Guide
The implementation of the rural revitalization strategy is the general grasp of China's "three rural areas" work in the new era, and it is also a concrete embodiment of China's comprehensive construction of a socialist modern country and the realization of the second centenary goal in the agricultural and rural fields.
As a well-known "three rural experts" in China, what are the views of Teacher Dang Guoying on the issue of rural revitalization?
Dang Guoying is a doctor of economics, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the chief researcher of the Rural Public Service Research Innovation Team, and a doctoral supervisor.
He has been working on the front line for a long time, mastering the fresh first-hand research data on the topic of rural revitalization, and conducting theoretical research and refinement.
The articles are compiled from: China Rural Discovery, People's Daily Minsheng Weekly, Beijing Daily, etc
Dr. Dang Guoying, Researcher of the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Chief Researcher of the Rural Public Service Research Innovation Team
First, rural revitalization should respond to the three major problems of efficiency, equality and governance
The relationship between agricultural operators who have reached a certain scale and the owners of contracting rights is the first efficiency problem. To achieve economic efficiency, we must take the road of "moderate-scale operation + deepening of social division of labor + socialized services", that is, the establishment of contracting rights transactions, but this is a difficult point, involving the problem of family transfer, the development of small cities and the problem of agricultural product cycle.
Another major efficiency conundrum is the conundrum of public services. Through statistics and data mining, he found that the corresponding expenditure of urban communities is similar to the corresponding expenditure of rural communities, but the rural public service is obviously relatively poor in terms of population coverage and service quality, indicating that there is an efficiency problem in rural public services.
The second conundrum is the equality conundrum. The issue of equality is first manifested in the question of whether peasants' incomes can be increased after public services and large-scale operations; secondly, it is manifested in the accessibility of basic public services, that is, how to enable farmers to actually enjoy public services; and the third is manifested in the problem of social security and the environment, that is, whether cities can carry nostalgia.
The way in which developed countries address this problem is to give farmers the right to free choice, including land circulation, land transaction rights and, in rural development, to make the number of non-agricultural residents outnumber farmers. Social governance requires the integration of urban and rural areas. Judging from the current situation, by about 2040, there will be less than 20 million agricultural workers in the country, and there will be an average of several households in an administrative village.
Second, modern agriculture is the core element of rural revitalization
As a local economic development process, the logical relationship of rural revitalization has four core elements, namely modern agriculture, highly specialized agricultural industrial chain, reasonable urban and rural population layout, and modern industrial organizational structure. Among them, modern agriculture is the core element of rural revitalization. Whether agriculture, especially modern agriculture, develops well or not, is closely related to the level of agricultural scale operation, the degree of specialization of the agricultural industrial chain, and the industrial organization form of farmers, and all these factors are greatly affected by the rational layout of urban and rural populations.
Modern agriculture is an open agriculture, and traditional methods such as slash-and-burn farming and iron ploughing and cattle farming have long been unrealistic. This means that agriculture before, during and after production must rely on the outside world, and it is necessary to establish links with technology, equipment, talents and other elements outside the agricultural area.
This creates the requirement of a rational layout of the urban and rural population. If modern agriculture wants to get sustained and healthy development, the industrial chain service must be modernized, the industrial chain service needs people, and these people must also be served, and must be to achieve urban quality services, otherwise the agricultural industry chain cannot attract high-quality labor resources.
Third, rural revitalization must have correct urban and rural divisions
At this stage, the division of rural and urban areas is based on the level of government. However, in the past urbanization process, the definition of cities and villages has changed, and it needs to be clearer, and the distinction between farmers and urban people also needs to be clarified. At present, many peasants do not go to the land at all, do not belong to the "peasants on the side of the land", and need to have an overall understanding of the relationship between urban and rural areas.
Problems in the definition of urban and rural areas can mislead the management of the national economy. First of all, the unscientific definition of urban and rural areas is not conducive to the formation of accurate policy orientation. The broad concept of the countryside exaggerates the state's investment in the countryside, and it is difficult to avoid the "non-agricultural" tendency of agricultural inputs. For example, the expenditure on comprehensive rural reform under the expenditure on agriculture, forestry and water in the state finance is an input that is easy to deviate from agricultural support.
Secondly, the unreasonable definition of urban and rural areas is not conducive to guiding the rational flow of social capital. Some non-governmental investment projects have nominally invested in the rural areas and developed the so-called agricultural industry, which has received government support, but in the long run, it has nothing to do with agricultural modernization, and because it has lost the agglomeration effect of non-agricultural investment, it has formed inefficient investment.
Finally, the vague definition of urban and rural areas is also not conducive to guiding the rational flow of people. China's urbanization rate is not high overall, and many of the existing organized towns are necessary and likely to develop into small cities, so that China has an average of about one small city per 300 square kilometers in a large area along and east of the "Hu Huan Yong Line". Small cities should be built in accordance with the standards of the city, making them a base for serving the modernization of the agricultural industry chain and a base for the development of characteristic industries. However, the current role positioning of the formed town is more awkward, and the attraction to various elements is not strong, and it is urgent to correct the name.
Fourth, the real node of rural development is in small cities
The real node of rural development is in small cities, which is the foothold of agricultural and rural service talents, the bearing base of advanced culture, and a distribution center that integrates big and big. According to international experience, an agricultural and rural service center can be formed every 100-300 square kilometers, and there is a quality of public service in the city, so that professional farmers can reach this center with a maximum half an hour's drive, and similarly, all kinds of service personnel in the center can also reach any farm with a maximum half an hour's drive, which should be a necessary condition for the development of modern agriculture.
