A new round of rural reform is about to begin: there will be new breakthroughs in land reform, and small farmers and modern agriculture will be organically connected

China Times (www.chinatimes.net.cn) reporter Yang Shi province reported in Beijing

"Accelerate the reform of key rural areas and key links, stimulate the vitality of rural resource elements, respect the creation of grass-roots and the masses, and promote the continuous new breakthroughs in reform." The Central Rural Work Conference held recently stressed this.

On January 4, the party group of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs held a meeting and pointed out that it is necessary to deepen a new round of rural reform around promoting the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture, and stimulate the momentum and vitality of agricultural and rural development. It is reported that the next step of deepening rural reform will focus on four directions: it includes improving the integration of urban and rural development mechanisms; consolidating and improving the basic rural management system; deepening the reform of the rural land system; and deepening the reform of the rural collective property rights system.

"It is necessary to continue to deepen the reform of the rural property rights system, steadily and prudently promote the reform of the rural homestead system, and strive to promote a number of substantive pilot results under the premise of doing a good job in relevant basic work." Tang Renjian, minister of agriculture and rural affairs, recently said that in 2021, it is necessary to plan and promote a new round of rural reform.

Zhang Hongyu, vice president of the China Rural Research Institute of Tsinghua University, believes that after the second round of rural land contracts expires, it will be extended for another 30 years, how to pilot and demonstrate, how to make the management rights lively and well, how to achieve the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture, and there are many articles that can be done in reform.

"This requirement put forward by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs is very much in line with the next step of rural areas to rebuild the micro foundation, reorganize the business model, improve the degree of organization on the basis of household contracting, and lay the large-scale production system mechanism necessary for modern agriculture, so that it is possible to truly transform traditional agriculture and move from this road to agricultural modernization." On January 8, Chen Jiaze, an expert on the three rural issues and former vice president of the Chengdu Academy of Social Sciences, told the China Times.

How smallholder farmers and modern agriculture converge

Smallholder farmers are not diametrically opposed to modern agriculture. "Small farmers are the rural property rights relationship that has been reshaped by household contracting since China's reform and opening up, and it is precisely this property rights reform that has established a brand-new incentive mechanism for hundreds of millions of peasant masses, and while bidding farewell to the planned economic system of the first and second dukes, they have run on the road of moderate prosperity." This is the most important foundation and the greatest change for our country to bid farewell to the shortage economy and embark on the four modernization processes. However, the household contract management system will inevitably have problems such as land fragmentation, uneconomical scale, low ability to resist risks, and slow technological progress; the implantation of modern agricultural elements necessary for transforming traditional agriculture is slow and difficult, and it will form a contradiction between small farmers and large-scale production, traditional agricultural production methods and modern agricultural production methods, the former can not achieve the minimum effective scale, and the latter maximizes the production margin, so in the macro sense, the allocation efficiency is not high, and the growth rate of total factor productivity is slow. Chen Jiaze said.

In fact, after the integration of China's three rural areas into the global agricultural operation system, how small farmers and modern agriculture are organically connected has attracted widespread attention from all walks of life.

"China's agricultural population is high, and handling well the relationship between small farmers and modern agriculture plays an important role in maintaining China's social stability and consolidating China's economic foundation." On January 8, Wang Xiaoyu, deputy secretary-general of the Heilongjiang Provincial Food Industry Alliance and deputy general manager of Heilongjiang Eight Flags Grain and Oil Co., Ltd., told the "China Times" reporter that farmers are the main body of modern agriculture, and if agriculture becomes a sideline industry, rural hollowing out, and shortage of professional farmers will have an adverse impact on modern agriculture.

How to define modern agriculture affects the development direction of China's agricultural industry. "At present, some sporadic farmland in the south has been abandoned, indicating that in terms of mechanism, small farmers have not yet organically connected with modern agriculture." Wang Xiaoyu said that the appreciation of the RMB exchange rate has an impact on the competitiveness of China's agricultural products. The exchange rate is the coefficient of exchange currency and plays a regulatory role in international trade. The appreciation of the local currency is conducive to commodity imports and unfavorable commodity exports, and inhibits the participation of multiple entities in China's agriculture. For a long time, developed countries have forced the renminbi to appreciate, in essence, to help export their own products to China.

