Grain prices are falling and land transfer is cooling down. How should farmers farm?

1. Who is farming the land?

Most still farm on a scattered, individual basis. Left-behind elderly people and housewives are the main labor force, while young people are unwilling to farm and do not know how to farm.

The fall in corn prices did not make Zhang Wenming give up growing grain. "One season of wheat, one season of autumn crops. If corn does not work out, wheat can carry it. Besides, at my age, what else can I do but farm?"

Helplessly, this 65-year-old farmer worried: "At current market conditions, when I can no longer work, who will farm the land?"

"To see China's wheat, look to Henan; to see Henan's wheat, look to Xinxiang; to see Xinxiang's wheat, look to Yanjin." Yanjin is known nationwide for its high-quality wheat. The county has 1.03 million mu of cultivated land, with 950,000 mu planted to wheat, including 500,000 mu of high-quality wheat, and its seed sales radiate across more than half of China. Who is farming the land here?

Pingling Village in Sizhai Township, where Zhang Wenming lives, has 550 households and 4,900 mu of land. "People under 55 are almost nowhere to be seen in the fields," said village Party secretary Xiao Hongsheng frankly. Those born in the 1970s are unwilling to farm, those born in the 1980s do not know how to farm, and those born in the 1990s do not even mention farming. The village's land has not been transferred on a large scale; most of it is farmed at home by the elderly and women.

Dark-skinned, with prominent veins on his hands, Zhang Wenming had just finished watering the wheat field. The family has 5 members. His son and daughter-in-law work elsewhere, earning more than 6,000 yuan a month. His wife looks after their grandchild. All 10 mu of land is managed by Old Zhang alone. "I do not count on farming to get rich; it just earns a bit of spending money." His situation is fairly common in the village.

Villager Li Cheng, 74, only stopped going to the fields after surgery the year before last. His 12 mu of contracted land was handed over to his son Li Wenxian to tend. "It is not that my son wants to farm. It is that his health is poor, he cannot go out to work, and he has no particular skills, so he can only farm at home," Li Cheng said.

Why are Pingling Village villagers unwilling to transfer their land? Xiao Hongsheng said the village's fields are all seed fields, used to propagate high-quality wheat seed from the Provincial Academy of Agricultural Sciences, and 1 jin can fetch two mao more than ordinary wheat. If the land rent is low, farmers will not agree; if the rent is high, at current grain prices, it cannot be rented out. In addition, farmers have an emotional attachment to land. With land at home, they do not need to spend money on a year's grain ration or vegetables.

Unlike Pingling Village, 80% of the land in Dongshigu Village, Senggu Township, has been transferred and rented to the leading enterprise Xinxiang Xinliang Grain and Oil Co., Ltd. for operation. "Of 1,700 mu of land, with a 15-year contract, only just over 400 mu of non-contiguous land remains in the village," said village Party secretary Li Minfu.

Why are Dongshigu villagers willing to transfer their land? Li Minfu said, first, the village is close to the county seat, making it convenient to work; the village has set up 3 construction teams, employing more than 300 people. Second, the land rent is high, 1,200 yuan per mu per year, roughly the same as what farmers earn by farming themselves.

"Looking at the whole county, villages like Dongshigu are, after all, a minority." Jia Yong of the agricultural economic section of the Yanjin County Agriculture and Forestry Bureau introduced that the county currently has 384,900 mu of transferred land, accounting for 38.5%, but the operating area of leading enterprises and cooperatives is only just over 67,000 mu. Surveys show that in many villages more than 70% of male labor works elsewhere, and more than another 20% farm while doing odd jobs. Those engaged in agricultural production are mainly people over 60 and housewives.

The situation the reporter found in Zhangqiu, Shandong, was similar to Yanjin. The whole city has 1.04 million mu of cultivated land, with 320,000 mu transferred, and more than two-thirds is still farmed by households on a scattered basis.

Liu Yong, deputy director of the Zhangqiu City Agriculture Bureau, said that despite so many people working elsewhere, ordinary people are still unwilling to let land lie fallow. In recent years land rent has risen quickly, and basically all land that can be transferred has been transferred. What cannot be transferred is still farmed, even if more extensively. "Take this wheat field in front of us. If it could be watered once or twice more, an increase of one or two hundred jin per mu would be no problem." But now working elsewhere earns more than 80 yuan a day, and it is not worthwhile for farmers to take several days off to come home and water the fields.

