Now, the whole country has entered a well-off society. So, in the countryside, what kind of life are farmers living now? The author is already an elderly person, and in the summer of 2021, he returned to his hometown in the mountains where he had moved away for 36 years and lived for nearly five months, as an indigenous person, like the villagers, in the countryside, he most truly felt the current well-off life in the countryside. My experience is a frog at the bottom of the well, which may have the meaning of finding nostalgia and not representative, but it is indeed a rough look at the current well-off living state in the countryside.
This is a journal.
1: The storage room of the villagers in their hometown. The people take food as heaven. There was food in the house, and my heart was not in a hurry. Food is the ballast stone of a well-off life.
Start by saying, "Eat." My hometown is In Huaping Town, Jianshi County, Hubei Province, which belongs to a very ordinary alpine mountainous area in central China, and has always mainly produced corn. In addition to farmers growing cash crops (such as tobacco, vegetables, kiwifruit, grapes), food crops are mainly corn and potatoes. But now farmers themselves do not eat corn directly (except when the corn is just ripe to taste new), but convert corn into feed to feed pigs, raise chickens or sell boiled wine, etc., and the main food of farmers is rice, pasta, and potatoes.
2: In the farm yard during the autumn harvest, people are busy using machinery to tear off the shell leaves of the bud valley.
The rice that farmers eat comes from the market, the supply is abundant, and farmers do not lack this money to buy. In the past, the phenomenon of peasants lacking food and starving their stomachs and relying on civil affairs to distribute relief grain during spring famine or disasters no longer exists. In terms of side foods, farmers eat things that are actually more "environmentally friendly" than urban people, such as their own vegetables, fruits, pork, mutton, eggs, chicken is basically self-produced, rarely using pesticides, fertilizers and so on. Farmers feed the commercial pigs and their own pigs in fact, there is a difference in feeding, they will generally open a small stove for their own pigs, mainly feed grain, do not use or use less formula feed bought back in the market.
3: The family should pick up the daughter-in-law and slaughter the fat pigs fed by the family. The pigs that the farmers feed themselves are fed by the family on a small stove, and generally do not feed commercial feed.
4: Home-grown vegetables with farm manure, good quality.
Now, many people who originally moved to the city in the countryside still like to eat their hometown dishes, because their own dishes are original and have a good taste, just like Liu Grandma's entry into the Grand View Garden with some melons and fruits; in the past, the family ate the rest of the "water" to feed pigs, and now, even the water is not fed to pigs, because it generally contains chemicals such as dishwashing liquid, which is easy to cause pig diarrhea. It can also be seen from the banquets of rural farmers to do red and white affairs, and the table face (referring to the dishes on the table) is more realistic than those in the city hotels, generally there are 6-7 meat dishes, and the pork is slaughtered at home. But the villagers who eat are not hungry to eat, and it can be seen that they usually eat well; now, when the farmers are busy, they still need to hire workers (pay) or change jobs (work for work), and the main family must arrange two to three meals a day, and the richness of the meals is similar to the banquet for guests.
Say: "Wear". At present, the level of peasants' clothing is naturally not as good as that of the urban people, but there is no shortage of clothes to wear; the clothes worn and patched are almost extinct. All kinds of clothing are available at the village market. In the past, the old clothes worn by the people in the city could be given to relatives in the countryside or donated, but now, if anyone sends old clothes to relatives in the countryside, it will offend people. Nowadays, if there are red and white villagers gathering in the village, people are actually dressed beautifully; because of the introduction and exchange of a large number of migrant workers, the pace of rural fashion is no slower than that of the city people.
5: There are happy events in the villagers' homes, and several grandmothers eat and drink, and their clothes are very fashionable.
There is also a detail that shows the level of clothing in the countryside today. In the rural fields, there are usually scarecrows that frighten birds, which used to be made of straw, and now many scarecrows are also old clothes that people no longer wear. In fact, these clothes are not yet damaged. Nowadays, the children of peasant families generally attend kindergartens or schools in urban or rural market towns, and their clothing is not worse than that of urban children. The elderly who are old at home are dressed very warmly.
6: The scarecrow in the field is dressed better than the people of earlier years.
Say: "Live". On the whole, the average housing area of peasants now greatly exceeds that of urban people, among them, the manors and villas built by a small number of local tycoons in the countryside will be luxurious and luxurious, which will make many urban people sigh, which is of course another matter.
7: Farmer's new house. Housing per capita is much higher than in cities.
In the decades of reform and opening up, the vast majority of rural farmers will go out to earn money. It can be said that most of the money they earn is used to repair houses and build houses. In many villages, people compare themselves to each other to repair houses, and the houses have been renewed several times.
8: The farmhouse's self-built pool.
In today's countryside, old houses that have not been renovated at all are rare. Of course, in general, farmers' new houses, from the decoration level, quality, material grade, and craftsmanship, may not catch up with the people in the city as a whole, but they generally have toilets with flush toilets and shower equipment; new furniture, sofas, Simmons, and all kinds of home appliances have entered ordinary farmhouses.
