What Drives the Development of Modern Agriculture
In the new era, agricultural development likewise faces difficulties that can only be resolved by intensifying reform and innovation, and faces goals that can only be achieved more quickly by comprehensively deepening rural reform
The problems encountered in rural development are both problems that modern agriculture needs to solve and difficult issues facing the development of modern agriculture. There is only one path to solving them: reform and innovation
Relying on reform and innovation to advance modern agriculture is determined by China's national conditions and agricultural conditions. It is by no means just a slogan, nor merely a stopgap measure, but rather has concrete and substantive content, clear and urgent requirements, and long-term significance
Recently, a TV drama called "Old Peasant" was airing to great popularity. In the plot there is a scene: during the era of the people's communes, an old peasant named Niu Dadan saw that the days of starvation were truly hard to endure, while stretches of wasteland in the village went uncultivated. So he came up with an idea: borrow this wasteland from the village to farm. This both circumvented sensitive issues like “contracting” and “land leasing,” and solved the problem of not having enough to eat. Niu Dadan's borrowing of land truly reveals the fundamental secret of China's rural development, farmers' prosperity, and agricultural improvement: reform and innovation.
In the era of the “big pot rice” in which Niu Dadan lived, it was precisely because a large group of Niu Dadans dared to venture and to change that reform and opening up began with breakthroughs in institutional obstacles starting from the rural grassroots. When facing specific difficulties, Niu Dadan cleverly used “borrowing” to overcome obstacles and resolve contradictions, embodying innovative thinking in specific methods, specific forms, and specific paths. This spirit of reform and innovation still has great practical significance today. Because in the new era, agricultural development likewise faces difficulties that can only be resolved by intensifying reform and innovation, and faces goals that can only be achieved more quickly by comprehensively deepening rural reform.
What is the biggest difficulty China's agricultural development faces now? It is the problem of agriculture's modernization being the “short leg” in the “synchronization of the four modernizations” alongside new industrialization, new urbanization, and informatization. It is the problem that the goal of accelerating modern agriculture to realize agricultural modernization as soon as possible is still far removed from the current state of agricultural development. For example, our industrial production has entered the digital age and the remote age, but agriculture still relies on “flood irrigation.” New urbanization requires both more farmers to leave the land and more new-type farmers to enter rural areas, but now those who want to leave cannot leave, and those who want to enter cannot enter.
Among these problems, some are new problems gradually arising with economic and social development, some are old problems that were not well solved and have resurfaced in the new era, and some are new and old problems intertwined and appearing in new forms. From the rural perspective, many villages have become “hollowed out,” but rural culture grounded in farmland, forest land, grassland, and homestead land remains the root of our culture. From the farmers' perspective, the older generation is gradually returning to their home villages, while the new generation drifts between city and countryside. From the agricultural perspective, on the one hand grain and other agricultural products continue to increase in output; on the other hand, due to rising costs and strained resources, there is an urgent need to expand and elevate the space for agricultural production.
These problems are both problems that modern agriculture needs to solve and difficult issues facing the development of modern agriculture. There is only one path to solving them: reform and innovation.
Why must we rely on reform and innovation? Take large-scale land management as an example. One of the basic requirements of modern agriculture is large-scale, intensive, and standardized management, and large-scale management requires farmers to transfer land, which requires reforming the rural management system and mechanisms, and separating from a legal and policy standpoint the “three rights” of collective ownership, contract rights, and management rights over farmers' land. But reform of the management system and mechanisms alone is not enough; innovative thinking is also needed regarding the specific forms and specific scale of large-scale management. Some farmers are willing to transfer land, and some are not, so large-scale management methods must not be rigidly uniform and must not insist on only one model; otherwise large-scale management will be very difficult to advance. This is how forms such as transfer management, trusteeship management, and shareholding management emerged in some places.
But having multiple forms of large-scale land management does not mean modern agriculture can be advanced as desired. Rural reform involves all aspects and requires all-around coordinated cooperation. Still taking large-scale land management as an example, to achieve appropriately scaled management requires capital investment, but farmers' contracted land and houses do not have legally recognized qualifications as collateral, so exploration and reform are needed in areas such as land contracted management rights and rural housing property rights, and financial institutions also need to carry out reform exploration in rural lending. On the other hand, after appropriately scaled land management, some farmers may transfer to cities, but whether their contracted land and homestead land still belong to them after moving to the city is another matter requiring reform exploration. If these problems are well solved, farmers can move to cities with peace of mind and with the ability to do so, which in turn lays the foundation for urbanization development and gives greater space for developing modern agriculture.
Therefore, relying on reform and innovation to advance modern agriculture is determined by China's national conditions and agricultural conditions. It is by no means just a slogan, nor merely a stopgap measure, but rather has concrete and substantive content, clear and urgent requirements, and long-term significance. It requires us to truly understand and grasp this, and to bring forth a down-to-earth work style and a spirit of daring to take responsibility, carrying out real reform and deep reform.