With agricultural input costs rising and grain prices falling, where is the way out for farmers?

There was a time when farmers had to work the land to make a living, because they had no technical skills, no knowledge or education, and even selling their labor lacked a market. But times have changed, and farmers now have diverse ways out. Even without farming, in today's prosperous economy they can find a way to make a living. At the very worst, even collecting mineral water bottles in the city won't leave them hungry, let alone the fact that most people can still earn money through labor and odd jobs.

Now, one reality that farming has to face is that the investment cost of farming keeps rising, and in today's climate of generally rising prices, grain prices happen to be falling, which makes many people wonder whether farmer friends should still grow grain. Science Xingnong believes that growing grain really is not the only way out for farmers. From the perspective of planting returns, if you cannot become a large-scale grower, it truly pays less than working for wages. And the future direction of agriculture is naturally the path of large-scale, intensive land cultivation. As far as market trends go, it is no longer a smallholder economy, and the elimination of this smallholder economic model by the market is an inevitable rhythm.

First, as things stand now, grain prices are gradually declining, a fact everyone can see. The root cause of falling grain prices is that China's grain prices are more than 20% higher than international grain prices. This situation will not last forever. In the words of the higher-ups, China's grain prices should be brought in line with the international market; otherwise, China's economy will forever remain disconnected from the world. The situation of gradually falling grain prices and gradually rising agricultural input costs directly results in excessively high planting investment costs and declining returns from farming. The large-scale and intensive route is the way to reduce investment costs.

Second, the smallholder economy cannot carry out large-scale mechanized planting. This is a major drawback of the smallholder economic system and also a problem left over from China's history. If the landlord-based land system of feudal society was unsuitable for social development, then implementing the land contract ownership system at the time of reform and opening up was indeed matched to the productive forces of social development at that time. However, social development has been so rapid that in just forty years, the household contract responsibility system has gradually struggled to adapt to the needs of today's social development, and large-scale planting is hard to apply. Land has been split into fields for each household, and large machinery simply cannot be deployed. This situation was probably something no one anticipated at the time.

Now land confirmation has begun to be implemented, and the state is promoting land transfer. That is to say, when agricultural input costs are rising today, transferring out the land and choosing to go out to work is beneficial to others, to oneself and to society, so why not do it? For large-scale growers, using intensive and large-scale planting gives them greater bargaining power in the buying and selling of agricultural inputs and products. This can be described as a win-win situation.

A digression: a new term has appeared today, "new-type professional farmer", referring to those who in the future will specialize in operating and guiding agricultural production with new agricultural ideas and technical approaches, or engage in agricultural business activities, and use this as their means of making a living. The state currently provides training for new-type professional farmers and also corresponding subsidies, also in order to respond to the future transfer of farmers to cities and towns so that rural land can bring greater social and economic value into play. Therefore, in today's society, expecting to get rich simply by working one's own small plot of land is no longer realistic, and it may even be a problem to guarantee the family's food and clothing. Rather than that, it is more worthwhile to go out to work.

This article is originally written by Science Xingnong. Welcome to follow, and let me take you to grow your knowledge together.