How does the development of leisure agriculture promote increases in farmers' income?
Since the reform and opening up, China's leisure agriculture has gone through the historical stages of emergence, initial development and all-round development. After entering the new century, leisure agriculture has flourished in all regions, showing the characteristics of a steadily expanding industrial scale, continuously enriched development content, increasingly diverse types and models, a gradually transforming development mode, and a simultaneous increase in comprehensive benefits, forming a sound momentum of “accelerated development, optimized layout, improved quality and expanded fields.” According to incomplete statistics, by the end of 2013, there were more than 1.8 million leisure agriculture business entities of various types nationwide, receiving 900 million tourist visits annually, with operating revenue of 270 billion yuan, benefiting 29 million farmers, and both the number of visitors received and operating revenue maintained an average annual growth rate of more than 15%. At present, further raising awareness, following the trend and solidly advancing the development of leisure agriculture has become an important task for competent departments at all levels.
Deeply understand the important significance of developing leisure agriculture
As a new form of industry and a new form of consumption, leisure agriculture has an irreplaceable position and role in serving residents, developing agriculture, prospering rural areas, enriching farmers, protecting the ecology and passing on culture. It is closely related and highly consistent with the development strategies being implemented by the state. It is a sunrise industry with broad prospects in China's rural areas, a growth point with great potential for the development of new rural industries in the period ahead, and an important aspect of agricultural and rural economic development.
(1) Developing leisure agriculture is an effective way to promote the development of modern agriculture. Developing leisure agriculture can expand agriculture from a single production function to multiple functions such as leisure sightseeing, farming experience, ecological protection and cultural inheritance, and meet the needs of urban and rural residents to understand agriculture, experience farming fun and enjoy leisure and entertainment. Its relatively high economic benefits fully mobilize the enthusiasm of various business entities to improve agricultural infrastructure, apply high and new technologies and protect the production area environment, drive the development of pollution-free, green and organic agriculture and standardized agricultural production, and make it an important platform for building modern agriculture.
⟦NL> (2) Developing leisure agriculture is an effective way to promote farmers' employment and income growth. Promoting farmers' employment and income growth is the starting point, foothold and fundamental point of developing leisure agriculture. Developing leisure agriculture has enabled agricultural production to realize the transformation of labor results from being basically reflected only as material products to placing equal emphasis on material products and spiritual products, extended the agricultural industrial chain, and effectively increased farmers' operating income and wage income; it can turn farm courtyards into “farmers' paradises” that enrich citizens' lives, and open up channels for farmers to increase property income. No matter how fast urbanization develops, rural areas still have a fairly large proportion of the population. When these people operate leisure agriculture on a household basis, they can effectively solve the problem of local employment and enable farmers' incomes to continue to grow.
(3) Developing leisure agriculture is an effective means of building beautiful villages. The key to building beautiful villages is to implement the concept of industry leadership. Without strong industrial support, the building of beautiful villages will become a castle in the air. Leisure agriculture, with agriculture as its foundation, farmers as its main body and rural areas as its venue, is a unified entity highly integrating the agricultural industry and rural construction. Developing leisure agriculture objectively forces farmers to improve infrastructure such as water, electricity, roads, gas, housing and communications, treat mountains, rivers, forests, fields and lakes as a community of life, beautify village appearances, green roads and purify the environment, and promote the improvement of rural living environments. At the same time, it guides farmers to take farming-reading civilization as the soft power of rural development, continuously improves the cultural connotation of rural areas, and on the whole drives the continuous growth of new-type farmers who are cultured, understand business and know how to manage, and raises the level of rural civility.
(4) Developing leisure agriculture is an effective carrier for promoting urban-rural integration. The huge economic and social benefits brought by the development of leisure agriculture, on the one hand, retain rural popularity and resource factors, alleviate problems such as the rural “three left-behind groups” and “hollow villages,” and promote the harmony and stability of rural society; on the other hand, they attract more and more talent, technology and capital to gather in rural areas, pull urban infrastructure and public services to extend to rural areas, promote the flow of consumer spending from cities to rural areas, and curb and change the long-standing pattern in which resource factors mainly flowed one-way from rural areas to cities.
