What do farmers do after putting down the hoe in the process of urban-rural integration?

This Spring Festival, Ji Cheng of Xinhua Village, Wanghong Town, Yongning County, Ningxia, finally moved into his resettlement housing in Xinhua Yuan residential community, and his family of 4 spent a festive and lively New Year in a 110-sq-m apartment. “The home has running water, which is especially convenient, the heating is burning warmly, and the walls of the rooms will not be smoked yellow and black by the stove. It is wonderful.”

In Xinhua Yuan residential community, the red banner of the property management company reading “Happy New Spring” is hung in a prominent place at the entrance of the community, and the security guards are busy directing vehicles entering and leaving. It looks no different from a residential community in the city; the only difference is that the residents who have moved in are all farmers from nearby villages.

“The rural house was demolished, and the government returned apartments to us at a 1:1 ratio. This large apartment of mine did not cost a single cent, and the extra area of the old house was converted into monetary compensation, which was even enough for the renovation.” In the residential area of Shengli Town, Shengli Township, Yongning County, Zhang Youshou, who also moved into a new home, told the reporter that vegetable shops, grain shops, supermarkets, large pharmacies, and 24-hour self-service electricity vending have opened one after another at the entrance of the community.

When the reporter interviewed people in Xinhua Yuan and Shengli Town, many residents who had rushed back from other places to spend the New Year said that it looked no different here from the city. This benefits from the construction of characteristic small towns and central villages implemented by Yongning County in the past two years: villages around the county seat are continuously concentrated toward the county seat, villages around townships are concentrated toward the central areas of townships, and other villages are gradually concentrated toward nearby small towns and central villages. New rural town centers with relatively concentrated populations, complete basic supporting facilities, and sound service functions are taking shape one after another.

⟦NL> According to Wang Xingning, director of the Yongning County Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, from 2013 to now, Yongning County has invested about 10.1 billion yuan in total to implement urban shantytown transformation and central village construction involving 41,200 households of urban and rural residents, with a total area of about 4.53 million sq m.

Before that, Yongning County conducted a baseline survey of 27,000 households in 4 towns and 1 township across the county. The survey showed that more than 18% of the people were willing to live in small towns, 78.9% of the people were willing to move into central villages, and the vast majority of the people hoped that the government could improve rural production and living conditions.

The reporter found during interviews in the newly built small towns and central villages that village committees, neighborhood committees, clinics, garbage and sewage treatment facilities, and commercial supporting facilities, among others, are all fully provided according to the residential scale.

The environment is good, sanitation is good, and life is convenient. It seems that there is nothing to worry about, but once the novelty of living in an apartment wears off, Ji Cheng's worries surge up again. He told the reporter that, unlike other fellow villagers who transferred their land, his family's 18 mu of land has never been able to be rented out because of salinization, and he still has to work every day in farmland several kilometers from home. “Now that we live in an apartment, there is nowhere to put the farming tools, and the agricultural machinery can only be parked under the building. It looks out of place.”

What to do after putting down the hoe? What to rely on for a living? Where to park agricultural machinery? Where to store grain? How to raise livestock and poultry? These are the most troubling questions for farmers who have left the land and “gone to town and moved upstairs.” Urban-rural integration is not simply about having farmers move into apartments; the construction of new urbanization must effectively solve farmers' production and living difficulties.

The reporter learned from the Yongning County Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau that, in order to solve the public's worries, Yongning County has built supporting breeding parks in each central village. All free-range livestock and poultry are raised in the parks, managed centrally by professional companies, and, according to the standard of 2 fen of land per household, planting parks are centrally provided for growing vegetables or developing leisure and sightseeing farm stays. At the same time, a professional agricultural machinery operation company is established in each central village. For those who own medium and large agricultural machinery, forms such as shareholding operation and agricultural machinery leasing are adopted, with the agricultural machinery operation company managing and dispatching them in a centralized and unified manner.

“At present, the issue most strongly reflected by the public, that there is nowhere to park small household agricultural machinery, can be solved by selecting sites around the community to build parking lots for engineering vehicles and agricultural machinery, or by paying to park them at the sites of large land transfer operators.” said Liu Yusheng, director of the Yongning County Agriculture and Animal Husbandry Bureau.

Liu Yusheng told the reporter that Yongning County has also actively carried out a “grain bank” pilot, planning and supporting one grain storage, processing, and distribution center in each small town and central village with large grain processing enterprises as the operating entities, so as to solve problems such as grain storage and grain selling for rural residents.

Having left the land they depended on for survival, what do farmers rely on for food, and how do they survive? In order to enable farmers to “have work to do after putting down the hoe,” Yongning County guides various types of enterprises to provide more jobs for land-lost farmers, further increases vocational skills training, increases support funds for entrepreneurship, actively cultivates entrepreneurship incubation bases, and improves land-lost farmers' ability to start businesses independently and seek employment on their own. In addition, by generally adjusting the basic pension standards for urban and rural residents, raising the pension insurance benefits of existing land-lost farmers, and expanding the scope of participation in insurance for land-lost farmers, among other measures, it ensures that the people's production and living conditions are fully guaranteed.