The source of vitality for the development of agriculture, rural areas and farmers lies in reform
Recently, the research group from the Rural Work Committee of the Sichuan Provincial Party Committee that goes to the grassroots and stays at local sites visited Chengdu, Deyang, Mianyang, Yibin, Neijiang, Nanchong, Bazhong and other places successively, adopting various methods such as open and secret inspections, discussions and questionnaire surveys to observe the fresh practices at the grassroots level and listen to voices from the front line.
1. Land share cooperation has far-reaching significance, and there are diverse forms of invigorating management rights. For a long time, the main method of transferring land management rights has been leasing, which has poor stability, high costs and many problems. Questionnaire surveys show that 18.2% of farmers who transferred land had disputes with operating entities. The research group believes that the fundamental reason is that farmers did not participate and did not fully and continuously share in the development returns.
In response to these situations, various localities have thought of many countermeasures, including the "rural land transfer performance guarantee insurance" being promoted in Chengdu and the "land transfer + rent floor + comprehensive services" mechanism explored in Meishan. Among the various methods currently being actively explored to invigorate management rights, the main ones are land share cooperation and land trusteeship. At present, the province's land share cooperatives have reached 3,417, with 446,000 mu of land joined into the cooperatives.
Among all methods of invigorating management rights, land share cooperation can enable farmers to "leave the land without losing the land, leave the land without losing rights." The research group believes that land share cooperation will become the mainstream model for invigorating management rights, and the transformation from the household contract responsibility system to the household contracted shareholding land system is a trend of historical development.
2. "1+2" is a good model and has achieved mutual benefit and win-win results for multiple parties. The "1" is the land share cooperative: farmers form land shares by converting land contractual management rights into capital and shares
cooperatives, forming large-scale land operation. The "2" refers to agricultural professional managers and socialized service organizations: agricultural professional managers are responsible for proposing specific production plans and organizing production activities; socialized service organizations are responsible for providing specialized agricultural services.
The distribution method between the cooperative and professional managers and farmers is mainly distribution of profits after deducting costs, that is, after deducting production costs, the remaining net income is distributed at a ratio of 1:2:7.
This model has now been promoted across the board. Its greatest significance lies in systematically exploring the many issues involved in the "second leap" of agricultural production and operation, and exploring the many elements in the new agricultural operation system.
3. Family farms are developing rapidly, and cooperatives are getting bigger and bigger. After the Central "Document No. 1" of 2013 first proposed "family farms," in only 2 years Sichuan's family farms increased to 23,000. Sichuan's practice shows that this rising "new main force" of modern agricultural development, namely new agricultural operation entities, relying on specialized production, mechanized operations, large-scale operation and market-oriented operation, is rewriting the farming landscape of rural Sichuan.
4. Government purchase of agricultural socialized services is a good approach. Guanghan City, Sichuan Province, takes the construction of a socialized service system for the grain industry as a breakthrough, and in the form of government purchase has carried out agricultural socialized services throughout the entire process, including mechanized farming, centralized seedling raising and unified pest and disease control
services, and has established a quantifiable performance assessment mechanism for socialized services. At present, the city's socialized service organizations have grown to 95, and the comprehensive agricultural machinery operation level has reached 77.16%.
In building a new agricultural service system, the research group believes that several aspects must be grasped: First, it is necessary to grasp both public welfare and commercial operations, and pay attention to giving play to the role of social forces and private capital; second, it must not only adapt to the needs of new agricultural operation entities, but also serve ordinary farmers; third, the team of agricultural science and technology personnel must be energized through reform and become the main force in achievement transformation and innovation and entrepreneurship.
5. Rural cooperative finance takes diverse forms, and farmers have established "their own bank." The village-level poverty alleviation mutual aid societies that Sichuan Province began exploring and establishing in 2005 are a good model of rural cooperative finance. In recent years, Yilong County in the province has broken the previous restrictions of "no returns on membership funds, no wages for management personnel, and a maximum loan of 5,000 yuan," and carried out systematic reform and innovation of village-level poverty alleviation mutual aid societies. Thirty-five percent of the mutual aid society's returns are used as returns on membership funds to mobilize farmers' enthusiasm for joining; 30% of the returns are given to management personnel as wages to mobilize the enthusiasm of management personnel; the upper limit of a single loan is raised to 100,000 yuan to meet actual loan needs; a "chief guarantor" system, an "on-duty guarantee fund" system and a risk reserve
fund system are established to comprehensively prevent and control risks; a unified accounting custodial system is established to ensure the standardized operation of mutual aid societies. In 2015, the mutual aid societies grew to 41, with total funds reaching 37.93 million yuan, of which fiscal funds accounted for only 15%. In 5 years, the fund scale increased by 375%.
Below the provincial level in Sichuan Province, the promotion of rural financial innovation is mainly in three aspects: first, the policy-based guarantee system; second, rural cooperative finance; third, the pilot program of rural property rights mortgage financing currently being advanced. The research group believes that all three directions have great potential, and especially cooperative finance has very large room for development. As long as standardization and guidance are done well, it can absolutely become an important force in rural financial innovation.
6. Assets, resources and funds are turned into shares, and poor farmers receive real benefits. Bazhou District, Sichuan Province, by changing fiscal funds into special funds and adopting methods such as interest subsidies, guarantees and risk sharing, has supported new agricultural operation entities and poor households in obtaining loans and financing of 113 million yuan, driving social capital investment of 357 million yuan; changed direct financing into PPP co-construction, integrated 122 million yuan into the district government financing platform, leveraged 1.25 billion yuan of social capital, and concentrated on promoting the construction of poverty alleviation infrastructure projects; changed unpaid use into equity cooperation, quantifying equity to every member of the collective economic organization and poor households for operational agricultural assets formed by fiscal input; changed direct input into revolving use, in accordance with the principle of "un
compensated funds, paid use, rolling development," establishing industrial development funds of 150,000-200,000 yuan for each of 114 poor villages, lent to poor households to develop short, flat and quick projects, for revolving use.
In this research, the research group deeply recognized that poverty alleviation must rely on reform breakthroughs. Using poverty alleviation policies, cultivating new operation entities, driving poor households to increase income and developing agricultural industries can achieve the effect of "one stone killing many birds"; through reform and innovation in the mode of poverty alleviation input, establishing reasonable risk sharing and income distribution mechanisms can mobilize large amounts of financial and social funds to be invested, truly achieving "living water coming from the source."
Since the provincial party committee proposed the main direction of deepening rural reform in 2014, various localities have truly placed reform in an important position in the work of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and are advancing it in full swing. Data at the overall level can also illustrate the situation: the progress of confirming rural property rights leads the country, and the confirmation of contractual management rights will be basically completed this year; in the past 3 years, the area of contracted land transferred increased by 4.21 million mu, reaching 16.199 million mu, and large grain-growing households and large-scale breeding households increased by 4,178 and 6,808 respectively, while family farms, farmers' cooperative organizations and leading enterprises above designated size increased by 17,000, 28,000 and 840 respectively. Through the joint efforts of the whole province from top to bottom, a path of rural reform with Sichuan characteristics in the new era has already been blazed.