Who are professional farmers? The comparative benefit of the agricultural industry is not high
A few days ago, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "Opinions on Guiding the Orderly Transfer of Rural Land Management Rights and Developing Moderately Scaled Agricultural Operations," proposing to “carry out education and training for a new type of professional farmers.” As a province designated by the Ministry of Agriculture for province-wide advancement of cultivating a new type of professional farmers, Shaanxi has, from 2011 to now, recognized 3,835 professional farmers at all levels across the province, exploring “who will farm the land” and “how to farm the land” in the new era.
With the advancement of urbanization, “who will farm the land” and “how to farm the land” have attracted increasing attention. On the one hand, this points to the major issue of food security, namely “whether the rice bowl can be held in the hands of Chinese people”; on the other hand, it concerns agricultural food safety for millions of households. “Safety is not achieved through regulation, but through cultivation, and it needs to be addressed at the source, among production operators.” said Dai Jianchang, director of the Science and Education Division of the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Agriculture.
The traditional so-called “farmer” is often a laborer distinguished by household registration and identity. In recent years, in the course of China's development from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, as the division of labor has further refined and the degree of specialization has continuously improved, the new occupational group of “professional farmers” has been emerging.
The comparative benefit of the agricultural industry is not high; people would rather rent a house and work as migrant workers than return to their hometowns to farm
“‘Those born in the 1970s’ are unwilling to farm, and ‘those born in the 1980s’ do not know how to farm.” When Yang Xiaohong, deputy director of the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Agriculture, talked about the “catchphrases” he heard while visiting villages, his brows furrowed slightly. “As for ‘those born in the 1990s,’ they do not even talk about farming.”
“When I graduated from junior high school, all I could think about was how to ‘escape’ the countryside.” Ning Jiangjuan, born in the 1970s, is a villager from Dazhao Village, Chang'an District, Xi'an. “I went to the city and opened a small restaurant, and did that for more than twenty years, earning far more than farming.”
Liu Nan, 26 this year and also from Guobei Village, Dongda Street Office, Chang'an District, was admitted to the mechatronics major at Xi'an Engineering Technology College in the college entrance examination. “Most of my classmates are children of farming families, and they would rather rent a house and work in Xi'an than ever go back to their hometowns to farm.”
A large amount of labor has moved into the cities, and part-time farming that combines work and farming is widespread…… “The problem is the surface phenomenon; the key lies in the low level of agricultural production and operation and the low comparative benefit of the industry,” Yang Xiaohong said frankly. If “farmer” cannot become a respectable occupation and realize a person's maximum individual value, “even if you ‘tie’ them to the land, they will not do it.”
Of course, besides being unwilling to farm, quite a lot of people already do not know how to farm. In 2008, after happening to attend a lecture on the people-benefiting policy of land transfer, Ning Jiangjuan, who had “made her first pot of gold,” was full of enthusiasm and decided to return to her hometown to start a business. “I invested 300,000 yuan and transferred 50 mu of land to grow greenhouse watermelons, which was almost all my savings from running the restaurant.” As a result, lacking technology, market understanding, and marketing skills, “the next year I lost nearly 200,000 yuan.”
“Growing watermelons is like running a restaurant; each profession has its own specialty.” After learning from her painful experience, Ning Jiangjuan quickly realized, “Just because we come from farming families does not necessarily mean we know how to farm.”
“Farmer” is no longer an identity, but an occupation, divided into four types and three levels
As a province designated by the Ministry of Agriculture for province-wide advancement of cultivating a new type of professional farmers, Shaanxi divides the province's new type of professional farmers into four categories: production and operation type (large planting and breeding households, family farm owners, backbones of farmers' professional cooperatives, etc.), professional skill type (agricultural industrial workers, agricultural employees, etc.), social service type (rural information officers, agricultural product brokers, agricultural machinery operators, contracted plowing operators, machine pest control operators, animal epidemic prevention officers, etc.), and new generation type (agricultural university and secondary school graduates, returning young migrant workers, demobilized soldiers, etc.).
“Professional farmers should have a strong modern awareness, relatively high scientific and cultural quality, and relatively high professional quality,” Yang Xiaohong said.
Since 2011, the Shaanxi Provincial Department of Agriculture, through research and pilot projects, has successively formulated normative documents such as the "Work Plan for Province-Wide Advancement of Cultivating a New Type of Professional Farmers," the "Interim Measures for the Recognition and Management of a New Type of Professional Farmers," and the "Trial Measures for Performance Evaluation of Cultivating a New Type of Professional Farmers." The “top-level design” for education and training, recognition and management, and policy support for professional farmers has become increasingly clear.