Who will the land depend on till tomorrow? China's agricultural development encounters practical difficulties

With the large number of rural young and middle-aged laborers leaving the land, the “ageing” and “feminization” phenomenon of agricultural farming population has become more common, which raises a realistic problem for the development of agriculture in China.

At the moment, it is time for the harvest to be harvested. Crops from the north to the south are starting another round of busyness.

Zhang Jiayu, an old man from Dazhigang, Mengxi Town, Gongsi County, Hubei Province, just collected 3 hectares of rice from the past few days. “The rice is harvested by the farmers, and 120 yuan per mu, and the money from the handyman is given by the daughter.” Zhang Jiayu is almost 70 years old. Obviously, he has no strength to collect rice in the field. His two daughters were married to the city. His son went to work with his wife and children, and his wife followed him to care for his grandson. However, this does not prevent Zhang Jiayu from managing a few acres of contracted land alone at home, because "the machine farmland is becoming more and more convenient and one person can deal with it."

In rural areas in China, such scenarios are becoming more common. From Guangxi and Sichuan in the southwest to Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi in the central part of the country, Hebei, Liaoning, and Jilin in the north, the promotion of modern agricultural farming techniques and methods has gradually reduced labor intensity; In the prime of the year, the labor force left the land in large numbers, and the “left-behind team” dominated by the elderly and women became the main force for agriculture. This phenomenon is precisely a realistic problem faced by our country’s agricultural development—who depends on whom we farm.

The decrease in the rural labor force is a development trend. The reason for this is the Xuchang Tianhe Modern Agricultural Million Vegetable Park in Henan Province. On the one hand, the green vegetables are waiting to be picked. The other side is the vegetable field that the exhibition has just made. Dozens of women are looking down. Raise rapeseed. The person in charge of the park told the reporter that the park needs a large number of vegetable workers, but only a small amount of local workers can be recruited, and only large numbers of people can be recruited from other provinces. “Skilled vegetable workers are getting harder and harder to find.”

Henan is a province with a large population of agriculture, but nowadays there are fewer and fewer skilled workers. In some traditional grain provinces such as Hubei and Jiangxi, it is equally difficult to apply for every grain harvest season. “A labor force of 80 yuan a day, plus a good meal and a packet of cigarettes, is hard to find. “Ma Shibing, a grain farmer in Zaoyang City, Hubei Province, said that he was very impressed. Now that the labor force is hard to find and artificial prices have risen, it is a common phenomenon in rural areas.

The reduction of the rural labor force has a long history. In the 1980s, the rural labor force began to largely leave the land. At that time, the coastal joint ventures and the sudden emergence of township and township enterprises became the main force for absorbing migrant workers. According to the Bureau of Township Enterprises of the Ministry of Agriculture, township and village enterprises have to absorb about 150 million migrant workers each year. In the 21st century, with the accelerated pace of industrialization and urbanization, the restrictive conditions for the agricultural household registration population have been further loosened, the migrant labour force has been further increased, and the rural population has further decreased. In 1978, the urbanization rate in China was only 17.9%. Today, the urbanization rate has reached 49.68%.

While channels such as migrant workers and household registration transfer have continued to expand, further studies and entrepreneurship have also become important channels for rural population transfer. Tianmen City, Hubei Province is a “county college entrance examination”. Each year, more than 10,000 children leave the countryside through the college entrance examination. Local education bureau leaders told reporters that “it is almost impossible for these children to return to the countryside.”

The reduction of the rural labor force has promoted the pace of urbanization and industrialization, and has also changed the dense population of agriculture. According to expert analysis, the rural labor force is dominated by young adults and educated people. Another reason why this group “goes out” is that agriculture is less effective, the same labor is not paid the same amount, and agriculture lacks “professionals” for individuals. The "expectation of prospects" coupled with the fact that the labor intensity of agriculture is still relatively large, has led to the phenomenon of "ageing" of agricultural work and the "hollowing" of rural areas, and has thus affected the quality of agriculture itself. Some agricultural science and technology personnel said that the “local experts” who now work as farmers are hard to find.

The appearance of various professional cooperative organizations began to rewrite the status quo of agriculture, but the overall scale of small capacity is weak.

The massive reduction of the labor force has had a direct impact on agricultural farming, and agricultural product trade associations and farmers' professional cooperation organizations have emerged.

In Huoqiu County, a major grain-producing county in Anhui Province, there is a plant protection service team that is active in the fields and has become a farmer's “nanny.”

