Exclusive article by China's well-off network
Text丨Bai Yimin
The Japan Agricultural Cooperatives have created a miracle of agricultural development that belongs to the East Asian model: it has united the once ubiquitous small peasant class to form a huge industrial entity to play with the market, and has not only achieved agricultural self-reliance, but even made farmers rich. This also provides a positive reference for other countries and regions in Asia.
In the context of world trade integration, no country can stick to a self-sufficient small-scale peasant economy, and it has become the key to seek and explore a suitable agricultural development model.
Bai Yimin
Vice Chairman of the New Infrastructure Investment Committee of the Investment Association of China, Chief Economist of the Green Enterprise Working Committee of the China Green Development Association
The Japan Agricultural Cooperative, which is "industry-business finance".
In the beginning, Japan also followed the example of family farms in the United States. However, Japan is an island nation, and the per capita arable land is very limited, and the traditional concept of Japanese farmers who regard the land as their life makes it difficult to realize the American model.
Since then, in the process of continuous practice, due to the influence of Mitsui, Mitsubishi and other foundations, Japan has gradually formed a set of agricultural models that suit its own national conditions - Japan Agricultural Cooperatives. Through a series of strict organizational systems established from the central to the local level, the Japan Agricultural Cooperatives have built a huge organizational structure that integrates "production (agricultural production)", "business (trade, supply and marketing)", and "finance (credit insurance)" throughout the country.
The Japan Agricultural Cooperative is the main organization that serves the socialization of agriculture in Japan, and its services are very extensive and almost ubiquitous. In the entire chain of agricultural industrialization development, the Japanese agricultural cooperatives, enterprises and farmers have jointly formed an industrialization model of "company + agricultural cooperatives + farmers". The Japan Agricultural Cooperatives receive agricultural products from grassroots agricultural cooperative farmers through their own production enterprises and processing companies in which they have a stake, process and add value, and return the profits to farmers, thus forming a healthy and recyclable agricultural industrial system.
At the same time, the Japan Agricultural Cooperative has a special "general trading company", JA Zen-no. It has given full play to the advantages of general trading companies in the fields of trade, investment, finance, human resources, intelligence, and logistics, and has long gone beyond the mere organization of agricultural production and has played a positive and important role in easing social contradictions, protecting the economic interests of small farmers and small businessmen, and strengthening the industrial mix of rural peasants who are self-reliant and mutually reliant.
In the system of the Japanese Agricultural Cooperatives, the financial business has never been separated from other real industries. Whether it is the Central Treasury of Agriculture and Forestry on the first floor of the central institution or the Federation of Credit Agricultural Cooperatives (hereinafter referred to as the "Credit and Agriculture Federation") at the grassroots level, almost all of the loan services they provide are used to help the development of agriculture and rural areas, and they always insist that the main body of financial services should be the starting point of agriculture, rural areas and farmers.
In addition to guiding agricultural production (production), providing trade services (business) and credit and financial support (financing), the scope of the functions of the Japan Agricultural Cooperative is also expanding, and even extends to news, tourism, etc., such as the Japan Agricultural Shimbun, which is the only Japanese newspaper specializing in agriculture, and the newspaper can enrich the daily entertainment life of farmers with various information such as food and agricultural recipes.
It is undeniable that the Japanese Agricultural Cooperatives have indeed created a miracle of agricultural development that belongs to the East Asian model: it unites the once ubiquitous small peasant class to form a huge industrialized entity to play with the market, thus avoiding the weakness and uncertainty of farmers when they enter the market, and not only achieving agricultural self-reliance, but even achieving prosperity for farmers. This also provides a positive reference for Asian countries and regions.
The Korea Agricultural Association and the Taiwan Agricultural Association
In South Korea, which is adjacent to Japan, the agricultural cooperatives are mainly transplanted from the Japanese mainland.
In the beginning, the Korea Agricultural Association was only responsible for economic activities such as agricultural products, while the Agricultural Bank of Korea was responsible for agricultural finance, which was mainly used to solve the financing problems of agricultural associations.
In 1961, the Korean Agricultural Cooperatives Act was enacted, which integrated the former agricultural associations and agricultural banks into a national agricultural cooperative organization, the Korea Agricultural Cooperative. Through continuous efforts, the total assets of the Korea Agricultural Cooperative have reached 139.7 trillion won, and it has grown into the world's fourth largest cooperative organization with 1,200 branches of the Central Association, 3,500 branches of regional associations, 30 subsidiaries, and 170,000 employees.
Similar to the structure and function of the Japanese agricultural cooperatives, the Korean agricultural cooperatives also have the basic framework of "industry-business integration". The sales network of Korea Agricultural Cooperative covers all regions of South Korea and has more than 1,800 sales organizations, including purchasing points, sorting points, storage rooms, processing centers and sales offices, basically forming a complete agricultural product industry chain and enhancing the competitiveness and scale advantage of farmers in the market economy.
