How can abandoned farmland be addressed? Developing large-scale farming is an effective path

Land is the foundation of the people's food and the source of farmers' prosperity. However, with social development and progress, many of the strong laborers in rural areas have gone out to work, leaving behind only elderly people and young children with limited capacity for labor. Combined with the policy that farmers may change but the land does not, a strange phenomenon has emerged in rural areas: those who want to farm have no land, while those who do not farm hold the land. Much of the land is left uncultivated and overrun with weeds. Therefore, for China's rural areas to develop, land must be readjusted, large-scale farming must be vigorously developed, mechanized farming must be developed, and individual agriculture must be pushed toward corporatization, so as to ensure that those who want to farm have land, those who do not farm have no land, those who do not plant have no land, and those who want to plant have land.

Developing large-scale land farming and preventing farmland from being abandoned cannot be separated from advancing the transfer of land use rights. At present, it is not uncommon for entire rural families to work away from home year-round; even when they return home for festivals, they stay only a few days to keep their elders company. As a result, truly few laborers remain in rural areas engaged in agricultural production, leading to the phenomenon of abandoned farmland. Moreover, the slow transfer of rural land contractual management rights restricts the development of large-scale farming. Therefore, all localities should introduce relevant policies as soon as possible to advance the transfer of rural land use rights, so that land use rights are transferred in a reasonable, orderly and standardized manner, thereby advancing agricultural mechanization and modernization to meet the basic conditions for developing large-scale farming and maximize the benefits of large-scale land farming.

Developing large-scale land farming and preventing farmland from being abandoned also cannot be separated from accelerating the transfer of rural labor. Achieving large-scale farming on rural land means that a large number of rural laborers must bid farewell to the land entirely. Therefore, great efforts must be made to transfer rural labor and resolve their employment prospects. This requires local governments, in light of local realities, to adopt various measures such as skills training, building labor service bases in other regions, forming labor service associations, cultivating labor service brokers, carrying out labor service matching activities and strengthening rights protection services, actively promoting the transformation of rural labor transfer from employment to entrepreneurship, so that farmers who are attached to the black soil and have capital, strength and experience can achieve self-employment and return-home entrepreneurship, or go to cities to work and find employment, or engage in secondary and tertiary industries locally.

Developing large-scale land farming and preventing farmland from being abandoned also cannot be separated from the selection and cultivation of large-scale farming entities. As the saying goes: for a train to run fast, it all depends on the locomotive. Developing large-scale farming on rural land is by no means something that can be achieved by casually selecting one or two farmers. Local governments must think about the question of "what kind of people the land should be handed over to for cultivation." In accordance with the requirements of "production at scale, products with brands, operations with sites, supporting facilities and management with systems," they should provide systematic training to those "old hands" who are keen on agricultural production, thereby selecting and cultivating specialized large-scale operators in different production fields such as planting and breeding, guiding them to establish new-type specialized farmers' cooperatives, implementing corporatized operations, and making them the main entities of large-scale land farming who "understand production, have technology, are good at business and can manage."

Developing large-scale land farming and preventing farmland from being abandoned, moreover, cannot be separated from the building of agricultural mechanization. In large-scale land farming, the use of mechanized plowing and planting can effectively raise labor productivity and free rural laborers from heavy toil. Therefore, we can say this: the building of agricultural mechanization is an important guarantee and technical support for achieving large-scale land farming; without agricultural mechanization, there is no large-scale land farming. To this end, all localities should increase funding for the building of agricultural mechanization, develop and research new agricultural machinery, establish a compensation system for the renewal and scrapping of agricultural machinery, and guide farmers to eliminate and upgrade old and outdated farm machinery and tools. At the same time, farmers engaged in agricultural production should be trained in the operation of new machinery, so that farmers can afford to buy it and use it well.

In short, developing large-scale land farming must respect farmers' wishes and protect farmers' land contractual rights and interests; governments at all levels must not use administrative orders to force it forward. This requires governments at all levels to formulate and issue relevant preferential policies supporting large-scale land farming, and actively help farmers solve problems such as agricultural production loans and agricultural technical services, thereby accelerating the pace of developing large-scale land farming and preventing the occurrence of abandoned farmland.