China's farmers' incomes have grown rapidly for 10 consecutive years
In the first half of this year, farmers' incomes continued to maintain rapid growth. Data from the National Bureau of Statistics show that in the first half of the year, the per capita cash income of rural residents nationwide grew by 9.8% year on year in real terms, continuing to outpace the growth rate of the per capita disposable income of urban residents nationwide. As of last year, China's farmers' incomes had grown rapidly for 10 consecutive years.
The consecutive years of income growth for farmers are gratifying. But we must clearly see that at the current stage, farmers' income growth is still on a low level and a low base. Although the growth rate of farmers' incomes continues to exceed that of urban residents, and the relative income gap between urban and rural residents is narrowing, the absolute gap is still widening; although what farmers' incomes and urban residents' incomes show are both numbers, the substance and connotation of farmers' and urban residents' incomes are fundamentally different; although the overall environment for increasing farmers' incomes is gradually improving, there are still quite a few new problems in the development process that deserve attention.
At present and for a long period to come, to ensure that farmers' incomes continue to rise, we must overcome various unfavorable factors, cultivate lasting momentum for increasing farmers' incomes, and strive to form an endogenous mechanism and a long-term mechanism for increasing farmers' incomes.
Grain output has increased for consecutive years, and the steady development of agricultural production has consolidated the foundation of farmers' productive income. In the future, we must strive to make new progress in breaking through the institutional mechanisms that hinder the development of agricultural and rural productive forces, and make great efforts to straighten out and adjust the relations of production and productive forces in agriculture and rural areas. We must raise the degree of organization among farmers, establish and improve the socialized service system for agriculture and the marketing system for agricultural products, and increase farmers' share of income growth along the industrial chain.
Along with the rapid advance of urbanization, wage income has become the largest source of momentum for increasing farmers' incomes. To keep farmers' incomes growing in the future, we must effectively protect the lawful rights and interests of rural migrant workers. In the process of advancing urbanization, we must accelerate the improvement of the institutional mechanisms for integrated urban and rural development, promote equal exchange of urban and rural factors and balanced allocation of public resources, and form a new type of worker-peasant and urban-rural relationship in which industry promotes agriculture, the cities support the countryside, workers and farmers benefit each other, and urban and rural areas are integrated.
Over the past 10-plus years, support policies for increasing farmers' incomes have been continuously strengthened, and investment in “agriculture, rural areas and farmers” has increased steadily. In the future, we must continue to improve and strengthen the direct subsidy policy for farmers, strengthen the state support and protection system for agriculture and farmers, intensify rural poverty alleviation and development, and constantly raise farmers' living standards.
In recent years, rural reform has been comprehensively advanced, the dividends of reform have continued to be released, and the effect of promoting increases in farmers' incomes has been obvious. To continuously increase farmers' incomes, we must seek dividends from reform, reform the land expropriation system, and raise farmers' share in the distribution of land value-added benefits; we must explore reform of the rural property rights system, and effectively guarantee, implement and expand farmers' land property rights; we must properly implement farmers' collective land ownership and all rights to collective assets, and properly resolve the problem of the nominal subject of collectively owned rights.