Getting agricultural products into the city requires clearing three hurdles
Three-wheelers carrying melons are banned from entering the city, melons can no longer be sold in the city after August, and selling melons from a stall in the city requires buying a sunshade first... In recent years, the difficulty of selling agricultural products in the city has continued to emerge in endless waves, becoming a persistent worry for farmers during harvest season.
Selling in the city is normally a regular part of the circulation of agricultural products, yet artificially imposed barriers have blocked this channel, not only worsening the difficulty of selling agricultural products but also very likely triggering social conflict and becoming a factor of instability. Therefore, selling agricultural products in the city is not only a major economic issue, but also a real livelihood issue, and moreover a long-standing difficult problem in circulation that agricultural supply-side reform must solve at both the top-level design and grassroots operation stages.
To let farmers smoothly enter the city to sell agricultural products, they need help clearing "three hurdles": the hurdle of transporting melons into the city, the hurdle of time and location restrictions, and the hurdle of "piggyback" selling.
The first hurdle farmers face in selling agricultural products in the city is the "hurdle of transporting melons into the city." To this day, many cities still issue regulations: all vehicles transporting melons, fruits and vegetables into or through the urban area must be motorized trucks; tractors, three-wheelers and low-speed cargo vehicles are not allowed to pass through the urban area of the city, otherwise there will be fines or vehicle seizure. In reality, however, many farmers who grow melons and vegetables simply cannot afford to buy such motorized trucks. Although in recent years there have been more large-scale growers and farmer brokers, a considerable number of smallholders or poor farmers are still limited by economic conditions and can only use tractors or three-wheelers to transport melons and vegetables.
To help farmers clear the first hurdle, local governments need to relax restrictions, register vehicles transporting agricultural products, and issue relevant passes. If a large backlog of unsold agricultural products occurs, a "green channel" should be opened for vehicles transporting agricultural products so they can pass in an orderly manner.
The second hurdle farmers face in selling agricultural products in the city is the "hurdle of time and location restrictions." The "time restriction hurdle" refers to some cities restricting the time for entering the city to sell agricultural products, especially fresh melons and fruits, according to the traditional marketing season; the "location restriction hurdle" refers to different urban districts in the same city implementing rules that prohibit "cross-district sales." For example, this year in Chenzhou, Hunan, when more than 2,000 mu of grapes encountered a sales predicament, on the grounds that the traditional peak sales season had passed and that a civilized city was being created, temporary sales points for farmers to sell their own produce in the city were set for mid-June to the end of August, and at other times they could not set up stalls in the city to sell fruits and vegetables; and because of local market territorial management, farmers in the two urban districts of Chenzhou could not sell across districts. Such "time and location restriction" rules not only ignore the reality of staggered production and marketing in modern agriculture, but also squeeze the space for farmers to enter the city and broaden their market.
After agricultural products enter the city and begin to be sold, farmers may also encounter a third hurdle, namely the "piggyback selling hurdle." In recent years, although some city management personnel do not dare openly demand money or goods, disguised fees collected secretly still exist. For example, in a county seat in Henan, urban management team members, in the name of collecting a 500 yuan deposit, rented tents and sunshades to farmers who came into the city to sell melons, claiming that as long as the tents and sunshades were not damaged after use, the full deposit could be refunded. In fact, because sunshades are exposed to sun and rain and are often scraped, they will always be damaged, so the deposit paid by farmers is basically impossible to get back.
To help agricultural products entering the city for sale clear the "third hurdle," all localities need to vigorously tighten institutional management and strengthen work style construction. Once acts of demanding money or goods from those they manage and serve are discovered, they must be severely punished, so that from the source public officials and assistant management personnel "do not dare to be corrupt and do not dare to demand," creating a good environment for farmers selling agricultural products in the city.
Fundamentally speaking, the difficulty of selling agricultural products in the city is a question of how to coordinate the relationship between civilized city construction and farmers' right to subsistence. Clearly, it is not acceptable to restrict farmers' right to enter the city to sell melons and vegetables to make a living merely for the "face" of a civilized city. In fact, on the premise of safeguarding farmers' right to subsistence, the goal of civilized city construction can still be achieved through systematic urban management. Compared with the various criticisms suffered from "favoring the city" while "hurting farmers," a way of thinking about urban construction that takes rural development and farmers' livelihoods into consideration can better embody the "people-oriented" concept, help better handle the relationship between city and countryside and between urban residents and farmers, and overall promote the harmonious development of society.