How does land transfer benefit everyone?
A few days ago, Yang Jun, a farmer from Jianli, Hubei, who works as a dim sum chef in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, invited his parents to Hangzhou to help out at his bun shop. “My wife and I have worked in Jiangsu and Zhejiang for 10 years, and the bun shop business is quite good. We have long wanted my parents to come and help, but they just could not bear to part with that little bit of contracted land at home.” Yang Jun said helplessly.
“Land is the lifeblood of us farmers. 7.5 mu is still land. If we contract it out to others to farm, what will we do if we cannot get it back in the future?” Old Yang said. But in recent years, a series of measures in Jianli County to promote land transfer gradually dispelled Old Yang's concerns. After last year's late rice harvest, witnessed by village officials, Old Yang and his wife signed a land shareholding cultivation contract with Haotian Cooperative and went to Hangzhou with peace of mind.
Jianli, Hubei, is a major labor-exporting county, and problems such as part-time farming, an aging population, and extensive land management are prominent. Jianli County skillfully applies “addition and subtraction” methods, vigorously promoting land transfer on the premise of respecting farmers' wishes, letting those who want to farm more land, letting those unwilling to farm develop elsewhere with peace of mind, and ultimately allowing farmers to enjoy more of the dividends brought by land transfer.
“If the land is farmed well, it can still ‘gather land and produce gold.’ Through land transfer, intensive management has been achieved, and each mu of land farmed by the cooperative earns 220 yuan more than before!” Li Qiang, a major grain grower in Guoyang Village, Zhoulaozui Town, said happily.
During the land transfer process, the Jianli County government has provided good services, setting up more than 50 land transfer service windows in rural communities to provide both parties in land transfer with free services such as information, registration and publication of supply and demand information, land measurement, and contract signing. As for prices, farmers are allowed to directly set and negotiate prices with the land transferee, letting farmers calculate for themselves whether the transfer account is worthwhile.
“A few years ago, when I contracted out my land, I did not go through any procedures, and I often had conflicts with the household owner over land prices and term of use. Now that I have signed a transfer contract through the town, I can work with peace of mind at the garment factory in the county seat.” Liu Hongfang, who works in the Jiamei Garment Processing Workshop in the county seat, has deep feelings about the benefits of land transfer.
To promote agricultural transformation and upgrading through orderly land transfer, Jianli County has also vigorously cultivated new agricultural operating entities such as seedling-raising factories and leading enterprises. “Land transfer has made centralized rice seedling raising and full mechanization a reality. The multiple cropping index of Jianli rice has expanded year by year. In 2014, the goal was achieved of increasing early rice, late rice, and ratoon rice by 50,000 mu each, with total grain output increasing by another 100 million jin.” said Li Jiamo, director of the Jianli County Agriculture Bureau. The land transfer area in Jianli County has reached 800,000 mu, and another 200,000 mu will be transferred before this year's spring plowing. Over the past 3 years, the county's specialized large households have grown to more than 6,000, family farms have grown from 37 to 2,323, and professional cooperatives have grown from 202 to 620.
“To develop modern agriculture, orderly rural land transfer is an important prerequisite. Only in this way can the degree of organization, specialization, and scale of agricultural production be improved, and can farmers' incomes increase, rural areas develop, and agricultural efficiency improve in a true sense.” said Dong Xinfa, secretary of the Jianli County Party Committee.
In Jianli County, low-yield fields make up no small number of the transferred lands. In order to support the concentration of land toward specialized large households, the county has adopted methods of reward-based support and project follow-up: wherever land is transferred, farmland improvement projects follow. Last year, Jianli integrated a total of 510 million yuan in funds to upgrade farmland water conservancy facilities, roads, and power grids.
While land transfer has spurred scale management and improved comprehensive agricultural efficiency, it has also liberated more farmers from the awkward position of “not making much money, yet unable to leave,” turning them into “multi-income farmers” with income from land transfer, income from factory work, and dividends from cooperative shareholding. After farmer Chen Xinfa of Zhoulaozui Town transferred his land to a cooperative, he himself farms land at the cooperative, while his wife Wang Honglan works at the local Zhongtai Electronics Company. Their annual income is more than 60,000 yuan. The year-by-year increase in rural land transfer area has liberated more and more farmers from the land, allowing them to work with peace of mind in factories and solving the labor shortage problem for enterprises in the industrial park.