China's Agricultural Mechanization: A Ten-Year Leap - Forging a Distinctive Development Path
The leapfrog development of the "golden decade" of agricultural mechanization has written a glorious page in the history of China's agricultural development. However, history is an ever-ascending ladder, a process of factor accumulation, and the result of combined forces.
In China, a country with a profound traditional agricultural civilization, dominated by small-scale household farming, with a prominent human-land conflict and complex and diverse geography and climate, how can agricultural mechanization be achieved? This is by no means an easy task. It is destined to require more arduous efforts than others, and destined to blaze a development path suited to itself. Behind the "golden decade" lie practical explorations across different periods, embodying the painstaking wisdom of several generations.
The path of agricultural mechanization with Chinese characteristics has gradually become clear: it is the path of "farmers' initiative, state support, and market guidance"; it is the path of "resource sharing, mutual-benefit services, and coordinated functions"; it is the path of "seeking truth from facts, adapting measures to local conditions, and advancing with the times."
"The fundamental way out for agriculture lies in mechanization"; decades of arduous exploration by the Republic have led hundreds of millions of farmers to tirelessly pursue the dream of agricultural mechanization
In the mid-1950s, Mao Zedong put forward the famous thesis that "the fundamental way out for agriculture lies in mechanization," and envisioned using 5 "Five-Year Plans," that is, basically achieving agricultural mechanization nationwide by 1980.
Looking at it now, although the leader's prediction was somewhat ahead of its time, and even New China was somewhat "overly eager for quick success" on the road to exploring agricultural mechanization, it nonetheless planted the seed of the dream of mechanization in the hearts of hundreds of millions of farmers, made the concept of agricultural mechanization deeply rooted in people's hearts, and inspired later generations to break through one obstacle after another and pursue it tirelessly.
Looking back on the 65 years traversed, New China's agricultural mechanization has successively gone through four different stages: the start-up stage from 1949 to 1980, the institutional transition stage from 1981 to 1995, the market-guidance stage from 1996 to 2003, and, from 2004 to the present, the "golden decade" of law-based promotion.
After the founding of New China, the Party and the state always regarded achieving agricultural mechanization as an important strategic goal in building modern socialist agriculture. Starting in the 1950s, the state gradually set up agricultural machinery stations in qualified communes and brigades, allocated various agricultural machinery and tools according to plan, and supported the mass movement for farm tool reform.
From 1966 to 1978, the State Council convened three national conferences on agricultural mechanization. The state mainly used agricultural support funds for agricultural mechanization, with total fiscal investment of about 9 billion yuan, promoting the rapid development of agricultural mechanization. A relatively complete system for agricultural machinery management, scientific research and appraisal, technology extension, education and training, sales and maintenance, and use services was gradually established. China's agricultural machinery industry started from manufacturing new-style farm tools, developed from nothing, and successively established a number of large and medium-sized enterprises including YTO, Tianjin Tractor, and Changzhou Tractor, laying the foundation for China's agricultural machinery industry.
After the rural areas implemented the household contract responsibility system, large and medium-sized agricultural machinery lost its place on ultra-small-scale land, collective agricultural machinery stations were gradually disbanded, and except for retaining the policy of supplying agricultural machinery fuel at parity prices, the state's direct investment in agricultural mechanization and the agricultural machinery industry gradually decreased. There was once an awkward situation of "contracting land to households, agricultural machinery has no way to go."
In 1983, the No. 1 Central Document allowed farmers to independently purchase and operate agricultural machinery. During this period, small agricultural machinery and tools, walking tractors, and especially agricultural transport vehicles grew relatively quickly. However, the number of large and medium-sized tractors and matching farm tools stagnated, the ratio of machinery to matching tools was unbalanced, the utilization rate of field machinery was low, and the level of mechanization of farmland operations rose slowly.
Dong Hanying, who worked for many years in the Department of Agricultural Mechanization and is now director of the Supervision Bureau of the Ministry of Agriculture, said: "Looking back, the managers' worry at the time about 'contracting land to households, agricultural machinery has no way to go' was unnecessary; farmers' practice was not like that. In 1982, not long after I started working, during a survey in Huaiyuan County, Anhui, I found that farmers had a very strong demand for small agricultural machinery. Although the policy was not yet clear at the time and there were still many debates, farmers had already moved ahead. That year, farmers in the county had already purchased more than 20,000 walking tractors on their own, and they were sold everywhere on the streets." He believes that the biggest policy breakthrough of this period was breaking through the forbidden zone that "agricultural machinery, as means of production, is not allowed to be privately owned." The development of agricultural mechanization was no longer monopolized by the state and collectives, and decision-making power was given to farmers. This was a great ideological liberation in the development of agricultural mechanization.
In 1995, China began to establish a market economy system. All preferential policies for agricultural mechanization introduced by the state under the planned economy system, such as parity-priced diesel for agricultural use, were abolished, and agricultural mechanization entered a market-oriented development stage. Agricultural machinery management departments had no "policy tools" in hand, but cross-regional operations provided them with a "service handle." Starting in 1990, agricultural machinery departments began to facilitate and promote nationwide cross-regional operations. Wang Yong, deputy director of the Jiangsu Provincial Agricultural Machinery Bureau, recalled that the main work of the bureau director and staff in those years was to help people connect and raise money, traveling everywhere from February or March. For example, people from the south went north, and people from the north went south, contacting harvested plots for machinery operators, resolving various disputes for machinery operators and farmers using machinery, and actively promoting the development and formation of cross-regional operations with Chinese characteristics and the agricultural machinery operation market.
