How do small plots get merged into big fields? The farmers have the final say
Having multiple plots per household is not only a headache for farming households, but also restricts the development of modern agriculture. Can the scattered plots of individual households be merged into one whole plot to achieve joint cultivation and joint planting? To meet the needs of agricultural mechanization, large-scale and intensive management, various places are actively experimenting and exploring. Recently, a reporter learned during research in Huaiyuan County, Bengbu City, Anhui Province, that through exploring the reform of "one household, one field" for farmers, the locality made adjustments based on the second round of extended land contracts, which not only raised labor productivity, but also achieved multiple effects such as saving land, improving agricultural efficiency, and increasing farmers' incomes.
"Scattered plots no longer meet the needs of modern agriculture, and the farmers have a strong desire for reform, so it should be respected"
"My family originally had 9 plots, 18 mu in total, one here and one there, the largest just over 3 mu and the smallest only a few fen. Because the plots were small, mechanical wheat harvesting cost 70 yuan per mu, and harvesting the 9 plots took three or four days. But now that they have been turned into one large plot, mechanical wheat harvesting costs only 50 yuan per mu, and it can all be harvested in about 3 hours." said 68-year-old Shao Dongyang of the Dongshao group in Yinshang Village, Huaiyuan County. Every household has these "patchwork fields," and the villagers are very troubled by them.
Because the plots are scattered, cultivation can only rely on manual labor, and the cost of farming is getting higher and higher. "The household with the most plots even had 42 plots, which is the reason many farmers leave their land uncultivated," Liu Chunli, chief of the Management Section of the Bengbu Municipal Agriculture Committee, told the reporter.
In the 1980s and 1990s, due to factors such as differences in regional soil quality, different conditions for water and electricity use, and different distances from the village, the cultivated land of a village group generally had differences in land grade. "This directly led to the fragmentation of contracted land," Liu Chunli said.
When the second round of land contracting was carried out that year, the land of the Dongshao group was mainly divided into three categories: good, medium, and poor, and the difference in land grade was mainly determined by the drainage conditions of the land. "High land that is not flooded is good land, land that can generally drain water is medium land, and low-lying land prone to flooding is poor land." said Wei Wei, Party branch secretary of Yinshang Village. From 1992 to 2013, Yinshang Village invested more than 20 million yuan in land improvement funds, mainly financial project funds for comprehensive agricultural development, farmland water conservancy infrastructure, and comprehensive land improvement, used for digging ditches, building bridges, paving roads, and other construction, gradually narrowing the differences in land types. "This laid a foundation to a certain extent for exchanging and merging land to achieve 'one household, one field.'"
"Let's just merge small plots into big fields!" In 2014, when land rights were confirmed, it was quite difficult to register the more than ten plots of each household, so several village representatives in the Dongshao group of Yinshang Village, including Shao Zhimin and Shao Dongyang, came up with the idea of merging fields. They proposed re-merging the group's currently overly scattered and fragmented contracted land by exchanging and combining plots, so that each household would form "one field." Unexpectedly, this proposal immediately won unanimous agreement from all villagers in the group.
In less than two months, the Dongshao group completed the merger of 168 plots and 467 mu of cultivated land formerly belonging to 20 households. The villagers spontaneously set up an organization, studied and formulated a plan, sought legal and policy basis, won support from the township and village levels, and carefully measured the land. In the process of merging land, they adhered to the basic principle of "keeping the population from the original second-round contract land allocation unchanged," and redistributed the land to households as new contracts according to "one household, one field," enabling 19 households to achieve "one field," while the remaining 1 household had 2 fields, thus achieving the goal of one field per household. The plot area of each household ranged from more than 10 mu to more than 30 mu, forming contiguous blocks convenient for cultivation.
"Scattered plots no longer meet the needs of modern agriculture. The farmers have the desire to merge land and a strong willingness to reform, so it should be respected." said Wang Hong, director of the Bengbu Municipal Agriculture and Forestry Committee.
It is necessary to steadily advance the pilot operation of "one household, one field" through democratic consultation and government guidance, develop appropriately scaled operations, and explore a new path of land management suited to the development of modern agriculture
"Merging small plots into big fields sounds easy, but it is not a simple thing to do." Wei Wei said with deep feeling.
