The development history of domestic family farm scale policies

The development process of domestic policies concerning family farm scale

Domestic theoretical discussion on the moderate-scale operation of family farms is relatively lacking. Drawing on foreign theories, the proposal of the concept of family farms in China is mainly concentrated in central government policy documents, and this can roughly be divided into three stages. The first was 1984-1986, when the government encouraged the development of employee family farms to solve the operational difficulties faced by state farms. Family farms first appeared in the form of employee family farms. The second was 1993-1995, when the focus of discussion was on how to implement scale operation, carry out land system innovation, and improve agricultural production efficiency, hoping to use scale operation to change the situation of abandoned land and continuously declining labor input. The third was in 2013, when family farms were explicitly written into the Central Document No. 1 as a new type of agricultural operating entity, which aroused widespread attention. This time the main goal was to solve the problems of who will farm the land, how to farm it well, and how to achieve agricultural modernization.

(1) Family farms and "employee family farms"

Domestic policy research on family farms can be traced back to "employee family farms." Since the implementation of the household contract responsibility system, research on "household operation" became popular. On the basis of dispersed smallholder household operation, in the mid-1980s, when solving the difficulties faced by state farms, the government encouraged the development of employee family farms. In the 1984 Central Document No. 1, it was already pointed out: "State farms should continue reform, implement the household contract responsibility system, and run family farms well." (This refers more to family farm heads than to today's family farm operators.) In nature, the "family farm" no longer belonged to traditional smallholder household operation; it also belonged to the genus "'agricultural enterprise'," and "employee family farms and employee household contracting" had significant differences. In the 1984 "Regulations on Employee Family Farms on State Farms," the definition given for employee family farms was: "Under the leadership of the state farm, an economic entity with the household as the unit, implementing household operation, fixed quota delivery, independent accounting, and sole responsibility for its own profits and losses." Afterward there was a great deal of research on "employee family farms." For example, in 1987, "Social Sciences in China" published a dedicated article, "The Forms, Scale, and Development Trends of Employee Family Farms," which divided the family farms emerging on state farms into four types, namely: single-household self-cultivating family farms, single-household commissioned-cultivating family farms, single-household hired-labor family farms, and joint-household family farms, and analyzed and demonstrated the best form, optimal scale, and development trends among each type. Obviously, the employee "family farms" here had both a self-cultivating character and a hired-labor character, so the "family farm" here was more like a specialized large household, and it was completely different from dispersed smallholder operation.

During this period, much research was produced around the definition, nature, scale operation, and development path of employee family farms. Overall, "employee family farms" were a mode of agricultural operating organization based on state family farms, and they had both self-cultivating elements and a large proportion of hired labor. They were similar to the family farms emphasized today, for example in their deep degree of commercialization and their household organizational form; however, they also differed from today's family farms, for example in that they allowed hired labor, their land was state-owned, and more importantly, they did not emphasize scale.

(2) Family farms and moderate-scale operation

By the 1990s, the concept closest to family farms was "moderate-scale operation." In 1987, the Central Document No. 1 explicitly proposed for the first time that land moderate-scale operation should be actively and steadily advanced in places where conditions permitted. In the following years, in economically developed areas such as Jiangsu and Zhejiang, the degree of land transfer and concentration reached a certain scale, and places such as Wuxi, Wu County, and Changshu in Jiangsu became important experimental areas for large-scale operation under the Ministry of Agriculture. As reform experimental areas moving from small-scale farmland to moderate-scale operation, Wuxi and other places received high attention and affirmation from agricultural departments, and at the same time the "household-operated type"① form of land scale operation was made the focus of developing moderate-scale operation of agricultural land. The article "From a Small-Scale Equal-Field System to Moderate-Scale Operation" pointed out that the household-operated type included large farming households, family farms, and joint farms, with farmer households as the unit, mainly relying on the family's own labor to organize production and operation, and operating with independent accounting and sole responsibility for profits and losses. Here, "family farm" was proposed as one form of "household-operated type" farm, but it did not receive more specific explanation and analysis. We can also conclude from other articles that "skilled farmer" also seemed to be a synonym for the current concept of family farm. Overall, these formulations mainly revolved around "moderate-scale operation." In the same period, someone proposed the concept of "family farms with Chinese characteristics." Gu Jianzhou wrote that "households contracting operations on state farms," "self-employed households," and "one person taking the lead and multiple people partnering in developmental planting" were all regarded as "family farms with Chinese characteristics." Family farms with Chinese characteristics were "of a certain moderate scale, oriented to domestic and international markets, aimed at large-scale commodity production, using the full play of the family's subjective initiative and creativity as the means, continuously improving the degree of intensification and economic efficiency of household operation, and ultimately becoming a competitive economic entity in the rural market economy." It should be said that this text is quite similar to the concept of "family farm" in current central documents. For example, both propose being market-oriented, which distinguishes it from self-sufficient dispersed household operation; another example is the proposal of "intensive" operation, which is close to the current proposal of using "intensive, commercialized" production methods. However, the article did not involve specific scale or agricultural income levels, and it existed only as a form different from large hired-labor farms, without detailed explanation of the differences from agricultural operation forms such as specialized large households and skilled farmers. Most importantly, this formulation itself was not expressed in important central documents, and remained only at the academic level.

(3) Family farms and agricultural modernization

If the concept of "family farm" can initially be traced back to the "employee family farms" and "state farms" of the 1980s, and was reflected in the formulation of moderate-scale operation in the 1990s, then it truly emerged as an analytical concept in 2013. In 2013, the Central Document No. 1 clearly pointed out the need to "create a favorable policy and legal environment, adopt multiple means such as rewards and subsidies, and support joint-household operations, specialized large households, and family farms." The concept of "family farm" appeared for the first time in the Central Document No. 1, and afterward all sectors offered interpretations of family farms as a new type of agricultural operating entity.

Domestic researcher Gao Qiang pointed out that, unlike traditional family enterprises, family farms are new microeconomic organizations based on household operation and integrating modern production factors and concepts such as science and technology, information, and agricultural machinery. At the same time, traditional farmers will also transform and upgrade into professionalized specialized legal persons. This explanation inherits the views of earlier researchers. Similarly, Jiang Hui proposed that family farms are modern agricultural operating entities realized on the basis of household operation, and that being market-oriented and pursuing profit maximization is the purpose of family farms. This is exactly the same as Guan Fuxin's definition of family farms. Guan Fuxin believes that family farms have the institutional characteristics of marketization, specialization, and socialization, and also belong to an enterprise-style mode of operation.

It should be said that the discussion at the above levels highlights the characteristics that distinguish family farms from traditional smallholder household operation, namely the scale, intensification, and commercialization of family farms, but at the operational level, targeted suggestions are still lacking. The Ministry of Agriculture's definition of family farms is a new type of agricultural production and operation entity that uses family members as the main labor force, engages in agricultural scale, intensive, and commercialized production and operation, and relies on agricultural income as the family's main source of income. Clearly, the Ministry of Agriculture's definition of family farms is more operational, but because it involves descriptive summaries such as "main labor force" and "main source of income," for the convenience of government management, at the practical level what a family farm is, what scale counts as a family farm, or what other core indicators should be used to identify a family farm should receive clearer quantification. Below we first look at the development of family farms across the country.