Huoqiu County Agriculture Commission introduced the plant protection service team to provide service to the villagers through unified control of personnel, unified plant protection machinery, unified control of time, and unified pharmaceuticals. When the villagers go out to work, as long as they call the plant protection team, the plant protection team will be responsible for the quality and quality assurance. Now, Huoqiu has formed a plant protection and prevention service network of “county center-township team-village plant protection service team”. Serving team members like “professional farmers” has alleviated the problem of insufficient labor and unprofessional farming to some extent.

Compared with the crop protection team, the earlier and more common starting point is the “company + base + farmer” agricultural industry association, farmer professional cooperation organization and other industrial organizations formed mainly of leading enterprises. Leading companies are responsible for product selection and acquisition, and villagers implement order planting. The farmer households in the same organization do not have enough manpower, and they can also cultivate and harvest them in a unified manner. At that time, farmers will pay a certain percentage of the income. According to local conditions, the form of industrialization is not the same, some are "enterprise + rural organization + order farmers", some are "enterprise + purchaser + order farmers", some are "enterprise + professional organization + order farmers", etc. Not the same, but the role is generally consistent.

The emergence of farmer professional organizations has helped advance agricultural farming techniques. In the past, it was difficult to implement standardized planting and unified dispensing and fertilization for one household, because the scale was enlarged to form a result. In Shandong, Anhui, Jiangsu, Henan and other places, “agro-machinery yards”, “farm-cultivation teams” and “agricultural service teams” appeared one after another. Some were led by township agricultural technology stations, some were villages, some were farm machinery. Big households are the leaders. Farmers who join the Agricultural Machinery Organization can give priority to farm machinery services. The agricultural team also serves external businesses and earns profits and grows.

In Jiaxiang, Shandong, farmers spontaneously formed “mutual aid groups” and “communities”. Every time the plants were harvested, members of the mutual aid team sent you out of the agricultural machinery. I pumped fuel to carry out “labor mutual assistance,” “technical mutual help,” and “difficult mutual assistance.” . At the same time, some individual agricultural households also play a role by taking villages and townships to become rural village labor market "robots."

At the same time, issues such as the small scale of professional cooperative organizations of farmers, weak capacity of “orders”, poor guidance ability, and weak restrictive power are also common. There is a “soft constraint” between farmers and leading enterprises. This restricts the extension of the industrial chain.

Who will farm tomorrow's land? The answer has been made clear. It is necessary for the government to guide the promotion of the emergence of farmer professional cooperative organizations to improve agricultural efficiency. In the past, many people were able to complete the agricultural work. Now a machine has been solved, which has broadened the space for the reduction of the rural labor force; it has improved the quality of agriculture and dispersed the past. If we do it alone and do it well and we don’t have any questions, we now have professional organizations and even “professional farmers” who can provide guidance for farming.

In recent years, some localities have taken many measures to support agricultural product trade associations and farmers' professional cooperation organizations. In Huoqiu County, Anhui Province, 32 plant protection service teams and 682 village plant protection service teams were established. The plant protection team had limited development capacity at the beginning of its development. The county arranged more than 20 million yuan to purchase more than 21,000 atomizers at one time, and distributed it to the village plant protection service team for free, which solved the urgent needs of the plant protection team.

Guangxi Xingye County has formulated measures to support the development of farmers' professional cooperatives, and has provided support from funds, loans, and land use. Now there are more than 130 farmer professional cooperatives in the county, which has brought more than 30,000 farmers into the company.

In view of the current situation of the shortage of talents for professional cooperation organizations, Qingdao Agricultural University established the Cooperative College in 2008 to carry out cooperative personnel training work for the whole country. This is the first high-level professional personnel training institution for cooperatives in China. Recently, Chongqing City proposed to use the “high gold content” policy to support farmers’ professional cooperation organizations, and introduce specific policies in the areas of capacity upgrading of rural new-type stock cooperatives, personnel training, information construction, and loan interest subsidy, and support and help cooperatives improve infrastructure. , enhance development capabilities.

These measures will undoubtedly effectively promote the development and expansion of farmers' professional cooperation organizations. However, at present, the overall strength of China's farmer professional cooperative organizations is still very weak, and it is difficult to form a strong driving force. This is precisely why local governments at various levels need to fully understand and solidly support and guide. As some experts have said, the common development of farmers’ professional cooperation organizations is “not only the problem of tomorrow’s arable land, but also how to solve better problems.”