Methods for Using the Internet to Cultivate New-Type Professional Farmers in Rural Areas

Today, two potential crises exist in China's rural areas, and the problems are gradually spreading. So is the Internet a golden key to solving China's rural problems?

If farmers want to farm, they must study agricultural issues; if farmers live in rural areas, they must study rural areas. And today, two potential crises exist in China's rural areas, and the problems are gradually spreading. So is the Internet a golden key to solving China's rural problems?

　　Rural Areas Are Facing a Crisis of Disappearance

One of the potential crises facing rural areas is that villages are gradually declining, or even disappearing. According to statistics, over the past decade the rate of village disappearance has been 80 per day.

Some of this disappearance is natural: young people are unwilling to stay in the countryside and so leave, the elderly follow them, there is no one left in the village, and the village disappears. But some disappearance is artificially promoted, the most typical example being village consolidation and town merging; the countryside becomes empty-shell villages with fewer and fewer people, so these villages need to be demolished.

This round of destruction to the countryside may be uprooting, directly causing villages to decline or even disappear. Some say this crisis may shake the foundations and damage China's traditions and culture. Because previously everyone had reached a consensus that the root of Chinese culture lies in the countryside; if the countryside is destroyed, the culture will disappear as well.

Another potential crisis is that young people are unwilling to farm. When I conducted a survey in 10 provinces and municipalities in 2010, the average age of those who farmed was 57. We wanted to find someone under 30, but could not find anyone; the local party secretary said that everyone under 30 had gone out to work.

To solve these two problems, the state issued two important strategic decisions. The first is to build beautiful villages, proposing that beautiful village construction should plant more trees and demolish fewer houses, further enabling farmers to enjoy modern civilization on the basis of their original villages.

But implementing this policy in modern society has not been satisfactory. Some villages are beautiful empty shells; some, in order to build up the countryside, have destroyed farmers' livelihoods, with the whole village living on minimum living allowances. The main reason is that there is no industry, no one is willing to stay in the countryside, and those who leave do not come back.

The other decision is to vigorously cultivate new-type professional farmers. In the future, farmers will certainly be the ones farming, so what kind of farmers are needed to farm? They should be new-type professional farmers. To this day, this has risen to become a task of the central government's strategy.

When training new-type professional farmers, we often become mere formalities, because we cannot find a vehicle for new-type professional farmers. Training a junior high school graduate into a new-type professional farmer is unrealistic: first, he is unwilling to be a farmer; second, he has no conditions to be a farmer; and without large-scale land, can professional farmers be sustained?

Therefore, when the Ministry of Agriculture and the Ministry of Education discussed the age of new-type professional farmers, it proposed that they should be under 35. I said it should be under 65, because people under 35 simply cannot be found. Some say that if those who farm are basically around 65, they should all be retiring, but in reality there is no retirement for farmers. At present it is obvious that agricultural ecology lacks successors, so who is willing to come and farm?

　　Riding the East Wind of the Internet to Solve Rural Problems

The emergence of the Internet has provided an important condition for the growth of new-type professional farmers. Judging from the status and role of China's Taobao villages, three aspects can be directly observed that promote the growth of new-type professional farmers.

The first is that it directly attracts young people to return home and start businesses. People in their 70s can also do e-commerce, but they are by no means the main body of e-commerce; the younger people are, the more they can contribute in the e-commerce industry.

Some young people around 30 are already very proficient in e-commerce, and the Internet attracts them to come back from working in the city. Because the Internet serves as a vehicle for new-type professional farmers, it will also gradually guide these people to become new-type farmers rather than pure merchants.

The second is that it truly realizes industrial integration. In the past, we shouted the slogan of integrating the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, yet could not find the point of integration. The purpose of integration is to let producers, especially producers in the primary industry, gain more benefits, rather than developing the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries separately; that is not called integration.

The third is that it helps form new-type operating entities. New-type operating entities include large industry households, cooperatives, and engineering enterprises, but the new forms of Taobao villages go far beyond these few. A Taobao store, as well as the companies, logistics, packaging and a whole series of related industries that provide services to this Taobao store, all form different operating entities.

These three aspects all provide conditions for attracting young people to engage in agricultural work in the countryside, so this is an important vehicle and breakthrough point for the formation of emerging agriculture.

How will the Internet extend into rural areas in the future? The safety of agricultural products is a major problem troubling every consumer, and to this day it has not been solved. Some methods can also ensure that the agricultural products bought are safe, for example, regulatory authorities ensure the safety of agricultural products by imposing fines, but this is not realistic. The rural crisis is that wasteland is everywhere, young people are almost unwilling to farm, and who will farm is itself a problem, so how can we even talk about fines?

In response to this phenomenon, a mechanism must be created to let ordinary people voluntarily produce safe agricultural products. The best way is for ordinary people to sell their own products. The production form I most advocate is the family farm; some of the people who remain in the countryside can farm, and the products of family farms can be sold through the Internet, but they must be responsible to consumers, otherwise no one will ever come to the shop to buy products again. Institutionally guaranteeing the safety of agricultural product quality is also a role played by the Internet.

I have full hope for the role the Internet plays in agriculture and rural areas. In the future, rural areas can sell not only agricultural products but also handicrafts, and the revitalization of handicrafts plays an important role in rural development, beautiful village construction, rural governance, and the inheritance of rural culture. I hope the Internet will play an ever-greater role in future agricultural development, and I also hope the Internet can follow the scale of agricultural development and the laws of rural development, rather than changing or violating them.