family farm operations. The number of university graduates returning to their hometowns to engage in family farm operations is increasing day by day. A professional farmer team with knowledge, technical understanding, and the ability to operate agricultural machinery is taking shape. At present, family farm operators are mainly farmers aged 45-55, and about 14% have an education level of high school or above. Developing family farms has provided a new path for effectively solving the question of "who will farm the land."

The supply of agricultural products is guaranteed, and the agricultural ecological environment continues to improve. For a mega-city like Shanghai, compared with traditional agricultural production methods, Songjiang's development of family farms is more conducive to giving play to the functions of guaranteeing the supply of agricultural products and protecting the ecological environment. Taking a "combining planting and breeding" family farm with a scale of 150 mu as an example, the grain produced and the live pigs raised in one year can respectively supply consumption for 344 people and 3,191 people, and food safety is better guaranteed. At the same time, livestock manure is treated on site, promoting the development of circular agriculture. Looking at the whole district, farmland is cultivated by local farmers, farmland is no longer abandoned, agricultural land is fully utilized, and fertility is well cultivated. In particular, the implementation of returning straw to the fields, returning organic matter to the fields, and the "three-three system" crop rotation has greatly reduced the use of chemical fertilizers, maintaining both the productivity of basic farmland and the pastoral scenery of the Jiangnan water town. Suburban agriculture has become the seasonal wetland of this major metropolis, Shanghai.