How to Improve the New Agricultural Socialized Service System
Since the Central “No. 1 Document” first proposed the concept of “socialized services” in 1983, China's agricultural socialized service system has gone through development stages including the period of expanding service connotation in the 1980s, the period of adjusting service systems and mechanisms in the 1990s, and the period of comprehensively enhancing its strategic position since the new century, initially forming a basic pattern that relies on public service institutions, takes cooperative economic organizations as the foundation, leading enterprises as the backbone, and other social forces as supplements, combines public-benefit services with commercial services, and coordinates specialized services with comprehensive services. At present, China has entered a new period in which industrialization, informatization and urbanization require the synchronous advancement of agricultural modernization. The supply of and demand for agricultural socialized services face a new and complex environment, and it is urgent to form a set of effective new mechanisms for agricultural socialized services and further improve the new agricultural socialized service system.
The major strategic significance of building a new agricultural socialized service system
An inevitable choice under the new normal of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers.” As the national macroeconomy enters the “new normal,” the development of “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” has also shown stage-specific characteristics such as continuously rising agricultural production costs, limited surplus rural labor, increasingly diversified agricultural operation methods, and simultaneous growth in both farmers' wage income and household operation income. In particular, the degree of commodification and marketization of agricultural inputs and outputs has continued to rise, and the trend that the driving force of agricultural growth comes more from factors external to agriculture has become increasingly prominent. This inevitably requires that agricultural socialized services closely focus on these new characteristics and new trends and constantly innovate the systems and mechanisms of agricultural socialized services.
⟦NL> An important part of the reform of agricultural operation systems and mechanisms. The new leadership of the Party Central Committee proposed to “build a three-dimensional and composite modern agricultural operation system based on household family operations, linked by cooperation and association, and supported by socialized services.” In practice, agricultural socialized services and agricultural production and operation are interwoven and integrated at multiple levels. Therefore, innovating and improving the systems and mechanisms of agricultural socialized services is itself an important part of building a new agricultural operation system. The establishment of a new agricultural socialized service system will help strengthen the function of “unified” management in the dual-layer agricultural operation system and provide multiple possibilities for agriculture to break through the limitations of decentralized operation.
A key measure for realizing agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics. At present, with the acceleration of China's “four modernizations” process, developing appropriately scaled operations has become an inevitable trend. However, China's agricultural modernization cannot avoid the basic fact of decentralized operations by hundreds of millions of farming households. The central government recently issued the “Opinions on Guiding the Orderly Transfer of Rural Land Operation Rights to Develop Appropriately Scaled Agricultural Operations,” pointing out that various forms of appropriately scaled operations should be developed on the basis of adhering to family operations. It can be seen that using the scale of services to compensate for the fragmentation of operations is an important strategic orientation for realizing agricultural modernization.
The current status and problems of the development of the agricultural socialized service system since the “Twelfth Five-Year Plan”
Institutional innovation is insufficient, and systems and mechanisms have not yet been straightened out. In terms of understanding and thinking, there is a lack of clear ideas for building the agricultural socialized service system. In terms of support measures, there is not much related support for agricultural socialized services, especially a lack of subsidy categories targeting commercial service entities. From the government level, departmental and regional segmentation is serious, and resources serving agriculture lack unified integration. From the market level, along with the restructuring of grassroots service institutions, problems such as public-benefit organizations engaging in commercial activities and thereby losing their public service functions restrict the improvement of the overall efficiency of the socialized service system.
The supply and demand structure is unreasonable, and diversified demand is still difficult to satisfy. From the perspective of service content, the top three comprehensive socialized services for which farmers have the highest demand are: information services, financial services, and sales services; while the top three external services that farmers receive the most are: technical guidance and training, agricultural product sales services, and agricultural input purchasing services. It can be seen that the supply of services does not match the priority order of demand, and in particular farmers' demand for financial services cannot be effectively satisfied. From the perspective of service entities, public-benefit service entities, due to problems such as unsmooth management systems, low personnel quality, and lack of working funds, are increasingly unable to meet the individualized, whole-process and comprehensive agricultural service needs of various new types of operating entities.
Village collective service capacity is weak, and regional supply capacity is unbalanced. Most village collective economic organizations in China have weak economic strength and disorganized organizational structures, making it difficult for them to effectively assume the function of providing agricultural socialized services. In addition, because agricultural resource allocation, economic development levels and social factors differ among different regions of China, the cost of agricultural socialized services varies by region, and service capacity also differs greatly.