The claim that farmers have no successors is just mawkish sentimentality
"Ordinarily, you basically never see young people in the village." Chen Maosheng, a professional grain-growing farmer in Pingxiang City, Jiangxi Province, said with no small worry. He is already 55 years old, and he said that farming by middle-aged and elderly people has now become a common phenomenon. At least there are still people farming the land now, but in another ten years or so, when people like us have grown old and can no longer farm, who will farm the land will truly become a problem. (Economic Information Daily, November 5)
The decline of rural areas is a worry for many people, and mixed into it is a subtle kind of nostalgia. In particular, many rural areas are now hollowed out, land lies waste, and the countryside has completely become an "old folks' home." Faced with the reality that rural areas are mostly populated by middle-aged and elderly people and that those born in the 1980s and 1990s are unwilling to farm, many people have expressed anxiety.
When discussing the topic of farmers having "no successors," a good existing example is the TV drama "Ma Xiangyang Goes to the Countryside," starring Wu Xiubo. In Dahuashu Village, where Ma Xiangyang serves as first secretary, the village also faces a situation in which the population consists mostly of middle-aged and elderly people, women, and children, while young people work elsewhere. Why is this so? The reason is simple: in many places the net income per mu of grain is only a few hundred yuan, and for two seasons of crops it is only around a thousand yuan per mu. The "2013 Monitoring and Investigation Report on Migrant Workers" was released some time ago, showing that China's total number of migrant workers was 268.94 million, and the monthly income of migrant workers who leave home was 2,609 yuan. The monthly income of a migrant worker working away from home is equivalent to the harvest from farming one mu of land for two years. In rural areas with little arable land per person, people naturally are unwilling to farm.
In "Ma Xiangyang Goes to the Countryside," Ma Xiangyang, relying on his background in the commerce bureau, brought in funds to build roads, brought in tourism projects, started a pancake company, and used the high selenium content in the soil to introduce high-end greenhouses. In the end, the village became prosperous, and the people who had been working away returned one after another. It must be said that this kind of special case cannot solve the problems of most rural areas in China. The land in most of China's rural areas is not special, and not every village has clear mountains and waters that can support tourism. In other words, it is almost impossible to attract rural young people back again.
According to statistics, China's urbanization rate had already reached 46.6% in 2010, but from the perspective of household registration, China's urban household registration at that time accounted for 33% of the total population, meaning that 13.6% of people, although in urban areas, still had agricultural household registration. The proportion of the U.S. population engaged in farming was 32% in 1910, and by 1994 it had fallen to 2%. From this perspective, the fundamental problem in China's rural areas is to raise farmers' living standards and improve agricultural production efficiency.
The 2013 agriculture white paper published by Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries shows that among growers of rice, Japan's main crop, 74% are over 65 years old. In 2012, the average age of farmers in South Africa had already reached 62. Severe aging of farmers is a worldwide problem, and the only way to solve it is to improve the efficiency of rural land transfer and accelerate modern management of agricultural production. When farmers' returns rise, there will naturally be no worry that no one will farm the land.
Rural population decline is a development trend. China's most important current problem is to change the situation in which "China's cities look like Europe and America, while China's countryside looks like Africa." Increase investment in rural infrastructure, narrow the gap between city and countryside, and carry out relevant reforms so that free movement between rural and urban areas can be achieved. On that basis, discussing farmers having "no successors" is realistic; otherwise it can only be mawkish sentimentality and wishful thinking.