The farmland should not be concentrated too hastily.

In recent years, there have been some innovations in China's farmland system. The question I want to discuss is this kind of innovation that is too hasty. Should we support it or oppose it? my view is that we should not be in such a hurry. At present, the innovation of rural land system in China has the following backgrounds: urbanization, late industrialization, land wealth, contradictions in food supply, etc., coupled with the international financial crisis in 2008, it is under such circumstances that some of us have come up with some ways to solve the problem of insufficient land supply and use to solve the problem of relatively small scale of agricultural production. So the scale of agricultural production is relatively small. Where do they want it to go? If we go in the direction of scale operation, how to solve the problem of insufficient land supply? We solve the problem through the centralized arrangement of homestead, so this is what we call Chengdu model. The approach of Chengdu model is to merge homestead, four or five mu homestead per household. Of course, there is some preparatory work in advance. To set up financial support and government platforms, we have to put in place the work of changing the homestead sorted out into agricultural land. In this way, we have 1.8 billion mu of red line. The specified amount of agricultural land can free up some surplus, and the surplus land can be used for real estate development. The latter one is relatively simple. The right to use the homestead is handed over to the enterprise, and the real estate development can be done directly. This is the most typical Chengdu model at that time.

Mr. Zhou Qiren wrote a special article supporting this approach, but my point of view is precisely that I do not support it. The second is more simple, Jiaxing model, called two-point exchange, homestead and agricultural land are replaced, homestead is concentrated into residential land, or land security rights, and so on, agricultural land is concentrated into a scale, this is the Jiaxing model. The third is the Suzhou model, which looks a little more complicated. The Suzhou model is exactly the opposite of our idea. We think how to realize the phenomenon of land accumulation step by step, let farmers choose their own way of uniting themselves, and finally gradually realize large-scale operation. This is agricultural land. Homestead should also be like this, farmers unite themselves, and then solve their own housing problems, its scale develops to a certain extent, and then compete with real estate developers. On the contrary to the Suzhou model, the government first decided to centralize land, agricultural land and homestead, and then made other supplementary and blank-filling arrangements, which included the establishment of three kinds of cooperatives. In fact, these practices can be summarized as the centralization of land (mainly homestead) and the scale of agricultural land, which is the phenomenon we are going to discuss today.

First of all, we have to do a little analysis of such a phenomenon. Well, the perspective of analysis is still the perspective of institutional management that I prefer. I think the problem can be analyzed from two aspects. One of the problems is the impact of information asymmetry, the information asymmetry between farmers and the government, and the information asymmetry between the government and industrial and commercial enterprises. Often, the farmer is not only unable to make an accurate judgment at present, but also more difficult to make a rational judgment for the future. Well, under such circumstances, there will be blind obedience, and blind obedience has occurred many times in history. This is a problem. Because of the asymmetry of information, he may choose to follow the arrangement of the government. Also because of the asymmetry of information, he will choose not to resist even though he has suffered losses. This is the trend of withdrawing from the society in Yongjia, Zhejiang Province. He will choose to resist. There is no change in the agricultural crisis. He chose to continue to listen to the government's arrangement, which is brought about by the asymmetry of farmers' information. From the second perspective, I think this is actually a tripartite game. I have just mentioned what the background is. The government is very worried about its financial problems. It needs to solve its financial problems. At the same time, there may be problems of industrialization and insufficient supply of agricultural products. In this case, the government may have an impulse that there may not be enough land in this city and some other land is needed. So the government may be in the middle of the game, it is the more active party. Well, the other side is what we call industrial and commercial enterprises or financial institutions, which tend to hitchhike, and it is actually the farmers who suffer more.

This is a tripartite game pattern, why is this so?