For example, the cost of soybean cultivation is $1,000 in developed countries and 6,000 yuan in China. If the RMB exchange rate is 1 US dollar for 8 yuan, then the cost of imported beans planting is 8,000 yuan, 2,000 yuan higher than China, and imported beans are not competitive; if the renminbi appreciates, 6 yuan for 1 US dollar, then the cost of imported beans 1000 US dollars is 6000 yuan, the cost is comparable to China. If the renminbi appreciates again to 1:4, then the cost of imported beans is 2,000 yuan lower than that of China, not counting subsidies, and selling them to China will also make money.

"In recent years, the costs of land, labor, water, electricity, oil and gas in China have increased, and domestic and foreign capital will be induced to find value depressions." In the business environment, market factors such as exchange rates are also hard indicators and are necessary factors for coordinating the resources of the international and domestic markets. Wang Xiaoyu said.

"Modernization cannot be based on the small-scale peasant economy, so it is necessary to change the small-scale peasant economy through specialization, scale, jointization, and intensification, so that it can smoothly move toward modernization." Wang Yiwu, a professor at Hainan University and president of the Hainan Institute of Modern Management, told the China Times.

There will be new breakthroughs in land reform

"Comprehensively promote the reform of the shareholding cooperative system for rural collective management assets, vigorously develop a new type of collective economy, promote the entry of rural collective management construction land into the market, and increase the property income of farmers." Tang Renjian, minister of agriculture and rural affairs, recently stated that in 2021, it is necessary to plan and promote a new round of rural reform. According to him, it is necessary to continue to deepen the reform of the rural property rights system, steadily and prudently promote the reform of the rural residential land system, and strive to promote a number of substantive pilot results under the premise of doing a good job in relevant basic work.

Among them, it is necessary to take the county as an important entry point for the integration of urban and rural development, implement the policy of increasing the proportion of land transfer proceeds used in agriculture and rural areas, and accelerate the market-oriented reform of land, labor and other elements and the reform of the household registration system to achieve new breakthroughs.

"I think this is very simple, because this kind of one-family contract production to household, which is what we call the household contract responsibility system, in fact, the efficiency of this policy is already decreasing." Ye Qing, deputy director of the Hubei Provincial Bureau of Statistics, told the "China Times" reporter that every family and a piece of land, everyone around this land to produce, but now the situation is a large number of young people out, the first generation of migrant workers have been in the city, the second generation, the third generation has also begun, so rural land, it is difficult to talk about intensive farming, so now land circulation is very important, as long as the right to use the land, then you can circulate, circulation also achieves certain benefits.

"After a specialized agricultural company acquires land, it can be unified and leveled, which can reduce costs, expand the scale of operation, and the effect of operating scale will come out, and it can also improve agricultural efficiency." Ye Qing said that the more concentrated the land, the more it can carry out this kind of artificial intelligence, large-scale and specialized production, and the production efficiency will be greatly improved.

"If there is a new breakthrough this time, for county-level cities, it is very good for the real estate market, and it should become a new driving force for development and new opportunities." Xie Yifeng, president of the China Urban Real Estate Research Institute, told the "China Times" reporter that deepening rural land reform, the most important thing is the reform of the homestead system, providing a very favorable development opportunity for some emerging real estate projects in townships.

"Under the new land system, large-scale agricultural scale operation may develop to a new stage, for example, some enterprises, including developers, have carried out large-scale operation of rural land, for example, Vanke and COFCO have begun to turn to planting grains such as rice and doing agricultural and sideline products." Xie Yifeng said that in 2021, agricultural projects, tourism and vacation projects, emerging industrial park projects that integrate urban and rural people, homestead circulation projects, and county-level urban upgrading and development projects in the metropolitan area may all be favorable projects for rural revitalization this year. Based on this, a grand picture of rural revitalization is slowly unfolding.