Land transfer must not become a new round of enclosure movement

When General Secretary Xi Jinping presided over the seventh meeting of the Central Leading Group for Comprehensively Deepening Reforms on the 2nd, he stressed that the three bottom lines must be upheld: the nature of public ownership of land must not be changed, the red line for arable land must not be breached, and the interests of farmers must not be harmed.

Holding fast to the policy bottom line means that farmers should occupy the principal position in agricultural modernization, and that the state's intent for land reform should be truly reflected. At present, in some places, due to the impulse for government performance and the profit-driven pursuit of capital, transfers have become distorted and farmers have gradually lost their principal position; this phenomenon warrants high vigilance.

Data show that in 2013 the area of land transferred to enterprises increased by 40 percent over the previous year. Behind the data there are also hidden worries. "One or two hundred mu is nothing; only several thousand mu or tens of thousands of mu counts as modern agriculture." Under this one-sided understanding, some local governments blindly pursue the scale and proportion of transfers: some issue "local policies" for attracting investment, giving enterprises large subsidies and rewards for transferred land; others simply rely directly on administrative orders, using the methods of assigning targets and setting tasks to artificially create an inflated land transfer rate.

The excessive introduction of these administrative wills has led to situations that violate farmers' wishes occurring from time to time. Village organizations were originally supposed to serve as representatives of villagers' interests, but in the process of capital entering the land, when they found that they themselves could profit, they also changed from former "passive acceptors" into proactive "vanguards," intensifying the momentum of the "new enclosure movement."

Are companies and enterprises really better than farmers at treating and using land well? For some industrial and commercial capital involved in agricultural land transfer, there is often a lack of genuine intention to operate agriculture.

Reporters interviewing at the grassroots found that some enterprises often "have an ulterior motive": some come for "government subsidies," for example an enterprise in Guangzhou, in the name of growing vegetables, transferred nearly 1,000 mu of land in Fengyang, Anhui, and over seven years enjoyed no small amount of government subsidies yet did not plant a single vegetable; other enterprises come for the "land business," and after transferring land from farmers they leave it abandoned waiting for appreciation, or use the names of leisure agriculture, temporary warehousing and so on to change the use of the land. Taken together, when profit-seeking capital enters agricultural land, the better case is the "de-grainization" of land, and the worse case is "de-agriculturalization," and the impact this brings to national food security and arable land protection must be taken highly seriously.

Land transfer and concentration is a gradual process and needs to conform to national conditions and agricultural conditions. The local government's "visible hand" should be used more to build land transfer platforms, rather than replacing the market and making decisions on behalf of farmers. In this process, farmers must become the principal body of land transfer. In particular, new types of agricultural operating entities represented by large grain-growing households, family farms, and farmer cooperatives should be given more priority in transferring land. At present, the tendency of some local governments in agricultural support policies to "favor commerce over agriculture" and "subsidize the rich but not the poor" urgently needs adjustment.

Although the development of modern agriculture requires capital, unrestrained industrial and commercial capital is like "a wild horse" and needs to be fitted with "reins." In the past two years, the central "No. 1 documents" have both proposed that there "must be an access and supervision system" for industrial and commercial enterprises entering land transfer, but local exploration has lagged relatively behind. From a practical point of view, regarding access for capital entering the land, the operating capacity of enterprises should be screened; regarding the scope of operations, they should be guided to engage in pre-production and post-production deep processing and other services, rather than directly competing with farmers to take land for planting.

Land transfer also cannot simply be left at the transfer itself; afterward, an exit mechanism must also be established and strict control of land use must be implemented. Only by doing this work well can it be ensured that the red line for arable land is not breached and that farmers' interests are not harmed.