How does land transfer fatten farmers' wallets?
President Xi Jinping stressed that land transfer and various forms of scaled operation are the inevitable path for developing modern agriculture and the fundamental direction of rural reform. In the practice of land transfer, all regions must be required to implement the guidelines and policies set by the Party Central Committee to the letter, both intensifying policy support and encouraging innovation in agricultural operation systems and mechanisms, and adapting to local conditions and proceeding step by step, without launching great leaps forward, without coercion and commandism, and without blind administrative direction. At present, all parts of the country are exploring innovative models of land transfer and have achieved a series of encouraging results.
“Grasping both rent and wages”: land transfer creates “double-income people”
In recent years, Liubei Town in Yunyang District, Shiyan City, Hubei Province, has developed agricultural sightseeing parks and high-tech agricultural demonstration parks through land transfer, hiring farmers who have transferred their land to work in the parks, enabling formerly impoverished people to escape poverty and become prosperous at their doorsteps, working on “their own land” and becoming “double-income people” who “hold rent in one hand and wages in the other.”
It is reported that the town has now transferred more than 10,000 mu of land, with more than 2,000 “double-income people.” Nearly 100 impoverished farmers in Wujiagou Village work in the land they have transferred out at a rate of 100 yuan per day, with each household earning more than 20,000 yuan a year in “double income.”
Internet Plus land transfer: saving time and effort at a higher price
On June 25 this year, the Xiaogang Village Land Transfer Service Center of Tuliu.com was inaugurated, and Mr. Yan Jinchang, one of the 18 leaders of the “household contract responsibility system,” became the first general manager of the Tuliu.com land transfer center, bringing the trendy new “Internet Plus” to the land of Xiaogang Village.
At the event, Yan Jinchang said that Tuliu.com is like a “matchmaker,” helping Xiaogang Village market its land and bring in capital and good projects, not only saving time and effort but also fetching a higher transfer price than before.
At present, Xiaogang Village, through farmers' professional cooperatives and enterprises, has extensively carried out the integration of the primary, secondary and tertiary industries, forming an industrial system led by modern agriculture and sightseeing tourism. Of the village's 14,500 mu of arable land, including the 35 mu of Yan Jinchang's family, about 8,400 mu has been transferred. The village's per capita disposable income has risen from 12,000 yuan in 2013 to 14,700 yuan last year.
Crowdfunded land share cooperatives: 600 villagers become shareholders
The Laoma Fruit and Vegetable Cooperative in Guanyin Village, Sanquan Town, Nanchuan District, Chongqing, is widely known for adopting a “crowdfunding” production organization model. The cooperative began to be formed early last year, with villagers voluntarily joining as shareholders with land or cash and sharing in dividends once the cooperative becomes profitable. Each share is 1 yuan, each mu of land counts as 60 shares per year, and the longer the contract period, the higher the dividends that can be obtained.
At present, the cooperative has successively obtained 147,500 shares in cash and 53,600 shares in land, integrating more than 800 mu of land from more than 600 villagers. This year, Guanyin Village secured a 750-mu high-quality rice planting project, which is expected to bring the cooperative hundreds of thousands of yuan in profit each year. By then, villager shareholders will receive dividends ranging from several hundred to several thousand yuan.
In addition to traditional subcontracting, the new internet model, and the land shareholding guided by the No. 1 Central Document, whole-village land transfer models like those in Dongsi Village, Shiji Town, Juancheng County, Heze, Shanxi; Sanbei Village, Pinghu City, Jiaxing, Zhejiang; and Baoshan Village, Sihaidian Town, Suiling County, Heilongjiang, are also gradually emerging across the country. Advancing land transfer on a whole-village basis can powerfully promote intensive land management, facilitate the adjustment of the agricultural industrial structure, raise land output, and enable the labor force released from scaled land management to increase income through starting new ventures and taking up employment.