"Farming it yourself is more worthwhile than renting it out." Liu Kaisheng, 53, a villager in Wanxin Village, Zaoyuan Subdistrict, has 6 mu of land at home. Last year, with wheat and potatoes in rotation, 1 mu yielded more than 3,000 yuan in income. After deducting costs, net income was still 1,500 yuan, while the transfer rent was only 1,000 yuan.

Asked about future plans, Liu Kaisheng said: "Never mind that my son is unwilling to farm; even if he were willing, he would not be able to." Once he asked his son to go water the field, but after struggling for a long time he still could not get it done. In the end, Liu had to rush to the field after finishing his errands before the water came out.

2. Who can farm the land well?

Left-behind elderly people struggle to support modern agriculture. New types of operating entities have obvious advantages, and new varieties and new technologies spread quickly.

Can left-behind elderly people and women support modern agriculture?

The reporter learned that, judging by grain yield per unit area, ordinary farmers are not lower than large-scale operating entities.

Take Pingling Village as an example: wheat averages 1,100 jin per mu and corn 1,300 jin; while at the leading enterprise base in Dongshigu Village, wheat averages 900 jin per mu and corn 1,100 jin.

"One household working intensively and carefully is something large operators and enterprises find hard to do," Xiao Hongsheng said. Although everything from planting to harvest is now mechanized, much work such as watering fields and spraying pesticides still requires manual labor. For example, if mechanical sowing leaves gaps, whether replanting can fill them in sufficiently and whether watering reaches the right places depends on care. When farmers work their own land, they are certainly more attentive than when working for others.

However, modern agriculture cannot be judged only by yield; quality and staying power matter even more. Behind ordinary farmers' consecutive years of high yields, some problems have become prominent.

"The land is getting more and more demanding; soil fertility is declining, and it is hard to reduce fertilizer use," said Guo Peirong, head of the Yanjin County Agricultural Technology Extension Station. Now scientific fertilization is being promoted: 25 jin of fertilizer per mu of wheat is enough, but ordinary farmers worry that with less fertilizer the yield will not rise, so they often apply 50 jin.

"Farming is much easier now, but technical requirements are higher, and it is probably hard for old methods to keep up." Guo Peirong believes that Yanjin wheat has undergone 4 major variety upgrades in more than ten years. When each variety should be planted, when pesticides should be applied, and how to strengthen seedlings all have their own particular requirements. For example, pesticides work better when applied to the base of the wheat, but many farmers use sprayers and sprinkle them on the leaves.

Xiao Hongsheng felt this deeply. In 2005, when the village promoted high-quality wheat, he brought in 50,000 jin of seed and went door to door to deliver it, but many farming households simply did not want to plant it. Seeing that the season would soon be missed, he became anxious and led village cadres to pull up other people's crops and force-plant the seed. Breeding requires high purity and a uniform variety. There were 6 seed drills, with one person watching each, for fear that other seeds would mix in. Only the next year, when everyone saw the harvest, did dissatisfaction fade. "If it were now, I would not dare do that," he said.

By comparison, large-scale operating entities have obvious advantages.

Yan Xizhan, director of the land transfer office of Xinliang Grain and Oil Company, said that with 1,700 mu under unified operation, new varieties and new technologies can be put in place quickly. Now pesticides are applied by aircraft "working," taking only a few minutes per mu and costing only 15 yuan, 10 yuan cheaper than hiring people; fertilizer is purchased centrally, saving 10 yuan per bag; and with order-based purchasing, the price per jin can be 0.1 to 0.15 yuan higher, giving them more market bargaining power than ordinary farmers.

"If you want to make money, you must have scale." In the view of Sha Shuxing, village Party secretary of Wanxin Village in Zhangqiu City, "earning 500 yuan per mu is not easy, but earning 100 yuan should always be possible. Once scale goes up, returns can be magnified a lot." He has his own "shepherding theory": whether it is four or five sheep, they still need a day of herding, and herding four or five hundred sheep at once is also a day.

"Do not harvest until cold, do not plant until hot." Growing scallions is physical work and also skilled work. For this reason, Wanxin Village established a selenium-rich scallion cooperative, rotating wheat and scallions, transferring more than 200 mu of land, with 30 member households. "Only those who plant more than 3 mu, strictly follow standardized cultivation, and do not indiscriminately apply chemical fertilizers or pesticides can become members," Sha Shuxing said. The scallions grown by the cooperative have more stable quality and better prices.

