Backbone farmers are a new force supporting rural development

Reform and opening up, especially after Deng Xiaoping's Southern Tour talks, the export-oriented development strategy and the practice of the socialist market economy brought enormous changes to China's social structure.

In general agricultural areas across the country, the biggest change in rural areas is that a large number of young and middle-aged farmers have moved to the cities to work or do business. A household livelihood pattern has become widespread in rural areas in which middle-aged and elderly parents stay in the village to farm while their young children go to the cities to work.

In rural areas of the central and western regions, farmers who have moved to the cities no longer cultivate their own contracted land; they transfer the land to the young and middle-aged couples who still remain in the village to cultivate, forming appropriately scaled operations. These couples' income comes from the village, their social relationships are in the village, and they also maintain a complete family life. This is what we call "middle farmers." In the sense of social structure, "middle farmers" are the backbone force remaining in the countryside, and are "backbone farmers."

Judging from the current situation in rural areas across the country, "middle farmers" account for only a small proportion of all farming households, with the proportion in different regions across the country at about 10%-20%. From the perspective of time, economic development and urban expansion provide more and more migrant workers from rural areas with the opportunity to settle in the cities, and more and more farmers will move their whole families to the cities and transfer out the use rights of their contracted land, thereby making it possible to form more "middle farmers" in rural areas.

Because these "middle farmers" who take in land have a certain operating scale, they can obtain income from agriculture no lower than that from working away from home. They begin to equip themselves with agricultural machinery, pay attention to new agricultural technologies, and consider low input and high output, and therefore they also have agricultural operating character and agricultural operating models that differ somewhat from small-scale operations. Farming households of this scale pay more attention to production infrastructure conditions, are more willing to organize to build irrigation channels and tractor roads, and have more incentive to take on various top-down resources sent to the countryside. They are active absorbers of new agricultural technologies, active promoters of rural infrastructure construction, and the best candidates for village and group cadres and villager representatives. They are in the prime of life, have good economic income, good social status, and feel good about themselves. Against the background of the outflow of rural people and financial resources, they are the most vibrant and energetic builders.

The emergence of "backbone farmers" is a fairly unique phenomenon that has appeared against the background of Chinese-style farmer migration to the cities. The rise of "backbone farmers" has changed the imagination that the mere outflow of rural people and financial resources may bring rural social crisis and decline, and has given rural society a new, vigorous and energetic force. This is precisely the reason why, against the current background of the outflow of rural people and financial resources, rural society has still maintained stability.

The self-generated and spontaneously formed middle farmers are an extremely noteworthy new force in the current rural social structure. The rise of middle farmers will become an important phenomenon for a fairly long historical period after entering the 21st century. Studying the formation mechanism of middle farmers, the structure of middle farmers, and the role of middle farmers in agricultural production and social governance will become a rich mine for policy and academic research.

At present, some local governments promote the transfer of land to industrial and commercial capital, and the result is not only the elimination of elderly farming, but also the elimination of "backbone farmers." Rural areas then increasingly divide into a structure in which a very small number of outside industrial and commercial capitals stand opposed to the great majority of the elderly, weak, sick and disabled who cannot enter the cities yet have no farming to do. In this way, village order will be difficult to maintain.