Six Major Issues China Must Resolve in Agricultural Modernization
“To advance agricultural modernization, we must fully understand our country's basic national conditions and stage of development, must conform to the universal laws and development trends of world agriculture, and must fully consider the major obstacles encountered in the new stage of our country's agricultural modernization and the prominent problems that need to be solved.” On May 26, at the 10th National Entrepreneurship Star Experience Exchange and Commendation Conference, Han Jun, deputy director of the Development Research Center of the State Council, stated that agricultural modernization is not only the modernization of agricultural production methods but also includes the reform of agricultural institutions. Advancing agricultural modernization in step with the deepening of industrialization and urbanization is a major task that bears on building a moderately prosperous society in all respects and on the overall situation of modernization. To accomplish this major task, we must base ourselves on our country's basic national conditions and focus on solving six major issues: how to stabilize and improve the basic rural operating system, how to improve the rural land system, how to accelerate agricultural science and technology innovation, who will farm the land in the future, and how migrant workers can integrate into cities.
What kind of model to adopt——unswervingly adhere to the family farming model of agriculture
“Family farming is now, and will continue to be, the most basic form of operation in our country's agriculture.” Han Jun stated that at the current stage, large-scale leasing of farmland by industrial and commercial enterprises does not conform to our country's basic national conditions. We should insist that farmers farm their own land and that fewer farmers farm more land, truly achieving agricultural land for agricultural use and voluntary transfer, and ensuring the dominant position of farmer family operations.
Han Jun emphasized that adhering to family farming without wavering is by no means freezing the current scattered, small-scale land operation model. Our country is one of the countries with the smallest per-household land operation scale in the world. At present, our country has 220 million farming households, with an average land operation scale of less than 0.6 hectares per household. As the rural labor force continues to shift outward, there will inevitably be a process of land continuously concentrating toward capable farmers and the scale of land operation gradually expanding. This is an inevitable trend of our country's agricultural modernization.
To overcome the limitations of small-scale family operations, Han Jun suggested that as farmers continue to steadily move to cities and towns, in places where conditions permit, farmers should be encouraged and guided to transfer land contractual management rights in accordance with the principles of lawfulness, voluntariness, and compensation, to develop a market for the transfer of land contractual rights, and to develop various forms of appropriately scaled operations such as specialized large households, family farms, and farmer professional cooperatives.
How to reform the land system——respect and protect farmers' land property rights
“Letting farmers enter cities as new citizens with their land rights is a need to protect farmers' interests and also a need to promote the healthy development of urbanization and social harmony and stability.” Han Jun stated that the land property rights system is a foundational institution in rural areas and bears on the stability of our country's basic rural operating system. To advance agricultural modernization, we must take protecting farmers' land property rights as the core, revise and improve relevant laws and policies, and improve the rural land system.
To this end, first, clearly define farmers' land property rights. Han Jun believes that only by ensuring that rural land contractual relations remain stable and unchanged for the long term can farmers feel secure and rural areas enjoy long-term peace and stability. Therefore, we should accelerate the issuance to farmers of land contractual management right certificates and homestead use right certificates with clear legal effect, so that farmers clearly know their lawful rights and interests, and prevent the seizure and forced expropriation of land in the name of rural land being collectively owned, which harms farmers' land property rights.
Second, prohibit forcing farmers to exchange land rights for urban citizenship. “With land at home, one has grounds for advancing or retreating. Rural contracted land and homesteads are not welfare distributed gratis by the state to farmers; they are lawful property rights granted to farmers by law. Letting farmers enter cities as new citizens with their land rights is a need to protect farmers' interests and also a need to promote the healthy development of urbanization and social harmony and stability.” Han Jun said that to meet the needs of migrant workers settling in cities and the development of urbanization, migrant workers should be given the right to independently dispose of contracted land, homesteads, and collective asset equity, creating conditions for farmers to realize their land property rights.
Third, truly compensate farmers whose land is expropriated according to the market value of the land. Han Jun believes that the scope of land expropriation in our country is too broad and compensation to farmers is on the low side. The land value-added benefits generated in the process of land conversion to non-agricultural use and urbanization are enormous, and the proportion of farmers' share in land value-added benefits needs to be substantially increased. On the basis of complying with national land use planning and strictly controlling the total amount of non-agricultural land, more non-agricultural construction land should be directly left to farmer collectives for development, allowing farmers to use land as capital to directly participate in industrialization and urbanization and share in land value-added benefits.