Why is the land bank the only route to solving the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers?
A land bank, as the name suggests, is a financial institution that deals with land; here, both what is deposited and what is lent out is land. Through a "deposit in small sums, lend in lump sums" approach, the land bank pools the scattered, idle land in farmers' hands and then transfers it to large agricultural growers, effectively speeding up farmland transfer and driving the formation of agricultural industrialization and large-scale operations, making it the only route to solving the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.
As relevant policies continue to be introduced, the pace and scale of land transfer keep increasing, and exploring land transfer models has become especially important and urgent. This article introduces in detail the common land bank and several land transfer models currently in use, and analyzes their characteristics, to help the public better understand the economic benefits and social significance of the land bank and land transfer.
Chengdu model - village self-governance, government support, market operation, cooperative management
In December 2008, Chengdu's first agricultural resource management cooperative (land bank) in Pengzhou City - the Huangcheng Agricultural Resource Management Professional Cooperative in Cifeng Town - was officially inaugurated and began operating. This was a bold innovation by Chengdu built on reform of the rural land property rights system, a village-level collective economic organization engaged in the business of depositing and lending land rights.
The specific operating model of the Chengdu land bank refers to organization by the government, on the basis of farmers' voluntary participation, classifying and integrating or moderately improving the contracted land use rights of farmers in a given area, the use rights of rural collective construction land, and the use rights of farmers' homestead land after "demolishing courtyards and merging them into communities"; while maintaining the basic agricultural use unchanged, these are "lent" to other agricultural enterprises or large growers in need of land. Those needing land pay the land bank the storage value of the land, the value of its consolidation and development, and the loan interest for the same period on the sum of the two, and the land bank then pays the storage value to the farmers.
As the first region to take the plunge and establish a land bank, Chengdu follows an operating approach of village self-governance, government support, market operation and cooperative management, which both ensures appropriate land concentration and large-scale operation and maximizes land efficiency, while fundamentally protecting farmers' interests, achieving a "win-win" for all parties and also providing valuable experience for those who followed.
Queshan model - land bank, professional cooperative, professional farmers, service enterprises
The "Queshan model" of "land bank + professional cooperative + professional farmers + service enterprises" in Queshan Village, Chengqiao Town, Ningxiang County, Hunan Province, integrates farmers' scattered plots, similar to a bank's "deposit in small sums, withdraw in lump sums", and transfers the entire village's land as a whole. In just two years it solved the problem of abandoned land that had been widespread in the village in earlier years. The village set up a land cooperative, bringing all 4,205 mu of cultivated land in the village into it by "turning scattered plots into a whole"; the land cooperative leases the land as a whole to a grain professional cooperative formed by villagers' voluntary share contributions, and the grain professional cooperative then divides the land into several production zones of 50-100 mu, assigns them to capable growers through bidding, and provides them with paid services such as agricultural machinery, agricultural inputs, storage and drying.
Today, the "Queshan model" has long since spread beyond Queshan, with teams from all over the country visiting Queshan Village to study it in an endless stream. Ningxiang has promoted this model in 40 administrative villages across 24 townships in the county, and Changsha has promoted it citywide; currently 136 administrative villages have successfully replicated the "Queshan model". This model has successfully resolved the rural contradiction of "land with no one to farm it, and people with no land to farm": those who do not want to grow grain can go out to earn money with peace of mind, while large growers who want to grow grain get priority for large-scale planting. Farmers can collect rent and also enjoy a second round of dividends from the land cooperative. If they are willing to farm the land, they also have wage income from labor.
Gongzhuling model - government-enterprise cooperation, tripartite co-construction, Internet+, serving agriculture, rural areas and farmers
On August 19, 2016, the unveiling ceremony for the Gongzhuling City Agricultural Land Financial Trading Center and the Mengjia Farmers' Land Shareholding Professional Cooperative in Fanjiatun Town was held at the Fanjiatun branch of Gongzhuling Rural Commercial Bank, marking that the construction of Gongzhuling City's "land bank" had entered a substantive stage.
Gongzhuling Rural Commercial Bank signed a strategic cooperation agreement with Hunan Tuli Information Co., Ltd. (Tuliuwang) and the Gongzhuling City Rural Economic Management Bureau, with the three parties jointly building the Gongzhuling City Agricultural Land Property Rights Trading Center and the Land Financial Trading Center. The Agricultural Land Financial Trading Center is a non-profit institution led by the government and serving agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and Gongzhuling Rural Commercial Bank provides financial services for the center in areas such as fund settlement and loan financing. At present, the Gongzhuling City Rural Property Rights Trading Center platform, for which Tuliuwang provides technical support, has officially gone online and is in operation, integrating functional sections such as news and information, policies and regulations, mortgage financing, trading auctions, project management, contract and archive management, dispute mediation, project announcements, trading rules and service centers.
Compared with the land banks in the other two places, Gongzhuling City has taken a distinctive path between the two mainstream routes of government supervision and guidance and market-oriented operation, seeking a balancing point between private capital and agriculture-related public-interest services, and innovatively adopting a "government-enterprise cooperation" model to bring in Tuliuwang, a comprehensive land transfer service platform that has been developing for 7 years, grafting the government's credibility onto Tuliuwang's advanced Internet+ land transfer model and professional technology, making a bold innovation for comprehensively solving the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.