Land Rights Confirmation: A Comparison of Land Confirmation with Plots versus Land Confirmation with Shares

Indicator name

Confirming rights and confirming land model

Confirming rights and confirming shares without confirming land model

1.Work steps

Three-step working method:

1.Based on the second-round (1996) contract archives and the Ministry of Land and Resources 1:2000 working base map, conduct household-by-household preliminary surveys, while also carrying out publicity and mobilization work.

2.Based on the working base map, conduct on-site surveys or actual measurements; farming households designate boundaries on site, which are entered into the surveying and mapping system, and the surveying and mapping system is used to check and vectorize the measurement results.

3.With the group as a unit, publicize the public notice maps and public notice tables; after farmers confirm, establish a rural land contract information database and form textual and electronic archives. Issue certificates.

Three-step working method:

1.Convene a household head meeting to explain the current situation of rural land contracting and the significance of rural land shareholding cooperatives, solicit opinions from household heads, and unify thinking.

2.Convene the founding meeting of the rural land shareholding cooperative, at which farming households sign shareholding commitment letters, elect the cooperative management body, and adopt the distribution plan and related management systems.

3.Apply to the industry and commerce department for registration and certificate issuance; after determining the plot area, uniformly conduct bidding to farmers in the group and outside merchants. Rent is distributed as dividends to shareholding farmers at 80%, and 20% serves as a public welfare undertaking fund. Shareholding farmers are mainly based on the family planning population as the unit.

2.Technical support

1.Ministry of Land and Resources 1:2000 drawings

2.Surveying and mapping companies with surveying qualifications.

Mainly village and group cadres; no drawings needed. However, there is no accurate land area.

3.Validity period of rights confirmation

This round of certificate issuance is an improvement of the second-round contract certificate, with a time limit to 2026 (1996 to 2026, 30 years), and a validity period of 12 years.

Based on the family planning population. As long as the person is alive, the shares remain. The validity period is permanent.

4.Certificate issuance method

Issue rural land contractual management right certificates supervised by the Ministry of Agriculture, recording in both textual and electronic form the household head, population, contracted area, the four boundaries of each plot, and the measured area; these can be queried nationwide through networking.

Issue rural land shareholding cooperative equity certificates supervised by the Municipal Rural Economic Management Bureau, recording the household head, population changes, annual dividend records, etc.; for land there is only a quantified number of shares, with no four-boundary limits, and nationwide networked queries cannot be made.

5.Certificate issuance costs

1.Hiring a surveying and mapping company costs about 30 yuan/mu;

2.Village and township work costs about 5 yuan/mu;

3.1:2000 drawing fees, nationwide networking and other information engineering fees, certificate fees, etc. are calculated separately. The whole city is expected to need 1.2 hundred million to 1.8 hundred million yuan.

1.Rural land sub-cooperative equity certificate work fee is 2 yuan/copy. The whole city is expected to cost 200 ten thousand yuan.

6.Banks' recognition of rural land management right certificates as collateral for loan issuance

According to consultations with relevant banking departments, banks do not recognize our city's rural land management right certificates as collateral. The reason is: the average cultivated land area per farming household is about 3 mu, and it is divided into several plots, or even dozens of plots, and is not contiguous, so it cannot be converted into cash on the market.

1.Equity certificates have little value as collateral.

2.The Municipal Rural Economic Management Bureau plans to issue rural land transfer management right certificates to large-scale transferees, to facilitate collateral loans for large operators, and banks recognize them.

7.Ways of realizing transfer

Two ways of transfer:

1.Realize cultivated land transfer by signing subcontracts with farming households one by one.

2.Villages and groups sign subcontracts with each farming household, and then outside merchants sign transfer contracts with the villages and groups.

When the rural land shareholding cooperative tenders for tenants each year, management rights are obtained through bidding, and then a transfer contract is signed with the cooperative.

8.Promotion of agricultural mechanization

Rural land is scattered, and farming households do not have high requirements for the mechanization rate

Farming households, cooperatives or other investors, through contracting land in whole blocks, have high requirements for large-scale operation and agricultural mechanization.

9.Rural land utilization rate

After rural land rights and land are confirmed, the household-based operation model has not changed. Because the comparative benefit of agriculture is low and the scale is small, farming households are not very willing to farm, and the rural land utilization rate is low.

