Why is leisure agriculture a practical necessity for transforming traditional agriculture?

First: the push of the market. Market demand is the driving force behind industrial development.

Years ago, the leisure farm “Jinxiu Jiangnan” in the Flower World of Yuhua District was demolished due to the introduction of an automobile project. Now the new “Jinxiu Jiangnan” has been established again in Meihua Community, Changsha County. Why is the farm owner so persistent in pursuing leisure agriculture? I think it is the attraction of market demand to entrepreneurs.

Modern agriculture has four aspects: agriculture armed with machinery and various other modern agricultural technologies and possessing an advanced level of productivity; agriculture compatible with large markets and large-scale production and based on farmers' cooperation as the production relations; agriculture operated with modern marketing concepts, such as emphasizing branding; and agriculture that satisfies modern people's new needs. What best reflects the modernity of an industry is its ability to satisfy modern people's needs and modern demands. Pursuing leisure agriculture can satisfy people's demand for healthy leisure. Therefore, those who are engaged in or preparing to engage in leisure agriculture must push aside the layers of market phenomena and grasp this core essence: healthy leisure. To operate a farm and develop leisure agriculture, one must focus on health and leisure in designing the theme, in layout, in planning, in project development, and in construction and operation. How much is invested in satisfying people's healthy leisure needs, and how long and how far one goes, is the lifespan and course of the farm and leisure agriculture.

⟦NL> Second: it conforms to industrial laws or the historical evolution of the production mode of a certain product.

In the development of products and production modes to satisfy a certain need, there is roughly an evolutionary process of production modes: natural——simple handicraft——professional handicraft——technology——art. When we view the development of the agricultural industry through the process composed of these 5 stages, we can likewise discover that, from the human perspective, after nearly ten thousand years of evolution, agriculture has also begun to enter a period in which artistic means serve as the main development mode. Although we still have many things to do, and perhaps our agriculture has not yet reached this stage, we can know the historical process of the production development of a certain product and the sequence of production modes. At least we can confirm that the development mode of agriculture will ultimately reach the stage dominated by artistic means, and this is why we emphasize that developing leisure agriculture and pursuing leisure agriculture requires creativity. If there is not much and not good creativity, it is not good leisure agriculture.

Third: the practical necessity of transforming traditional agriculture.

The American Nobel Prize-winning economist Schultz wrote a book in the 1960s, Transforming Traditional Agriculture. Its general conclusion is: the key to transforming traditional agriculture lies in introducing new production factors on a large scale. The book argues that agriculture is also an important aspect of economic growth. Schultz observed and analyzed that traditional agriculture is self-sufficient agriculture, mainly producing for one's own needs and only taking surpluses to market for exchange. It relies on the weather for food, and its efficiency comes from experience. An experienced farmer, in his production process, knows how large an area he wants to plant, how much labor to invest, how to care for it, how to kill pests, and how to fertilize. In summary, it is the comprehensive input of production factors that makes its production efficiency optimal.

With the development of the times, agriculture has transformed and must become agriculture that produces for the market, agriculture of a commodity economy. How can this transformation be realized? The method Schultz discovered is what we now call the method of agricultural modernization: mechanization, new technologies, and other new production factors that can achieve scale are introduced to realize it, changing the combination of production factors based on farmers' experience and adding new production factors with higher efficiency: machinery, new varieties, chemical fertilizers, and so on. Through this method, the United States transformed traditional agriculture with high efficiency, making agriculture an agriculture of economic growth and considerable returns. Of course, there were other factors as well.

Then through what method should our country's traditional agriculture be transformed? We have many people and little land, so it is difficult to enable a large household or a certain family farm to possess a large area of cultivated land through methods such as land transfer. Thus, the space for new production factors such as mechanized use and fertilizer use to play a role is constrained. This constraint is manifested in the inability to fully obtain the scale required for the benefits these factors can produce. Therefore, the method by which we transform traditional agriculture must be broader in vision and more innovative in approach, or rather, it requires more exploration: we must make the value produced on limited land higher and greater, increase the uses of agricultural production and agricultural output products, endow them with more functions, and satisfy more people's needs, thereby elevating one's own value space, that is, space for development. Then what other functions does agriculture have? Experience, health preservation, science popularization, sightseeing, ecological and environmental protection, and so on. In summary, it is leisure. Therefore, the method we propose for transforming traditional agriculture is, on the basis of mechanization, fertilizer use, and the use of new technologies and new varieties, to realize the multifunctionalization of agriculture, that is, to use artistic and creative means to develop leisure agriculture.