After the mid-1990s, rural labor began to show a trend of large-scale transfer, the trend of seasonal rural labor shortage became increasingly obvious, farmers' enthusiasm for using agricultural machinery kept rising, the socialization and marketization of agricultural mechanization services accelerated, and cross-regional combine harvesting gradually emerged. The path of agricultural mechanization with Chinese characteristics took initial shape. The national inventory of various combine harvesters surged from 73,000 units in 1995 to 400,000 units in 2004.
One law and one subsidy policy provided strong guarantees for the "golden decade" of agricultural mechanization and generated a powerful driving force
In 2004, two epoch-making "major events" occurred in the history of China's agricultural mechanization development: first, the "No. 1 Central Document" decided to give subsidies to farmers for purchasing and upgrading large agricultural machinery; second, on November 1, the "Law of the People's Republic of China on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization" was officially implemented. From then on, China's agricultural mechanization entered the best development period in history.
"The agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy has strong targeting and precision, achieving multiple benefits with one measure." Zong Jinyao, former director of the Department of Agricultural Mechanization of the Ministry of Agriculture, said, "Since 2004, 120 billion yuan in cumulative state fiscal subsidies have driven more than 200 billion yuan in farmer investment, and farmers' enthusiasm for buying and using machinery has never been higher; the level of agricultural mechanization has risen substantially, and the country's comprehensive agricultural production capacity has been ensured; the agricultural machinery industry has emerged from years of stagnation, and China quickly became the world's largest agricultural machinery manufacturing country."
With purchase subsidies as the focus, the state's support policies for agricultural machinery tended to become systematic and complete. In 2010, the "Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the Sound and Rapid Development of Agricultural Mechanization and the Agricultural Machinery Industry" clarified the framework of promotional policies for agricultural mechanization with Chinese characteristics. The state and local governments successively implemented capital construction projects such as the agricultural mechanization promotion project and the conservation tillage project, carried out pilot programs for scrapping and renewal subsidies for agricultural machinery and operation subsidies for key links, and explored benefit-to-farmers measures such as agricultural machinery mortgage loans, policy-based agricultural machinery insurance, free safety inspections, and management of agricultural machinery sheds and shelters as agricultural land, effectively mobilizing farmers' enthusiasm for purchasing and using machinery.
"It was the agricultural machinery subsidy policy that finally let me see the spring of agricultural mechanization development and allowed my deep feelings for agricultural machinery to be released once again. Especially when two large corn harvesters were delivered to the cooperative, I was so excited that I could not sleep well all night. I got up in the middle of the night to touch the machinery, and tears flowed like rain." Fan Jiazhu, chairman of the Ping'an Bao Agricultural Machinery Cooperative in Changtu County, Liaoning, and a national model worker, expressed his gratitude in this way.
Fan Jiazhu was a "veteran" who entered the agricultural machinery industry in 1974. In the 1970s, he created the glory of a "national advanced agricultural machinery station," and also experienced the pain after the breakup of the agricultural machinery station. In 2007, agricultural machinery subsidies expanded in Changtu, and after many silent years he came out again, joining with 17 drivers to establish an agricultural machinery professional cooperative. The cooperative raised 1.06 million yuan of its own funds, used 750,000 yuan of central and provincial subsidies and 540,000 yuan of subsidies from the Changtu County government to purchase two large corn combine harvesters, as well as 71 units (sets) of tractors, combined land preparation machines, seeders, silage equipment, and others, covering all links of plowing, planting, and harvesting. That year, the average wages plus dividends for cooperative members reached 30,000 yuan.
The effects brought by agricultural machinery subsidies are visible and tangible, while the influence of the Law on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization is invisible and far-reaching.
The Law on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization is also a confirmation of the creative practice of Chinese farmers and embodies the unity of the Party's propositions and the people's will. In 2007, Zhang Baowen, then vice minister of agriculture, summarized and distilled the main features of the path of agricultural mechanization with Chinese characteristics as "farmers' initiative, government support, market guidance, socialized services, shared use, and improved benefits." Corresponding provisions for all 6 aspects can be found in the Law on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization.
Liu Min, director of the Agricultural Machinery Testing Station of the Ministry of Agriculture, who once participated in the preliminary research for the Law on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization, introduced that understanding was not unified before the law was issued. Some comrades believed that China has many people and little land; with agricultural machinery, where would farmers go? Would it affect stability? Some comrades believed that according to the concepts of Western market economies, the government should do nothing and should not intervene, and that it would be enough to let agricultural mechanization develop naturally. There was no need to promote it; promotion was "looking for rice to put in the pot"... The promulgation of the law meant breaking through the shackles of thought once again.
Liu Xian, director of the Agricultural Machinery Extension Station of the Ministry of Agriculture, said: "Social progress needs promotion. Whether to liberate farmers - the law embodies a value orientation and is a powerful spiritual force. The Promotion Law elevated the state's policy measures supporting agricultural mechanization, such as giving farmers purchase subsidies, supporting demonstrations and extension of agricultural mechanization technology, strengthening agricultural machinery quality and safety management, and supporting agricultural machinery technological innovation, into legal norms, creating a long-term and stable environment for the development of agricultural mechanization and firming up our direction in developing agricultural mechanization."
"We have blazed a path suited to national conditions, and the state has promptly issued laws and support policies. The forces of farmers, government, market, and enterprises have never gathered together as well as they do today, creating a strong and inexhaustible driving force for the development of agricultural mechanization." Bai Renpu, a member of the drafting group of the Law on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization and a 77-year-old professor at China Agricultural University, offered this explanation of the four stages of New China's agricultural mechanization development.