After concentration, the cooperative contracts out land in contiguous plots according to water systems and field blocks, forming scale, and farmers are willing to contract. Good fields get good prices, poor fields get lower prices. Shijiaotang Village has had not 1 fen of land left uncultivated for more than 10 years.

10.Enthusiasm for small rural water conservancy maintenance

The household-based operation model has not changed, and enthusiasm for small rural water conservancy maintenance is not high.

There is relatively high enthusiasm. After the cooperative invests in water conservancy maintenance, the rent increases, and the investment can be recovered. Just like renting out a house, a finely decorated house gets a higher rent.

11.Handling of the contradiction between people and land

After confirming rights and confirming land, because the certificate has already determined the area and the four boundaries, the contradiction between population changes and land distribution is relatively large and cannot be resolved for the time being.

Shares are based on the family planning population as the unit; when the population increases, shares increase and dividends increase; when the population decreases, shares decrease and dividends decrease. Ordinary people highly recognize this, and it is quite fair.

12.Handling of water use conflicts

Because of household-based operation, the land is scattered, and the fields of farming households are interwoven, so disputes often arise over water use.

With contracting by water system, there is not much interweaving between farming households, and judging from more than 10 years of practice in Shijiaotang, there are few water use conflicts.

13.Conflicts in the distribution of rural land compensation fees

After confirming rights and confirming land, after the land of farming household A is requisitioned, there are currently two ways to distribute rural land compensation fees. First, A enjoys all the land compensation fees, and the collective organization no longer allocates land to A, so A becomes a farmer with little or no land. Second, the land compensation fees are uniformly distributed by the group collective, and then the group reallocates fields to farming household A.

Rural land compensation fees are recorded as cooperative income and distributed according to shares.

14.Conflicts over land use for projects such as rural land consolidation and water conservancy maintenance

When the state advances rural water conservancy construction, comprehensive agricultural development, rural land consolidation and other projects, conflicts often arise because individual farming households' fields and land are damaged and the farming households demand compensation.

Land for public welfare undertakings such as rural water conservancy construction and comprehensive agricultural development can be implemented after study by the cooperative, and individual farming households do not obstruct the work.

15.Rural housing construction conflicts

After the land is allocated to farming households, individual farming households have a misconception, believing that the land is their own, that they can farm if they want to farm and build houses if they want to build houses, and there is a phenomenon of disorderly house building.

All land is owned by the cooperative, and farming households only have shares, without the location or area of actual field plots, so they cannot build houses at will. Building a house must be applied for to the village group and comply with planning.

16.Collective economic development

After the cooperative completes bidding, the rent becomes income. The whole city has about 400 ten thousand mu of land; calculated at an average price of 400 yuan per mu, that is 16 hundred million yuan, with 20% retained for the collective, so the village and group collective economy is 3.2 hundred million yuan. If forest land is also included as shares, the village and group collective economy would be very considerable.

17.Livelihoods of the remaining farmers

1. Some farming households farm at home, transferring land through substitution and subcontracting.

2. Some farming households go out to work or do business.

1. By bidding to the cooperative to contract the fields and area they prefer, they become “professional farmers” and “manor owners”.

2. Some farming households go out to work or do business.

3. The labor force at home works for large operators, becoming “professional agricultural workers”.

18.Household registration in towns and cities

Because they fear losing their farmer status, farmers are unwilling to register as urban households.

No matter where the household registration is, as long as one has a rural land shareholding cooperative equity certificate, one enjoys dividends; as long as the person is alive, the dividends remain.

19.Favorable aspects for attracting investment

With household-based operation, the land is in the hands of farming households, and transfer requires negotiation household by household, so rural land transfer is difficult.

Land management rights are obtained after bidding through the cooperative, and contracts are signed with the collective, without dealing with individual farming households. Currently, some mine owners, real estate owners, and returning migrant farmers are all willing to invest in agriculture; they do not lack money, only land. If the land problem is solved, planting one mu of oil tea requires 2000 yuan, and our city has more than 800 ten thousand mu of forest-suitable mountainous land, so investment could reach 160 hundred million yuan. Adding investment in facility agriculture and so on, the overall investment pull would be very considerable.

20.Management of the three rural assets

Because the total village and group collective economy is relatively large, the rural land shareholding cooperative has heavy management tasks, so the building of township rural economic management teams needs to be strengthened, and financial management must be improved.