In Yanjin County, there are 1,710 cooperatives, with 23,000 member households, and 19 municipal-level leading enterprises; in Zhangqiu City, there are more than 1,000 farmers' professional cooperatives and more than 300 family farms.

With agriculture lacking successors, farming indeed needs a different approach. Rapidly growing skilled grain growers, family farms, professional cooperatives and other new types of entities are placed under high expectations.

3. The new predicament of new types of entities

Grain prices are falling, large growers are losing money growing grain, and the pace of land transfer is slowing. They hope structural adjustment policies will be introduced soon.

The survey found that falling corn prices have plunged many new types of entities into a new predicament.

"Selling 1 jin for a few mao less puts the risk concentrated on large households, and the pressure is unbearable," admitted Guo Weifeng, a large grain grower in Shazhuang Village, Senggu Township, Yanjin County.

In earlier years, policies encouraged large households to grow grain. Guo Weifeng and three other farmers jointly rented 300 mu of land, planting wheat one season and corn one season. By 2014 the transferred area had grown to 600 mu, with 800 mu under trusteeship. To adapt to large-scale operation, they purchased tractors, harvesters and other farm machinery worth several hundred thousand yuan. "Grain prices were good for two years, then last year there was a big drop, and we lost more than 90,000 yuan. We had originally planned to transfer another 900 mu, and the land was already discussed, but we do not dare rent it now," he said.

Operating pressure has increased, and signs of land lease termination have appeared. Zhao Guohuan, chairman of the Yanjin Century Rich Cooperative, said the cooperative had transferred a total of 1,800 mu, with a 10-year contract. Although it has not yet expired, it is expected that by the second half of the year half of the land will be returned.

The pace of transfer has clearly slowed. Liu Xianghui, head of Senggu Township, said that in earlier years people often came to rent land, opening with "however much can be transferred, transfer it all." From the second half of last year to now, no one has come looking for land.

Growing grain is not profitable, and bank loans have tightened further, making life harder for new types of entities. A cooperative head said: "For the past 5 years we borrowed from a bank. A single sum required paying double interest: after borrowing, we first deposited it back, then borrowed it out again. But having money was better than not having it. Unexpectedly, last year the bank heard that growing grain was losing money, and this year it will not lend."

"Now when banks hear it is for farming, there is basically no chance of getting a loan." Guo Weifeng admitted that the biggest headache for large households is paying land rent, when they suddenly need to come up with more than 700,000 yuan. Payment first, land use afterward; there is no way but to borrow from loan sharks, at 1 fen interest. Any higher and we cannot bear it.

Pingling Village established a wheat planting cooperative back in 2005. Without policy support, if funding could not keep up, its 6 seeders and seed treaters would long ago have been idle. "If the cooperative's services could keep up, and the village fields were managed uniformly and supplied with uniform seed, farming costs would certainly come down a bit," Xiao Hongsheng said.

It is understood that many farmers' professional cooperatives have difficulty operating, and some are even nominal only.

Amid operating difficulties, many people are reflecting: "Transfer costs have risen too much!"

"The rent is 1,200 yuan per mu. At such a price, growing grain simply cannot make money." Chen Changhai, a large grain grower in Senggu Township, did the accounts for the reporter: growing two seasons of wheat and corn, total production cost per mu is 875 yuan; wheat yields 1,000 jin at 1.1 yuan per jin, and corn 1,100 jin at 0.75 yuan per jin. After deducting land rent, each mu loses 150 yuan.

It is understood that small-scale transfers between farming households in Yanjin County cost 600-800 yuan per mu, but transfers between farmers and leading enterprises, cooperatives and large grain growers require 800-1,200 yuan per mu.

In Zhangqiu City, land rent was less than 500 yuan per mu in 2007, now averages 1,100 yuan, and recently there has been even higher, reaching 1,468 yuan directly. Zhang Zhishui, section chief of the legal affairs section of the Zhangqiu City Agriculture Bureau, said: "Large-scale operation can improve efficiency, but we must be alert to land rent rising too fast."

At present, structural adjustment has become the biggest confusion for new types of entities.