The best public facilities in a county town should not be the county government office building, but the school, hospital, library; and the layout should be balanced, covering 100 to 300 kilometers; the population should be scaled, at least more than 30,000 people, to meet the needs of economic and social development.
Fifth, rural revitalization should deepen the division of labor in rural society
With the expansion of urban economic sectors and the transfer of employment, the average scale of land operation of peasant households has gradually expanded, and the main body of them has gradually become professional farmers. The annual working days of professional farmers in the field production link and other links of the agricultural industry chain make them reach the level of full employment, which is the guarantee for farmers to obtain the average social income and the basis for farmers' prosperity. According to the author's estimates, when the number of rural households in China is reduced to about 30 million households, its level of specialization will likely ensure that their incomes are close to the level of the urban sector. Rural development is also a process of specialization in agricultural regions. Due to differences in natural endowments and economies of scale in different regions, the regional division of labor in agriculture has been specialized. The expansion of the division of labor will greatly improve the level of agricultural technology and management efficiency, and will lead to changes in the organizational mechanism of agricultural operations and changes in the social structure of rural areas.
The organizational carriers of agricultural specialization are mainly family farms and farmers' professional cooperatives. Advances in modern agricultural technology are enough to allow a farmer to have a large scale of land management. An advanced multi-purpose agricultural machinery can complete thousands of acres of work every working day. Therefore, in the field production link, there is no need for peasants to form cooperative organizations, let alone retreat to the era of agricultural collective economy. However, in the service, circulation and processing of agriculture, the larger the scale of cooperation among farmers, the better. Judging from international experience, China's large-scale agricultural professional cooperatives have formed dozens of best in the country.
Sixth, rural revitalization should develop "strong agriculture, small rural areas"
To revitalize the countryside, the eyes can not only focus on the countryside, we must take the integration of urban and rural areas as the fundamental premise of rural revitalization, further give play to the exemplary and leading role of the city in the countryside, and further improve the professional level of the modern agricultural management system.
To revitalize the countryside, it is necessary to develop "strong agriculture and small rural areas." Through urbanization, the labor force is transferred, the cities are bigger and stronger, and finally the labor productivity of agriculture itself is improved, so that farmers become professional farmers, and the real rural settlements are reduced to mainly new professional farmers. This is the city is the city, the village is the village, and there is a developed transportation network connection. To take the road of integrated urban-rural development and lead the countryside by the city, we must first make the city livable. Cities should be built well to improve the quality of residents' living.
The rural population, which is difficult to enter the system of social employment division of labor, should go to the cities
Induced by job competition, small farmers tend to go to the cities to earn a living because of losses, and settle in the cities, so that the peasants who remain in the countryside become a professional and wealthy population fully involved in the social division of labor system. Those rural populations who have difficulty accessing the social employment division system, such as the disabled population of various types, should receive state and social assistance, but this part of the population is not suitable for living in rural areas and should go to the cities for more effective assistance. Modern government housing schemes for the poor (usually buildings) and nutrition schemes are easier to implement in cities and have lower financial costs. After major changes in the rural population layout, if this part of the population is scattered from professional farmers in small settlements, they will not be able to better enjoy any other public services. With proper government guidance, the rural poor will gradually move to the cities, making it easier to achieve the middle class of rural residents.
After the goal of building a moderately prosperous society in an all-round way is achieved, it is necessary to internalize the mechanism for preventing poverty through the establishment of an institutional mechanism for the integration of urban and rural development, form a normal operation system of legal guarantees, market leadership, and government regulation, transform the national poverty alleviation policy into a general income distribution policy, and realize the fairness and justice of social income distribution.
Eighth, rural revitalization should realize that farmers fully share the income of the agricultural industrial chain
An analysis of agricultural operation data in developed countries shows that even if the scale of farm operations is large, such as the average land area of specialized farms in the United States (not counting low-sales farms) of more than a few hundred hectares, the farm operating income of farmers accounts for only a relatively small part of the total income, usually about 20%. The proportion and composition of farmers' income outside the scope of farm operations varies from country to country, but it is related to farmers' sharing of income from other links in the agricultural industry chain. From China's official data, the value of China's food industry chain is about 2 times the value of agricultural raw materials. The agricultural industry chain mainly includes some beverages, some textiles, tobacco processing and other processing industries that use agricultural raw materials. According to the experience of the United States, the food industry chain is also about 2 times the added value of farms, and the total value of the agricultural industry chain is about 5 times the added value of agriculture. It can be seen that the value-added of the agricultural industry chain is more important outside the food industry chain.
An important channel for farmers to share the income of the agricultural industry chain is to become a member or shareholder of the cooperative, and the cooperative must be a giant cooperative that covers the agricultural industry chain as much as possible. Farm production also requires scale operation, but farm production is land-intensive and can be matched with very little labor. Therefore, farmers do not need to use their own land to join cooperatives. However, the operation organization of the agricultural industry chain must be capital-intensive, and some links are still labor-intensive. Therefore, in cooperatives, farmers need to carry out "capital cooperation" and "labor cooperation", otherwise they cannot achieve scale operation. The organizational form of cooperatives also needs to be changed, and there is no need to stick to the old rules of the International Cooperative Union.
Nine, the future of the countryside should have four aspects of change
First, the rural population still has to go out and transfer to small and medium-sized cities to achieve a balance between social governance and services; the real agricultural areas are only small peasant settlements; at that time, the landscape of the land will change.
Second, the income of peasants is higher than the average income of urban people.
Third, it is necessary to effectively improve the rural environment.
Fourth, agriculture should provide high-quality and inexpensive agricultural products, so that Chinese have no problems in the safety and quality of eating.
END
Layout Editor: Cat Cat
Source: Youcheng Entrepreneur Poverty Alleviation Foundation