(5) Developing leisure agriculture is an effective measure for passing on farming civilization. Farming culture is the foundation on which Chinese civilization stands and is inherited. The development of leisure agriculture systematically integrates the cultural elements in agricultural production processes, farmers' working lives and rural customs and features. A number of villages with rich historical culture, such as historical ancient villages, distinctive dwellings and distinctive folk customs, have become historical, cultural and landscape resources on which leisure agriculture can rely. In recent years, the work organized by the Ministry of Agriculture to explore and identify China's important agricultural cultural heritage has already produced a strong impact in society and has initially opened a development path of “protection through exploration and inheritance through utilization.” Developing leisure agriculture has become an important and effective form of publicizing, displaying and passing on farming culture.
The development of leisure agriculture has fully demonstrated its economic function of promoting income growth, its social function of driving employment, its cultural function of protecting and passing on farming civilization, and its ecological function of beautifying rural environments. It has promoted the transformation of farming areas into scenic areas, fields into parks, air into popularity, labor into exercise and agricultural products into commodities, enabling idle rural land to be used, farmers' leisure time to be enriched, surplus labor to flow, and traditional culture to become active. It has played an irreplaceable and important role in agricultural and rural economic and social development.
Further understand the situation and tasks of developing leisure agriculture
International experience shows that the rapid advancement of industrialization and urbanization is often accompanied by rapid growth in people's leisure needs. At present, China is in the middle stage of industrialization. For every one percentage point increase in the urbanization rate, about 13 million rural people move to cities and towns. With the improvement of residents' income levels and changes in consumption patterns, leisure agriculture is facing rare development opportunities and contains huge development potential.
First, the building of a beautiful China and new-type urbanization provides important opportunities for the development of leisure agriculture. The 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China made major decisions and arrangements for advancing ecological civilization and building a beautiful China, and the Central Urbanization Work Conference put forward the overall requirements of intensive and efficient production space, livable and moderate living space, and clear mountains and waters in ecological space. General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out that for China to be beautiful, rural areas must be beautiful. Beautiful villages and beautiful countryside, as important components of a beautiful China and important areas in the layout of new-type urbanization planning, are precisely important carriers of leisure agriculture. It can be foreseen that with the acceleration of the building of a beautiful China and new-type urbanization, leisure agriculture will surely receive high attention from governments at all levels, be more favored by urban and rural residents, and enter a period of rapid development opportunities.
Second, a sound policy environment provides strong support for the development of leisure agriculture. For several consecutive years, the No. 1 Central Document has proposed actively developing leisure agriculture and expanding space for non-agricultural employment and income growth in rural areas, which has pointed out the direction for the development of leisure agriculture. The Several Opinions of the State Council on Promoting the Reform and Development of Tourism issued not long ago clearly stated that, with transformation and upgrading and improving quality and efficiency as the main line, tourism should be promoted to shift toward placing equal emphasis on sightseeing, leisure and vacation, so as to meet the diverse and multi-level consumption needs of urban and rural residents. The characteristics of leisure agriculture, such as low price, time saving and flexibility, fully conform to the direction of tourism reform and are bound to become the first choice of citizens for holiday leisure and vacation.
Third, strong market demand provides a source of momentum for the development of leisure agriculture. In 2013, China's urbanization rate reached 53.7%, the annual per capita net income of urban residents was close to 27,000 yuan, and the annual per capita GDP was nearly 7,000 US dollars. Due to factors such as the urban living environment and pressure from life and work, citizens have an even stronger desire to stay away from the hustle and bustle of the city and go to the countryside to see blue skies and white clouds, view clear waters, breathe fresh air and taste distinctive foods. With the optimized adjustment of national statutory holidays and the gradual implementation of the paid leave system, this will surely become a source of momentum driving the rapid development of leisure agriculture.