Dang Guoying: We must firmly promote the large-scale and modern operation of agriculture and let the rural industry grow

Dang Guoying, a senior researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences

Modern agriculture is an integration, not just a planting and breeding industry that operates on the land; it must be a network, a three-dimensional structure containing points, lines and surfaces.

Tian Aoyun / From Beijing

"Increasing farmers' incomes, enhancing agricultural competitiveness, and accelerating the construction of modern agricultural integration and modernization are the three problems facing rural revitalization." On October 26, at the "2021 Rural Revitalization Summit Forum" with the theme of "Industrial Empowerment and Rural Revitalization", Dang Guoying, a senior researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, opened the scene and threw out the problem of increasing farmers' income in rural revitalization.

On the issue of increasing farmers' income, he put forward suggestions and programs from the aspects of world agricultural development, rural development thinking, and the recent rural revitalization policies introduced by various localities:

The first is to regard the part-time work of peasant households as an indispensable way to increase peasants' incomes.

Dang Guoying found in the survey that compared with professional farmers, the possibility of basically self-sufficient small farmers earning income in their agricultural leisure time is very small, and the opportunity cost of their agricultural leisure time is close to zero. "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 can work part-time near the farm."

Dang Guoying said that if China's peasant households want to make their income comparable to that of urban residents through nearby part-time employment, the total economic scale below the town (including the town) should reach about 64 trillion yuan, while the total scale of China's economy is only about 100 trillion yuan. This is certainly not possible in the short term.

Taking some developed countries as an example, the level of agricultural specialization is very high, and the scale of family farm operations is very large, but the income of family farms is still very important. In the United States, for example, the share of farm farming as a share of total income has fallen from 50 percent in 1960 to 15 percent today. This means that most of the income of American farmers comes from areas other than land production.

In the United States, there are four conditions for the income of peasant households to be slightly higher than that of urban residents: one is that the peasant households must be nearby and part-time; the second is that there must be an industry in the vicinity; the third is that there is an effective organization that carries the economic activities of the agricultural industry chain, such as farmers' professional cooperatives across administrative regions; and the fourth is that the rural population is several times that of the agricultural population.

"The problem of part-time employment in our country is quite prominent." Dang Guoying said that the proportion of non-agricultural income in the income of peasant households in China is increasing, but the four conditions mentioned above are not sufficient enough compared with the United States.

Second, enhancing the competitiveness of agriculture is the foundation of rural revitalization.

"Agricultural scale operation is an important condition for the growth of farmers' income." Dang Guoying said that although the scale of operation of farmers' families is getting larger and larger, the change in scale and the change in farmers' income have not formed a relationship between rising water. Therefore, improving the competitiveness of farmers is also the foundation of rural revitalization.

Starting from China's national conditions, it can be divided into two types: "small farmers + professional services" and "large farmers + professional services". In The investigation in Jiangsu, Dang Guoying encountered a cooperation case of "small farmers + professional services", "the local call is continuous farming, the land boundary is broken, from the perspective of the distribution of contracting rights, the operating farmers are already land lessors, and have established a relatively complete contract with the operators." ”

Dang Guoying believes that in the long run, the circulation of rural areas is not only the circulation of management rights, whether the right to contract can also be transferred, "This is a very challenging reform opinion, we hope to further deepen the reform of the land contracting system, and give more powerful functions to farmers' land use rights." ”

Dang Guoying held that it is necessary to firmly promote large-scale agricultural operation, continuously improve the level of operation, and realize the transformation of small farmers into family farms; we cannot regard small farmers as the long-term foundation of modern agriculture, and small farmers cannot really form a close interest connection with cooperatives; we must change our understanding of cooperatives and not confuse contemporary farmers' cooperatives with agricultural cooperatives before reform and opening up.

The third is to promote the modernization of the entire industrial chain of rural agriculture.

"Relying on the expansion of the scale of agricultural operations, Chinese farmers have not solved the income problem. In addition, although the scale of farmers' operations in China has increased, the degree of integrated modernization of modern agriculture is far from enough. Dang Guoying introduced that modern agriculture is an integration, not only the planting and breeding industry operating on the land, it must be a network-based integration.

Dang Guoying divided the industries that exist in the countryside into eight categories, and emphasized that the agricultural industry, the related industries of the agricultural industry chain, and the side of these industries are the most important. The development and growth of these three industries is enough to support the industrial base of rural revitalization.

Dang Guoying explained that it is difficult for peasants to achieve rural revitalization by relying only on land agriculture. "This problem is actually a problem of accounting, and the narrow sense of the agricultural industry accounts for about 7%-8% of GDP, which is already a good result." How many times is the agricultural industry chain at this scale? In the United States, it is 10 times, and the part that sinks to the countryside is conservatively said to be 3 times; many industrial links in the domestic agricultural industry chain float in the city, and the degree of sinking towns is relatively low. ”

Dang Guoying said that the industries in the agricultural industry chain, including the provision of agricultural production materials, the development and application of agricultural technology, the circulation of agricultural products and means of production, finance and insurance, and the processing of agricultural products, are all different industrial branches of the agricultural industry chain.

In his opinion. Some links in the agricultural industry chain sink into the town, plus other related industries, which are enough to support the prosperity of a town. In this process, the growth of farmers' income will continue to deepen the sharing of the value of the agricultural industry chain.

"In an area of more than 100 square kilometers in a row, if the total population size is less than 30,000 people, we must be cautious in comprehensively promoting rural revitalization." Rural areas with greater population density should pay attention to the construction of municipalities in the region and make them the center of the surrounding agricultural areas. Dang Guoying stressed that there is also a need to deepen reform in the mode of input, such as whether it can establish the concept of large agricultural policy, whether it can make the construction land indicators generated by the "increase and decrease linkage" used for urban and town construction to promote the integration of urban and rural development, etc., which need to be seriously studied.

The forum was hosted by China Real Estate News and China Academy of Urban and Regional Governance, and supported by China Association for Poverty Alleviation and Development, Rural Revitalization Committee of China Association for Asian Economic Development, and China Rural Revitalization Magazine.