On the basis of ensuring food security, it is difficult to increase farmers' income

Reporter Fan Sili

To effectively make overall plans to ensure food security and promote the increase of peasants' income, it is necessary to take multiple measures to promote the sustained and stable increase of peasants' income on the basis of ensuring national food security, and effectively solve the problem of difficulty in increasing the income of peasants who grow grain.

"Ensuring national food security is a goal that must be ensured, and promoting farmers' income to increase their income and become rich is an important way to achieve common prosperity for all people. Wei Houkai, director of the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, recently analyzed in an exclusive interview with a reporter from the China Economic Times that in the form of small-scale decentralized operation as the main body, the income of growing grain is relatively low

, there is a certain conflict between these two goals.

Face up to the conflict between the goals of ensuring food security and increasing farmers' incomes

China Economic Times: Ensuring food security and increasing the income of grain farmers are the main goals of rural revitalization, how to understand and view the conflict between these two goals?

Wei Houkai: Due to the high cost of grain production, the rise in grain prices has been limited, and the comparative income from growing grain has been low. Since the complete exemption of agricultural tax and special agricultural product tax in 2006, grain production has not only been unable to bring fiscal revenue to local governments, but also requires a large amount of investment from local finances. While contributing to national food security, grain farmers and grain-producing areas have also made great sacrifices.

The relatively low returns from growing grain and the small contribution to local finances have led to low enthusiasm among peasants for growing grain and insufficient motivation for local grain grabbing. This is embodied in three aspects: First, in the past few years, the tendency of cultivated land to be "non-grain" has been obvious, and this tendency is caused by many factors, such as higher land transfer rents, lower returns on grain planting, lax control over the use of cultivated land, and adjustment of the agricultural structure; second, the phenomenon of cultivated land abandonment is relatively serious, especially in some mountainous areas. The abandonment of a large amount of cultivated land in hilly areas and suburban areas will pose a serious threat to the country's food security; third, the main grain-producing areas are shrinking, the grain self-sufficiency rate in the main marketing areas and the production and marketing balance areas is declining continuously, and only a few provinces in the country are able to transfer grain at present.

In recent years, although the per capita disposable income of rural residents has continued to grow rapidly, the increase in peasants' income mainly depends on wage income and net transfer income, especially the wage income of peasants who go out to work and the transfer income of the government. Peasants receive less net operating income from agricultural production, and their income increases depend more on part-time farming rather than mainly on crops.

Properly Handling the Relationship Between Ensuring Food Security and Promoting Farmers' Income Increase China Economic Times: Ensuring food security and promoting farmers' income increase are important aspects of realizing the mainland's strategic tasks, how to properly handle the conflict between the two major goals?

Wei Houkai: In order to effectively solve the dilemma of grain farmers' difficulty in increasing income, the key is to handle the relationship between ensuring food security and promoting farmers' income increase, organically combine the two goals, increase the government's overall planning, and achieve overall coordination under high-quality development and high-level security. On the one hand, the premise of ensuring food security must be the prerequisite for increasing peasants' incomes, and the adjustment of agricultural structure and supply-side structural reform cannot break through the bottom line of food security. On the other hand, it is necessary to establish a long-term mechanism for diversifying and sustaining income increase for farmers and new types of organizations engaged in grain production, so that the income of grain farmers and new organizations can also grow sustainedly, steadily and rapidly.

The central and provincial-level governments should further increase the intensity of financial and policy support, improve the mechanism for compensating vertical and horizontal interests, and fully arouse the enthusiasm of peasants in growing grain and in local grain grabbing. By improving the diversified interest compensation mechanism, it is truly possible to make it profitable for farmers to grow grain, and to make the main producing areas have the enthusiasm to grasp grain.

We should take multiple measures to ensure food security and increase farmers' incomes

China Economic Times: What specific measures should be taken to coordinate the two major goals and tasks?

Wei Houkai: Under the new situation, it is necessary to adopt a diversified implementation path to ensure food security and promote farmers' income as a whole.