9: The bathroom in the newly built house of the farmhouse has a flushing facility.
Many farmers also raise flowers, pigeons, pets; in the past, the stilt house built by farmers, the first floor would generally be used to put debris, or feed cattle, horses, etc., now, the stilt house is not repaired, will build a garage, agricultural tool warehouse.
10: Farmhouse garage with lots of character.
Some farmhouses have also installed electronic monitoring.
11: The new electronic monitoring of the farmhouse, in fact, there is no valuable property to protect, the picture is fresh.
From the perspective of farm housing, I think the biggest change is the sanitary facilities, which have undergone a qualitative change. The national toilet revolution has shown results. Hygiene products such as hand paper and napkins have become essential supplies for farmers. The farmhouse does red and white things, and the convention will give back a few packs of napkins to the guests of the "upper affection", which is real, cheap, and very popular; in the past, the people in the city went to the countryside, and the most feared thing was to go to the bathroom, it was not able to take a bath, it was to sleep on a futon with a musty smell, and now, these obstacles basically do not exist. In our area, many farmers have converted their houses into homestays, which can also be seen in the basic improvement of rural sanitation conditions.
Say: "Okay". In my village, as in China's current countryside, the traffic situation is considered to be the most significant change in the face of the countryside, more than any other dynasty in history. A few years ago, the state implemented the "village to village" (highway) to create convenience for farmers to travel, but after a few short years, especially after the baptism of poverty alleviation, the vast majority of places not only reached the village and village, but realized the household connection! Farmers generally own motor vehicles (including cars, trucks, etc.); migrant workers who are wandering outside have quite commonly drive themselves when they return home; and the most unfortunate farmers also have one or a few motorcycles. Now, with the completion of the road network, many mountain village paths have become deserted into new "tea and linen ancient roads". The rural express delivery business is also in a blowout due to the development of the road network; in the past, the pick-and-carry goods who went from village to village was also replaced by a mobile small supermarket (truck); many local wanderers, or migrant workers, when returning home, a considerable number of people will get lost, even if there is navigation, but sometimes the road network changes too fast, and the navigation will fail; Judging from the large traffic pattern, rural farmers go out to work or travel, through high-speed rail, highways, and airplanes, and there is almost no difference between them and urban people. A considerable number of villagers in our group go out to work in the north or south, and taking high-speed rail and taking planes is the norm. A small number of peasants, who have gone out to earn a living in recent years, have traveled south and north, and have traveled to almost all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions in the country, relying on the convenience brought about by this general pattern of transportation.
12: Rush to the market, the village shuttle bus to the doorstep.
Another aspect of "line" is the smooth flow of information. Now, optical fiber in all directions, the major network operators are in the countryside camped, mobile phones have been as popular as in the city, wifi is almost everywhere, watch tv and the city is no different, you can watch cable TV, you can also watch network TV. Some farmers, when working in the fields, also put a small radio next to them to play music and news.
13: The old man watches the performance of Chinese athletes at home at the Olympic Games. The old man planted more than 4 acres of land at home alone and fed two fat pigs.
14: Farmhouse televisions are as common as chili peppers.
15: Villagers work on the spot, saw firewood for the villagers, and can earn 1-200 yuan per day (the main family manages rice).
16: Small-scale agricultural machinery solves the dilemma of insufficient labor in rural areas.
17: Shimoda work, mobile phone is a must-have.
Say it again: "Use". It should be said that farmers are now more active than in the past, and now farmers not only do not need to pay taxes, but also have various subsidies. In addition to the fact that young people earn money by going out to work (which is the main source of income for families), people living at home can make money by selling food, cash crops, and doing small businesses, and they can also earn extra money by working on the spot, such as helping people farm and doing housekeeping. All adults, including the elderly and the disabled, have bank cards, which have more or less deposits on the cards, such as pensions for the elderly, special subsidies for the disabled, widows and widows; subsidies for demobilized soldiers, as well as subsidies for natural forest protection, subsidies for growing grain, family planning incentives, etc., but in terms of average income level, this aspect is definitely much worse than the people in the city.