Hannonghyup also owns NH Nonghyup Financial Holdings, which is the only financial institution in Korea that is composed of pure private capital. In Korea, Nonghyup Finance includes a comprehensive financial system such as Nonghyup Bank, Nonghyup Insurance, Nonghyup Securities, and Nonghyup Futures. It is with the support of the financial sector of the agricultural cooperatives that the economy of rural areas in Korea has been able to grow and progress by leaps and bounds.
Similar to South Korea, in Taiwan, China, the Taiwan Farmers' Association has also learned from the experience of the Japanese Agricultural Cooperatives. However, the Taiwan Farmers' Association focuses more on credit, insurance, agricultural product distribution and agricultural extension business, and mainly uses the surplus of credit insurance business to subsidize the expenses brought about by the free service of technology promotion and cultural life services. Today, the Taiwan Peasant Association is the most widely distributed, most influential, most complete and most functional peasant organization in Taiwan, serving all aspects and fields of agricultural production and operation.
There is a saying among Taiwan's peasants: "If you have money, you will borrow it." It can be seen that Taiwan's peasant associations are an important guarantee for the development of local agriculture, rural areas, and peasants. In addition to financial and credit services, similar to the Japan-Korea Agricultural Cooperatives, the Taiwan Farmers' Associations also have other basic functions, such as establishing an effective agricultural product distribution system, implementing various agricultural economic policies and new agricultural technologies, and establishing cultural and educational undertakings for farmers.
Ryan's "Trinity" of Rural Cooperation
In 2001, at the International Symposium on Villager Autonomy sponsored by the Ministry of Civil Affairs, Chen Lin, a doctoral student from Tsinghua University, published an article entitled "A Preliminary Study on the Model of Agricultural Cooperatives as Non-Profit Intermediary Organizations". In the article, Chen Lin said that the model of rural cooperation, between the European and American models and the Japanese and Korean models, is particularly worthy of reference given the fact that China is a small-scale peasant society in East Asia.
In April 2005, Chen Lin, who was already a postdoctoral fellow at the School of Public Policy and Management of Tsinghua University, went to Zhejiang as a high-level talent introduced by the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee and served as the deputy mayor of Ruian City, Zhejiang. After coming to Rui'an, Chen Lin immediately presided over the pilot work of the "three-in-one" cooperative economic reform of farmers' professional cooperation (production), supply and marketing cooperation (business), and credit cooperation (financing).
In June 2005, the Shui On Rural Cooperative Bank passed the Resolution on Supporting the Preparation of the Shui On Rural Cooperative Association. In 2006, "guiding the establishment of agricultural cooperatives" was included in the "Government Work Report" of the Ruian Municipal Government of Wenzhou, Zhejiang. In March of the same year, the Ruian Rural Cooperative Association was formally established, which is composed of 8 core member units such as cooperative banks and supply and marketing cooperatives, and nearly 100 professional farmer cooperatives, agricultural machinery cooperatives and village economic cooperatives.
"Trinity serves the three rural areas, and the integration of all sections coordinates the urban and rural areas", which has become the motto of the Ruian Agricultural Association. During Chen Lin's tenure, Ruian has successively explored and established the country's first comprehensive rural cooperative organization "Ruian Agricultural Cooperative", the country's first property insurance rural insurance mutual cooperative "Xingmin Mutual Aid Cooperative", and the first county-level rural credit guarantee company in the national supply and marketing cooperative system "Ruian Agricultural Insurance".
In 2021, the per capita disposable income of rural areas in Ruian City was 39,424 yuan, an increase of nearly five times from 9,439 yuan in 2006. At the same time, Shui On has also built the country's first "Trinity+" modern agricultural service center, which has led 272 cooperatives and family farms, 4,215 large-scale growers, 3 vegetable trading markets and 2 financial institutions to form an industrial consortium.
Ruian Agricultural Cooperative has built a comprehensive service platform integrating production, supply and marketing, credit and other multiple functions, integrating the circulation advantages of supply and marketing cooperatives, the production advantages of farmers' cooperatives, and the financial advantages of credit cooperatives. The "trinity" model aggregates service resources, reduces service costs, improves service levels, and better meets the service needs of farmers and new agricultural business entities.
Not only in Wenzhou Rui'an, Zhejiang Supply and Marketing Cooperatives, as the carrier of various reforms, will also integrate their own deepening reforms into the construction of production, supply and marketing, credit "trinity" agricultural cooperative organization system, and organically combine with the agricultural management system, rural financial system, and the transformation of agriculture-related departments. Nowadays, a new pattern of large-scale cooperation, large-scale service, and large-scale industrial development has been initially formed.
("Xiaokang", exclusive article of China's well-off network)
This article was published in the early January 2024 issue of Xiaokang