Why did Yuan Longping say: If you want to make money, don't go into agriculture?
“If you want to make money, don't go into agriculture.” Yuan Longping, 84 years old, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and father of Chinese hybrid rice, spoke frankly when answering reporters' questions at the “Sanya · Finance International Forum” that doing agriculture requires preparation for long-term commitment, that making money in agriculture is not easy, and that “it requires even more of a sense of devotion.”
The planting industry struggles to attract capital
When BAT and Alibaba turned their attention to agriculture, the phrase “capital entering agriculture” emerged. But on closer examination, it is not hard to find that capital prefers the deep processing and distribution links of agricultural products, while the planting industry itself is largely neglected. Why does this situation occur? Yuan Longping said frankly in an interview with a Yangcheng Evening News reporter that doing agriculture does not make money, and if you want to make money, don't go into agriculture.
Yuan Longping believes that most of the time the output of agriculture is less than what is put in, and doing agriculture is not just about capital investment; what is needed even more is ideals and devotion. “If an enterprise invests in agriculture and withdraws as soon as it loses a little, it cannot do agriculture well,” Yuan Longping said, adding that enterprises that want to do agriculture must prepare for long-term commitment.
To solve the food problem well, Yuan Longping said the most important thing is good policies, “to mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for growing grain.” He believes that the current strong agriculture and beneficial farmers policies introduced by the state are very good and have given many preferential conditions, but the intensity can still be increased further. What makes Yuan Longping quite gratified is that in recent years the problem of abandoned cultivated land in our country has been somewhat alleviated.
Farmland transfer prices are too high
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“Farmers have great expectations for national policies,” said Liu Yonghao, chairman of New Hope Group, who stated that under China's new normal economy, as an agricultural practitioner, he also feels opportunities for development.
Why are more and more farmers going to the cities? Liu Yonghao said the main reason is that the income gap between rural areas and cities is too large. “Now a person has to cultivate 100 mu of land to earn about the same as in the city, but the current situation of rural land is less than 10 mu per household, a 10-fold difference from 100 mu.”
Liu Yonghao believes that land transfer will also become a new normal in the future, and he also suggested that the state can make land transfer policies more detailed and clear. “When I inspected in Australia, in places with very good water, very good sunlight, and very fertile land, buying one mu of land was equivalent to 1,000 yuan RMB,” Liu Yonghao said. In most places in China, he noted, the transfer of one mu of land costs 1,000 yuan per year. Liu Yonghao pointed out that the problem brought by excessively high farmland transfer prices is that the prices of agricultural products are generally higher than abroad.
“Renting for one year for us is the same as buying permanently for others. This means that our future farmland rental and transfer prices will definitely decline,” Liu Yonghao believes that current urbanization considers mostly urban construction issues, while “towns” are considered a little less, and considering the issues of villages and towns must be placed under the “new normal.”