"Wheat harvest is coming soon. After planting wheat, what should we plant? We are not in the corn reduction subsidy area. What policies are there? When will they be introduced?" Chen Changhai felt uncertain. He said: "Given this year's market, continuing to plant corn will definitely be wasted effort. This year I plan to adjust several dozen mu to grow peanuts. If that does not work out, the land will have to be returned."

"Now we are very passive. If we do not plant corn, there really is no suitable crop. It is hard for large households to change direction, and without policy, who dares take the risk?" Guo Weifeng is waiting for policies to be introduced quickly. He said farm machinery cannot simply be replaced at will; they have bought a lot of machinery specifically for corn. If they do not plant corn, the loss on machinery alone will not be small.

"The urgent task is to help new types of entities and farmers get through this difficult period as soon as possible, so that those who know how to farm and can farm do not suffer losses. Only then will agriculture have hope in the future," said Luo Peng, deputy county head of Yanjin County in charge of agriculture.

4. To transfer, or not to transfer?

Developing trusteeship and contract planting to drive ordinary farmers can also achieve large-scale operation. The government and the market should both exert force to make up for shortcomings in socialized services.

Land transfer has cooled. In the future, is it better to transfer or not to transfer?

Luo Peng believes that land transfer should follow its natural course and be moderate, compatible with the non-agricultural transfer and employment of rural labor. How large exactly counts as "moderate"? The county has conducted surveys, and the ideal operating scale for leading enterprises and cooperatives is 500-1,000 mu.

"Achieving moderate-scale operation is not only about land transfer." Luo Peng said that, as things stand, relying on the socialized service system and adopting methods such as land trusteeship and contract planting can also drive the vast number of ordinary farmers. This can give play to the "intensive and careful cultivation" of individual households and also achieve large-scale, specialized production. It is a future development direction.

In the process of market-oriented reform of grain prices, to solve the problem of "who will farm the land," it is fundamentally necessary to advance structural reform of the agricultural supply side, give play to the enthusiasm of both the government and the market, support the development and growth of new types of operating entities such as cooperatives and large grain growers, and make up for the shortcomings in agricultural socialized services.

In the survey, large households' opinions on the direct grain subsidy policy were the most concentrated. "Whether or not you grow grain, you can get the subsidy. It seems to have become a kind of 'welfare,' while those actually growing grain get no subsidy." They believe that "whoever grows grain benefits" is the original intent of state subsidies, and suggest setting up special subsidy funds for large grain growers, with subsidies issued according to the area planted to grain.

Some cooperatives reported that subsidies are not issued in time and are a bit late: "This year's agricultural machinery purchase subsidy has not yet come down, and the spring machinery purchase period has already passed. The subsidy amount is also insufficient. Last year the whole county had only 280 quota units for corn harvesters, and many people could not apply."

At the institutional level, they hope to implement financial policies supporting agriculture, arrange a certain amount of agricultural credit funds, and ease the seasonal and temporary funding needs of new types of entities.

With policy support, new types of entities also need to find ways to face the market. Century Rich Cooperative extends the industrial chain, processing grain into stone-milled wheat flour and stone-milled corn grits, raising the added value of grain and defusing market risks; the Funong Cooperative in Weiqiu Township, Yanjin, tries switching to sweet potatoes, processing them into handmade vermicelli, selling 1 jin for 15 yuan and increasing income by 300 yuan per mu.

How can large-scale grain growing make money? In 2014, all 1,200 mu of land in Songjiabu Village, Longshan Subdistrict Office, Zhangqiu City, was transferred as a whole to Lianqing Family Farm. Last year corn prices fell, but this had almost no impact on Song Shilian, who planted more than 700 mu of corn. "We sold all of it to farms as silage corn. Each mu produced 3.5 tons, and one ton sold for 475 yuan. Altogether, one mu could earn 1,200 yuan." According to his research, the straw recovery market is currently large. Last year he also purchased 600 tons of straw, earning more than 50 yuan per ton.

Changing the organizational form of large-scale operation, Century Rich Cooperative took 700 mu of land under trusteeship, with unified seed supply, unified management and unified harvesting. "The biggest advantage is that the land still belongs to the farmers themselves. The cooperative charges a service fee, and we no longer have to bear such heavy rent pressure," Zhao Guohuan said.

Only by making agriculture an industry with prospects and making farming a respectable occupation can the difficult question of "who will farm the land" find an answer.