Family farms become an important driver of farmers' income growth
Recently, when reporters visited the Maolin Family Farm in Tangshan Subdistrict, Jiangning District, Nanjing, they saw more than 1,000 mu of lush green land. Over more than a decade, Hu Chengchang, a major grain grower in Tangshan Subdistrict, has successively contracted and transferred nearly 1,200 mu of land in Gaozhuang Village and registered and established this family farm. Hu Chengchang told reporters that Tangshan Subdistrict in Jiangning District provides family farms with a one-stop service covering seeds, pesticides, fertilizers, plant protection, agricultural machinery and grain purchasing, and the subdistrict provides various preferential services supporting his family farm. Today, Hu Chengchang's household has purchased more than 50 large and small agricultural machines and tools, and he has taken the initiative to lead his neighbors to prosperity together.
In recent years, Jiangsu Province has increased policy support, improved its management and service system, and, in accordance with the principles of "lawfulness, voluntariness and compensation," actively supported and guided the orderly transfer of rural land, advanced appropriately scaled land management, raised the level of agricultural industrialization and intensification, promoted the development of modern agriculture, stimulated the vitality of the rural economy, and created a vivid situation in which specialized large-scale operators operate on a large scale and agricultural specialty industries are developed in contiguous areas. As of the end of June 2016, Jiangsu had recognized a total of 31,000 family farms. In Jiangsu, family farms have become an important driver for safeguarding grain production, leading appropriately scaled management, promoting farmers' income growth and promoting ecological recycling.
To guide the orderly development of land transfer, Jiangsu began pilot land confirmation in 200 villages in 2009. By 2015, the confirmation, registration and certification of land contractual management rights had been carried out comprehensively in 98% of Jiangsu's administrative villages, and 16 counties advancing as a whole successively entered the stage of registration and certificate issuance. On the basis of full coverage of township land transfer service platforms, land transfer services were strengthened, pilot construction of rural property rights trading markets was carried out, and a market-based trading platform for rural land contractual management rights was established. At present, 62 counties across the province have established transfer trading markets, with a cumulative 14,500 transactions worth a total of 5.928 billion yuan. The total area of transferred household contracted arable land across the province is 30.95 million mu, accounting for 45% of the arable land area, and the recipients of the transfers are mainly farming households and cooperatives, accounting for more than 70%.
To strengthen the regulation and service of land transfer, Jiangsu Province has actively guided socialized services throughout the province, treated family farms as an important target of agricultural social services, and cultivated service providers and innovated service models in a targeted manner. In the three counties and cities of Zhangjiagang, Jiangyan and Rugao, pilot innovation in the mechanism for government purchase of agricultural public-benefit services was carried out. Suqian City, following the approach of "farm clusters, industrial agglomeration, concentrated services and intensive development," accelerated the construction of family farm clusters and has built 23 family farm clusters and public service centers, with 20 under construction. Each cluster has cumulatively introduced and cultivated 530 family farms, effectively solving the problem that individual households "cannot accomplish it and cannot accomplish it well." Taizhou City established the country's first prefecture-level family farm service alliance, absorbing nearly 1,000 individual members who are family farm owners and 14 institutional members including agriculture-related departments, financial institutions and agricultural input enterprises, to actively serve family farms. Qiaotou Town in Jiangyan District explored the family farm service alliance model by building a comprehensive service complex for agriculture, forming four cooperatives for comprehensive agricultural services, agricultural machinery, plant protection, and grain and oil production and marketing, and setting up four service points for unified agricultural input supply, training of new-type professional farmers, smart agriculture application demonstrations, and financial support for agriculture and insurance protection, providing all-round, multi-level comprehensive services to affiliated family farms.
In addition, to promote innovation in rural financial service products, Jiangsu Province was also the first in the country to explore the establishment of a financing risk compensation fund for farmers' cooperatives, which currently reaches 185 million yuan. In 2014, the provincial treasury allocated 10 million yuan in special funds, focusing on supporting provincial-level demonstration family farms and family farms with strong demonstration and driving effects. In 2016, provincial support funds for family farms increased to 90 million yuan, and the scope of support was expanded to provincial, municipal and county-level demonstration family farms. Cities such as Changzhou implemented one-time award and subsidy support, providing financial subsidies to family farms included in the municipal demonstration list at a standard of 50,000 yuan per family farm; Nanjing, Huai'an, Yancheng and other cities implemented project-based support; Yangzhou City set up 3 million yuan in special support funds for family farm development, giving subsidies of a certain amount toward land transfer rent for operating entities to family farms engaged in grain cultivation of more than 200 mu or protected cultivation of more than 50 mu; and many counties (cities and districts) such as Hongze, Rugao and Funing also set up special funds for demonstration family farms with a scale of about 1 million yuan.