"The biggest resistance to land merging comes from those households whose actual land area is larger than the land area they should have been allocated." Bai Yunxin, Party branch secretary of Baihu Village, told the reporter that during the second round of land contracting in 1992, due to factors such as incomplete rules and regulations, some people at that time actually received more land area than they should have been allocated. In addition, after land was contracted to households, each household continuously enclosed ditches and occupied roads around its own land, and some reclaimed wasteland or expanded ponds, actually adding quite a bit of new land.
"But this land merger requires uniformly measuring all the existing land in the group, and then dividing the total land area by the total population to get the land area each person should be allocated. As a result, those people with larger actual land areas were naturally unwilling." Bai Yunxin said. To persuade this group of people, the village cadres practically wore out their legs and mouths. Because they saw the benefits of land merging, many ordinary villagers also actively did work on these people. At the same time, along with publicizing the "five unchanged" principles, namely: adhere to the current national household contract management system unchanged, adhere to the nature of rural collective land ownership unchanged, adhere to the exchange scope based on the original villager group of the second-round contract unchanged, adhere to the original population base of the second-round contract unchanged, and adhere to the use of developing modern agriculture unchanged, in the end, the households with the greatest resistance dispelled their resistance to the "one household, one field" system.
However, how to ensure fairness and justice in land merging became another difficult problem. "The laboring people always have unlimited creativity. Facing the issue of fairness and justice in the process of land merging, they creatively invented a two-round lottery rule." Liu Chunli said. The villagers numbered the group's fields in units of 10 mu. The first round drew the order of land allocation, and the second round drew the plot numbers according to the order numbers. The more than 1,280 mu of land of 79 households in Yinshang Village was merged from the original 426 "scattered fields" into 81 "concentrated fields," basically achieving "one contracted field per household." At this point, Yinshang Village completely ended the history of fragmented cultivated plots. Seeing the benefits brought by land merging, other villages were also eager to try.
"Small experiment, big direction; explore the path, serve as a demonstration." Cai Yong, Party secretary of Xuwei Township, summarized "one household, one field" this way. He said, "What we are doing is a 'small experiment,' but this is certainly the 'big direction' of using the results of rights confirmation, registration, and certification to deepen the reform of the rural land management system. Our current work is precisely to actively 'explore the path' for this. If the experience we summarize can 'serve as a demonstration' for widespread implementation, then our work will be even more worthwhile."
At present, Xuwei Township has carried out pilot projects in 85 villager groups, accounting for 37.1% of villager groups; the households involved account for 27.5% of the total number of households, with a total merged field area of 46,159 mu, accounting for 37% of the 125,000 mu of cultivated land. By the end of this year, the area of "one household, one field" in the entire township will reach 60,000 mu, accounting for 48% of the total cultivated land area; by the end of 2018, the entire township will fully realize the "one household, one field" management model.
The grassroots exploration attracted great attention from Bengbu City. In May this year, the Bengbu Municipal Agriculture Committee issued the "Guiding Opinions on Expanding the Pilot Work of Farmers Exchanging and Merging Land to Realize 'One Field' Contracted Management," further clarifying relevant support policies: for villages that, through farmers exchanging and merging land, implement "one field" by merging more than 100 mu of land, the municipal finance department will provide rewards and subsidies at the standard of 100 yuan per mu of exchanged land area. The subsidy funds are mainly used for farmland infrastructure construction in the merged plots. The costs incurred in the process of exchanging and merging land, such as plot surveying and mapping, updating image information, and database adjustments, shall be borne by the county (district) finance department. Where farmers exchange and merge land to realize contracted management of "one field" or "two fields" per household, land contractual management right certificates shall be changed and reissued free of charge, and the required costs shall be paid by the county (district) finance department.
Scattered land turned into whole plots, with obvious results in production efficiency, land use efficiency, and social benefits
In the early winter season, the reporter saw in Yinshang Village, Xuwei Township, that the whole wheat fields were neat and uniform. When talking about the benefits of land merging, the villagers all spoke at once, recounting them as if counting their family treasures.
First, after "one household, one field," the land is relatively concentrated, which facilitates mechanized farming. The working hours of farming households in cultivation, irrigation, harvesting, and other links are greatly reduced, and inputs of material and financial resources are also significantly lowered. Wei Wei told the reporter that after merging small plots into big fields, for grain production such as wheat, corn, and rice, the production cost per mu can be reduced by about 20%. Together with factors such as an increase in the effective cultivated land area of farming households and a certain increase in per-unit yield, production and operation benefits have increased significantly, with household income increasing by more than 20%, and farmers have gained tangible benefits.