Are today's farmers bitter? It is also not bitter. According to my observation, in our hometown village, there are many "noes" for farmers now: no need to carry water (with tap water); no need to push and grind; no need to walk far; no axe to go into the mountains to cut firewood, no need to saw firewood by hand (with a chainsaw or chain saw); no need to feed large livestock (cattle, horses), no cattle to cultivate the field; no need to tear bud chaff leaves (with electric machinery to do the work), no need to twist bud grain (there is a threshing machine); no need to hoe grass (with herbicides); basically no need for farm manure; no need to carry heavy loads on the shoulders; no need to burn firewood when cooking rice (with electric heat or liquefied gas) Biogas is basically not used. In short, all the work that requires physical exertion has been greatly reduced; from this point of view, the peasants are not bitter in farming at present. This reduction in manual work effectively solves the problem of labor shortage in the countryside. For example, the villager group where my family is located, during the period when the total labor force was the largest, there were at least 3-4 people in each family, and the whole group had a labor force of nearly 100 people. At present, the average labor force in each household is less than 2 people, and the people who work at home are all elderly, but the original agricultural work that required hundreds of people to complete is still done well, and the crops are not worse than before, and the harvest is not lower than the original. I met an 82-year-old villager in this group, his descendants all work outside the home, his wife died in his early years, and now he is alone in the family planting 4 acres of more than 4 acres of budding grain, and feeding two pigs. He said that now farming is different from the original, it is easier, except for moving the hoe when planting buds in the spring, until the harvest does not need to take a hoe (weeding, fertilization do not need a hoe). Farmers have more free time than in the past, so they, like the townspeople, play TikTok, square dance, play cards, and sometimes travel. Farmers also have bitter times, that is, the busy season of farming, getting up early and playing in the dark. Some elderly people in their seventies and eighties tend to be so tired that they almost fall down.
Now, the village where my family is located, thanks to the construction of a well-off society, has good social security, good vegetation, good air, quiet, and is suitable for health and rest (especially in summer). Every summer, a large number of urban people, including Wuhan, Chongqing and other outsiders, have come to the countryside to escape the summer and maintain health, and some even buy commercial houses here. Some foreign giants have even taken a look at business opportunities and invested billions of yuan to build health centers in market towns; there are more people like me who desperately fled their homeland and entered the city more than 30 years ago, and now, they are touched by a wave of returning to their hometowns, and they have returned to their hometowns, where the hidden life code may not only be nostalgic and nostalgic.
At present, the rural area where my family is located has not entered a well-off life for a long time, and there are still some "weak ribs" in between.
First of all, the industry is thin, the main industry is planting, and there is a lack of successors to the field. Now, almost all the people who work in the fields of our hometown are old people who are fifty years old. Young people go out to work and earn a living, they hardly farm; they just go home for a few days a year during the Spring Festival or other holidays, never go to the ground, and can't do anything. In the past, we used to worry about certain skills or non-genetic inheritance, but now the biggest problem in the countryside may be who will cultivate the fields in the near future. Related to this, in the countryside, children are rarely seen. Farmers know that reading can change their destiny, so from the infancy of childhood, farmers have tried to send their children to the city or the township market town to receive education. A related problem is that rural women of childbearing age, like women in cities, are reluctant to have more children. Not only are third-born children rare, but even second-born children are not popular. The population gathers in market towns or cities, resulting in the disappearance of a large number of natural villages, and the historical traces of rural development are nowhere to be found.
Secondly, the cost of farming is high. Most of our hometown planted bud grain, now the harvest is higher than in the past, around 500 kilograms per acre, in addition to seeds, pesticides, herbicides, agricultural film, can protect the capital is not bad. Do you still have to farm at a loss? An elderly farmer told me that farming is mainly to harvest some feed to feed the pigs; besides, what is the purpose of not farming? After the age of 60 and there is no special skill, it is difficult to be accepted for going out to work, and staying at home is a helpless choice. Now, in our hometown, not only is farming a loss-making business, but even feeding pigs can't make money. This is also an important reason why young people cannot be retained in rural areas.
18: It was originally a famous alpine vegetable base, but after years of applying chemical fertilizers and pesticides, the soil quality has seriously deteriorated, and now it has to be changed to chrysanthemums.
Third, it is still a matter of environmental protection. At present, the overall ecological environment of our hometown is better than that of the city, but scientifically promoting carbon emissions is still a major event that plagues officials and farmers. For example, the treatment of crop buds is very headache. In the past, every household fed cattle, and all the bargs were fed, but now, families no longer raise cattle, and the buds have become a burden. Every year after the autumn harvest, the buds and valleys in the mountains that were once green are gray and dark. The government has explicitly prohibited burning, and even dispatched drones to monitor it. The problem is that it takes a lot of labor to crush the bud valley poles on the spot, and it is certainly impossible for those old people to do it alone; after the old man has returned home, he is no longer able to do heavy work. Some people say that today's farmers are also getting lazy, but it is not completely accurate. Please use machinery to crush, the cost is high, and mountain farmland is not easy to promote. Therefore, the result is that the peasants have to scatter these buds and quietly burn them. The local government had no choice but to keep its eyes open. A great uncle told me that now farming is good, that is, this bud is very difficult to deal with. In terms of total carbon emissions, decentralized incineration does not reduce emissions at all. Another thing about environmental protection is that cultivated land is seriously polluted, some places used to be vegetable bases, a large number of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, resulting in a serious loss of farmland "reproduction" ability, crop yields are not as good as a year, and even can no longer be cultivated, now have to be forcibly abandoned fallow. There is also the disposal of household garbage. Not only is garbage classification not widespread, but many farmers, even domestic garbage, are disposed of at will.
It is believed that these troubles currently existing in the countryside will be gradually solved under the impetus of the national strategy of revitalizing the countryside.