Strengthen the protection and rational use of cultivated land. Strictly abiding by the red line of cultivated land and permanent basic farmland protection and making rational use of cultivated land resources is the basis for ensuring food security and increasing farmers' incomes in an overall manner. It is necessary to further increase investment in construction funds, adhere to high-standard construction, strengthen follow-up management and maintenance, and comprehensively build, manage, and make good use of high-standard farmland. In accordance with the requirements of the "trinity" of quantity, quality and ecology, optimize and improve the balance system of urban and rural construction land occupation and compensation, and truly achieve "one to make up for one, to occupy the superior to compensate for the superior, and to occupy the paddy field to supplement the paddy field". Strictly implement the priority order of cultivated land use, strengthen the management of "non-agricultural" and "non-grain" cultivated land, and ensure that permanent basic farmland is mainly used for grain production, and high-standard farmland is used for grain production in principle. We will carry out in-depth actions to control the abandonment of cultivated land, strengthen the redevelopment and reuse of idle and inefficient land, and actively explore the linkage between villages and villages on rural collective construction land, so as to effectively improve land use efficiency. Strengthen the comprehensive utilization of saline-alkali land and the development of non-traditional cultivated land resources, and continuously expand the space for grain and agricultural production.

Multiple ways to increase food productivity. There is still a big gap between China's grain production and advanced countries in terms of land yield, labor productivity, and resource utilization. It is necessary to make a breakthrough in improving labor productivity in grain production and adopt effective and effective measures to earnestly increase grain productivity. It is necessary to meet the needs of urbanization and the diversification of rural industries, speed up the pace of transfer of agricultural labor, further reduce the number of peasants who grow grain, and realize the operation of grain production on a moderate scale through such means as land transfer, trusteeship services, substitution of cultivation and planting, and shareholding cooperation, so that the peasants who grow grain will embark on the road of professionalization, knowledge, and organization. It is necessary to speed up the innovation of grain science and technology and the cultivation of improved varieties, promote the mechanization and intellectualization of the whole process of grain production, further improve the socialized service system, realize the green, high-quality, characteristic and branded grain production, and continuously improve the level and quality of grain output.

Speed up the development of a modern grain industry. At present, the focus is to accelerate the transformation of grain production methods, continuously extend the food industry chain, upgrade the value chain, build the supply chain, implement the coordination and linkage of the industrial chain, the value chain and the supply chain, and build a vertically integrated and integrated food industry chain. Explore the multi-dimensional functions of food production, especially the economic, cultural, educational, ecological, landscape and other functions, promote the comprehensive and deep integration of food production and food processing, e-commerce logistics, cultural tourism, leisure and health care, and educational experience, and promote the horizontal integration and integration of the food industry. We will continue to optimize the layout of the grain industry, guide and promote more distribution of grain processing links in major grain-producing areas and major grain-producing counties, so that grain farmers and major grain-producing areas can share more of the value-added benefits of the grain industry chain.

Improve the compensation mechanism for the interests of grain production. Compensation for the benefits of grain production includes compensation for the interests of producers, compensation for the interests of the main producing areas and ecological compensation for grain production. At present, the compensation for the interests of grain production in China is mainly concentrated in the compensation of the interests of grain producers and the vertical compensation of the interests of the main grain producing areas, and there is a lack of horizontal compensation mechanism between the grain production and marketing areas, and the national ecological compensation system has not yet included grain production. On the basis of improving the compensation mechanism for the interests of grain producers and further increasing the support for the main grain-producing areas and the major grain-producing counties, we can consider establishing an inter-provincial horizontal compensation mechanism for the interests of grain production and marketing areas in accordance with the principle of "whoever eats grain will receive the money, and whoever adjusts the grain will be compensated." In addition to providing a variety of grain products, grain production also creates ecological service value, grain production should be included in the scope of national ecological compensation, and actively carry out the pilot exploration of the establishment of a grain ecological compensation mechanism, according to the value of different varieties of ecological services provided by grain production, according to the corresponding compensation per mu.