On April 22, China's agriculture and agriculture released a jaw-dropping thing.
Recently, it is the busy season of spring ploughing in Northeast China, and everyone is racing against time for spring ploughing, but in Kailu County, Inner Mongolia, many growers have reported that some town and village cadres have gone to the field to prevent them from plowing the land, and even some village cadres shouted: If you want to farm, you must pay money first.
In an interview with the media, the party secretary of Shuangsheng Village, Jianhua Town, Kailu County, mentioned that "the county asked us to collect money", and there was no regulation on how much to collect, and finally it was charged according to the standard of 200 yuan per mu.
This time, some farmers involved in the land contract area reached 4,650 mu, according to this standard, this means that local farmers have to pay 930,000 yuan to farm normally.
We must know that farming is a matter of course for farmers, and the mainland has always attached great importance to the development of agriculture, and every year during the spring ploughing period, the state will take various measures to ensure the smooth progress of spring ploughing, and there are many places that give subsidies to peasants in purchasing agricultural machinery, fertilizers, seeds, etc.
However, instead of subsidizing the peasants, Kailu County in Inner Mongolia had to ask the peasants to pay money to farm, and if they were unwilling to pay the money, they would not be able to cultivate the land normally.
In response to such an absurd thing, the local cadres not only did not realize the seriousness of the matter, but also pushed forward with confidence.
Regarding some people questioning the matter of collecting money for farming, some local village cadres shouted, "What can I do if 110 comes, and I will collect money if I am asked to collect money"
This did not take the interests of the peasants seriously at all, and even regarded the law as child's play, and when a member of the political and legal committee of a local town responded to this illegal act, everyone's jaws dropped even more.
The deputy secretary of a local town and a member of the Political and Legal Committee responded, "Don't look for me, I don't understand the law"
However, he was able to smoothly cite Article 533 of the Civil Code to talk about the "change of situation".
It can be seen from this that this member of the Political and Legal Committee does not understand the law, but wants to see who the law serves.
This kind of rhetoric that seems to be understood or not understood has further aroused the anger of netizens, and this matter has caused an uproar on the Internet, and the local people have to come out to respond.
However, judging from the actual situation reflected by the local departments, we can only use two words to describe it, that is, "weak heart".
Because there is no law and no reason to prevent farmers from farming, and to require farmers to pay money before farming.
Let's take a look at the cause of this.
The whole thing is a contradiction caused by the improvement of the contracted land.
It turned out that the local villagers signed a land contract with the village, contracting some local saline-alkali land, the contract period is 30 years, and the contract fee is paid in installments, but all the installment fees will be paid in 2022, and there is no controversy about it.
But in the process of contracting land, these villagers have transformed these saline lands over the years, making them usable for farming.
As a result, the local government determined that the land belonged to the newly added cultivated land, and that the new cultivated land was not within the scope of the contract, so the local government required the contractors to pay additional fees before they could farm the land normally, which was called the "supplementary contract fee".
So is this kind of supplementary contract fee legal?
Not legally, to be sure.
When the local peasants sign the contract with the village collective, the scope of the contract, the nature of the land, the duration of the contract, and the cost of the contract are clearly written, and this cannot be changed in black and white.
Moreover, when the local people rented out this land, they also knew that it was ordinary saline-alkali land, so the corresponding price was relatively low.
However, after the local farmers contracted the land, the saline-alkali land was significantly improved by adding organic soil, organic fertilizer, and replanting the land, and turned it into a paddy field that could be cultivated normally, so the local village collective repented.
They began to tear up the contract, believing that the current land already met the standards for paddy field cultivation and that it must be charged according to the cultivated land of the paddy field, so they required farmers to pay a "supplementary contract fee" of 200 yuan per mu before they could farm normally.
This is a completely old practice, completely ignoring some laws such as the Contract Law and the Land Contract Law.
According to the provisions of the Contract Law, once the two parties sign the contract, the rights and obligations of both parties have been clarified, and both parties must strictly follow the relevant provisions of the Contract Law, and cannot change or breach the contract at will.
It is also nonsense to argue that the local argument that the change of circumstances after the land improvement is included in the Civil Code.
In legal practice, three conditions are generally referred to in determining whether the change of circumstances in the Civil Code is met: first, the fact of the change of circumstances, that is, whether the objective circumstances on which the contract is based have indeed changed. The second is to examine whether the change of circumstances was unforeseeable by both parties and there was no fault of either party. The third is to examine whether it is obviously unfair to continue to perform the original contract.
In the case of Kailu County, it was completely foreseeable that the saline-alkali land would be turned into fertile land after improvement, and the objective conditions for the existence of the contract had not changed, and it would be obviously unfair for the local government to tear up the contract at will, and to impose an additional "supplementary contract fee."
Therefore, from a legal point of view, there is no legal basis for the local government to impose additional fees on the contracted land, and it is completely unreasonable.