The phenomenon of young people being unwilling to return to their hometowns to farm should arouse vigilance
What is preventing young people who go out to work from being willing to return to their hometowns to farm? Today, this is not a topic that is deliberately made to sound profound. When rural young people prepare for their careers, they seldom take becoming a professional farmer as a future goal. Apart from those born in the 1950s and some born in the 1960s, among the village people who consciously choose to be a professional farmer, those born in the 1970s are unwilling, those born in the 1980s do not know how, and those born in the 1990s do not even discuss it.
By rights, professional farmers are the leaders in agricultural and rural development, with relatively strong strength in capital, technology and so on, and their operational capacity and risk resistance are also stronger than those of ordinary farmers. But in operation, they encounter difficulties such as irregular land transfer, weak infrastructure, difficulty obtaining loans, and an unsound insurance system. For the various reasons above, to some extent, the title "professional farmer" not only weakens the sense of political honor farmers once had, but is also being seen as the "tragic figure" of a failed life.
Today, most professional farmers belong to a lower class lacking a sense of social respectability. As the essayist Liu Hongbo said, the interest of public opinion has also shifted to elites. Knowledge elites, management elites and entertainment elites such as Ma Yun and Zhang Ziyi together occupy the headlines of various media, and a kind of social consciousness amounting to capital worship is steering people's social evaluation. Everyone looks up to the heroes on the wealth list, the power list and the fame list. Apart from revering heroes, the work and lives of ordinary people are not respected, and an ordinary life equals a "worthless life."
It is hard to imagine, when most people in a country "look to money in everything" and "look to power in everything," all thinking of getting rich easily and quickly, or even getting something for nothing; when professional farmers are looked down upon by everyone and few young people are willing to take this as a career and take pleasure in farming, who will farm in the future in our major agricultural country? Who will supply the food on the plates of 1.3 billion people?
Agriculture is the foundation of the national economy, and agriculture is the source of food and clothing for humanity. Agriculture is a necessary condition for the existence and development of industry and other material production sectors and all non-material production sectors. Agriculture is the guarantee that supports the continuous development and progress of the entire national economy. Grain is the foundation of foundations. In short, whether the foundational position of agriculture is solid concerns the vital interests of the people, the stability of society and the development of the entire national economy, and also concerns whether our country can maintain an independent and autonomous position in international competition. At any stage of economic development, the foundational position of agriculture cannot be weakened, but can only be strengthened. Agriculture having "no successor" is enough to make people vigilant.