Dang Guoying: Why should we create conditions for farmers to work part-time nearby?

By the end of 2017, there were more than 3 million new agricultural business entities such as family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and leading agricultural enterprises in China, and more than 15 million new professional farmers. What kind of problems is China's agriculture in the transition period facing at present, and what is the solution? On October 26, at the "2021 Rural Revitalization Summit Forum", Dang Guoying, a senior researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, shared some of his thoughts on the perspectives of farmers' income, rural industry, and urban-rural relations.

Create conditions for part-time work nearby

"The opportunity cost of idle time for traditional smallholder farmers is zero, but the opportunity cost of modern farmers' idle time is close to the wage rate. Therefore, if peasant households do not work part-time and their income level cannot be raised, it will be very difficult for rural revitalization. "Dang Guoying found in the survey that compared with professional farmers, the possibility of small farmers obtaining income in agricultural leisure time is very small, but the possibility of professional farmers obtaining income in agricultural leisure time is relatively large." We believe that the more specialized, large-scale and modern agriculture is, the more farmers need to work part-time; from the experience of some developed countries, the main labor force should work part-time near the farm. ”

Roughly calculated, there are about 500,000 administrative villages in rural areas in China, with an average of 400 mu of arable land and 1,600 members of collective economic organizations in each village, and agricultural resources can only enable 274 members to reach the level of per capita disposable income (43,800 yuan) of urban residents. Dang Guoying believes that the actual agricultural population of members of collective economic organizations is about 800 people in each administrative village, and if these people want to reach the urban income level, they need to rely on part-time work to obtain 65% of the total income.

"Part-time work is an important way to increase farmers' incomes. The total size of our country's economy is 100 trillion yuan, and the country's nearby demand for part-time employment is 64 trillion yuan, that is to say, if the economic scale below the urban level reaches 64 trillion yuan, the income level of rural households is similar to that of urban residents. ”

Dang Guoying introduced four conditions under which the income of peasant households in some developed countries is slightly higher than that of urban residents: First, the peasant households must be in the vicinity of the same industry; second, there must be an industry in the vicinity; third, there are organizations that carry the economic activities of the agricultural industrial chain; and fourth, the rural population is several times that of the agricultural population.

Data show that between 2008 and 2017, the proportion of Chinese farmers' income from agriculture to total income fell from 48.7% to 37.4%. "To increase peasant incomes, it is necessary to provide convenient conditions for farmers to work part-time." Dang Guoying believes that China's peasants should not mainly work in different places, should not leave some family members in their hometowns, should live together with the whole family, and have part-time work near the family; the layout of the agricultural industrial chain should not only "float" the cities, but also "sink" the rural areas; all kinds of "leading enterprises" in the industrial chain should not all be ordinary profit-making enterprises, but also have professional cooperatives with farmers as members. "At present, China does not have a strong platform to support farmers to share the value of the agricultural industry chain through cooperative membership, but in fact, it is necessary to support this platform."

Take a serious look at leisure agriculture

Dang Guoying introduced that rural industries are generally divided into eight categories: the first is the agricultural industry; the second is the agricultural industry chain related industries; the third type is the agricultural industry chain side industries, mainly to meet the non-food consumption needs of rural residents of the production and service industry, such as rural environmental protection industry, this part of the industry is related to the size of the population, financial transfer payments, generally speaking, will reach about 3 times the value of the agricultural industry chain; the fourth type is agricultural and rural experience, sightseeing, from the perspective of international experience, in a larger area, The GDP of this part of the industry should not exceed 10% of the agricultural GDP; the fifth type is small-scale resource development industries, such as small and medium-sized mining; the sixth type is pension enterprises; the seventh type is independent manufacturing enterprises; and the eighth type is rural traditional handicraft industries.

"For rural revitalization, the most important thing is the first three categories, namely agricultural industry, agricultural industry chain related enterprises and agricultural industry chain side enterprises." Dang Guoying said that the prosperity of rural industries can be achieved by doing a good job in these three categories, "You know, the cost of modern agriculture includes the purchase of specialized services, capital utilization, labor costs and ground rent costs, which are relatively high." The latter five categories, especially agricultural leisure tourism, although more eye-catching, but for farmers, there are challenges with higher input costs. ”

How effective is the rural development of the resort industry? Dang Guoying believes that seasonal residents are generally more affluent than year-round residents, but they contribute less to the local economy, "And studies have found that taxes on seasonal housing have failed to produce fiscal benefits that offset the additional cost of municipal services." ”

Equalization of basic public services in urban and rural areas

"Public services have requirements for scale, such as schools, hospitals, etc.; public services must adapt to the requirements of ecological protection; public services have requirements for the working and living environment of high-end practitioners." Dang Guoying said that in order to retain people in rural revitalization, it is necessary to balance the layout of cities and towns and improve the rural public service conditions of peasant households.

The focus of rural development is on small cities, and small cities should have high-quality facilities, so that they can become the foothold of agricultural and rural service talents, the bearing base of advanced culture, and a distribution center. Dang Guoying introduced that according to China's national conditions, the towns in the rural areas of the eastern, central and western regions can have different municipal radiation areas, and in general, between 100-300 square kilometers, vigorously develop rural towns with small urban functions, build municipalities into agricultural service centers according to national requirements, sink more links of the agricultural industrial chain to municipalities, and the state supports farmers' professional cooperatives to become operators of the main links of the agricultural industrial chain.

"Through the balanced layout of the municipalities, the scattered farmers can reach the municipality within half an hour's drive, thereby improving the rural public service conditions of the farmers." To this end, it is necessary to support the linkage between the increase and decrease of rural construction land within the scope of counties (cities) and ensure the supply of construction land needed for the total population of urban built-up areas exceeding 20,000 people. Dang Guoying suggested that in areas with a population size of less than 30,000 people in areas of more than 100 square kilometers in a row, it is necessary to be cautious in comprehensively promoting rural revitalization and take ecological protection as the focus; the population of areas within 100 square kilometers of the continuous area is greater than 30,000 people, and it is necessary to focus on the construction of cities and towns, and adopt the policy of tilting industrial layout and population growth.

"Rural areas must have non-agricultural residents who far exceed the number of farmers, including practitioners in other links of the agricultural industry chain, but these residents are not suitable to be neighbors of farmers, so they should become municipal residents, bringing a certain population size and density to the municipality, and the population size of the built-up area of more than 20,000 people is a necessary condition for the effective operation of public service facilities, and such a town may become a livable small city."

Dang Guoying suggested that policy makers should establish the concept of "big agricultural policy" to solve the problem of raising funds for the construction of cities and towns, and moreover, the funds for the construction of large and medium-sized cities and villages should be appropriately cut to increase investment in municipal construction; the western region should apply to the state to establish a "special zone for large agricultural development" and implement tax exemptions for investment in all aspects of the agricultural industrial chain that sinks to the municipalities, not only to produce agricultural raw materials, but also to widely participate in the value-added part of the industrial chain; local governments apply to the state to establish a "provincial and municipal farmers' professional cooperative reform pilot zone". Cooperatives must do a good job, break through all kinds of rules and regulations, carry out experiments in the reform of farmers' professional cooperatives, and support the increase of construction land in townships and districts through the policy of allocating land indicators such as "linking increase and decrease".

Beijing News reporter Zhao Lixin

Edited by Zhang Shujing Proofreader Lucy