Perhaps what is more difficult to understand is why industrial and commercial enterprises do not volunteer to develop land and real estate. Will it choose a free ride? Because in the middle of the game, the game between it and the government, that is, both it and the government should get benefits, and this benefit is even greater than its cost, and the marginal cost is equal to the marginal income. Only then will it make such a choice. Let us think about this: if the government brings benefits to it, it does not have to pay the cost. which choice will it choose, this choice or the other option it advocates to pay the cost to convince the government? Of course, it will choose the one that does not have to pay the cost. So the key to this game is that industrial and commercial enterprises naturally see themselves as free hitchhikers, not to pay the fees, but to enjoy the benefits. In fact, the game is simplified and becomes a game between farmers and the government. There are many times in history, and the experience and lesson is that if the government adopts concession policies, farmers will get some benefits. If the government doesn't want farmers to get benefits, farmers can't get benefits. I mentioned a phenomenon in this article, that is, during the period from 1949 to 1978, farmers made contributions to the state through agricultural surplus, reaching 1/3 of the input of industrial fixed assets, and 1/3 of the input came from agricultural surplus, which is quite a large figure. well, we can see that farmers actually suffer more losses in this game, and that's what I'm talking about. Well, farmers suffer more when they suffer losses, which means the paradox of a country. If we do not need a government, such a tripartite game will not appear, but with the government, farmers will suffer again. So what are we going to do?

That's the problem.

The second aspect we see is information asymmetry and gaming. The third aspect is the cost of implementing the new system. Then I can look at it from the two aspects of the government and the peasants, that is, what costs are included in the hasty approach. We can divide the costs into three aspects according to the division of institutional economics: the cost of designing the system, the cost of abandoning the old system, and the cost of persuading and appeasing the peasants. So how much is this cost?

The first aspect we look at is the cost of design, which comes from the cost of scale operation. Let's first look at agricultural land. What kind of cost increase will agricultural land bring about by its scale operation? The theory of agricultural economics has long analyzed this problem very thoroughly. When you start, the teacher will tell you that there are all supervision costs. When a production becomes teamproduction, his supervision cost and information cost will increase. This is a cost that can be increased. The second cost that can be increased is whether our current agricultural population is too large or too small, is it insufficient? As a matter of fact, some people have already told us clearly that even if our rate of transfer reaches 80%, there will still be hundreds of millions of agricultural people.

Well, if you implement scale management, you may squeeze out many people's jobs. I have learned of an example. A place has implemented scale management. In principle, there are about several thousand people employed in this village, whether full or insufficient. However, after it implements scale management, it leases these lands to an enterprise. The method adopted by the enterprise still allows those farmers to cultivate, but it does not need so many farmers. The original several thousand farmers now only need 172 farmers. Where are the remaining two thousand farmers going? This obviously became a problem at that time. Although these farmers were relatively old, some of them were in their 60s. Our academicians could still lead doctoral students at the age of 80. Do you think farmers could not work at the age of 60? You can't think like this. You can't simply think that 60 years old isn't labor force. This is the cost of the second aspect. Add to that the potential employment pressures and the costs of scale.

The second aspect of cost is the cost of homestead. How do we make industrial and commercial enterprises and financial institutions not resist or their resistance can be effectively controlled in the transfer of homestead? This is a problem. The second problem is the cost to farmers. What are the costs to farmers? I think I can't go back and survive. What if I can't go back when I get to the city? This may be an incalculable cost.

The third cost is the cost involved in the law. As a law, the first consideration is whether the law is appropriate and whether the provisions of the law are complete. Although there are various problems in our land-related laws, we have already had some experience in coordinating the implementation of land-related laws and other related aspects when dealing with them. What if the laws before the laws are reformulated now?

Now we see a strange phenomenon. Rural construction land should be included in the unified market operation of urban and rural areas for sale. This practice conflicts with many laws. Many laws say that rural land, including rural construction land, belongs to rural collectives and farmers live in rural areas. In fact, it is closed in rural areas. In order to make construction land sold uniformly in cities and villages, the state has no choice but to let the National People's Congress revise and formulate new judicial interpretations, and then make this policy of the State Council legitimate. This is actually a joke in western countries. The law should be supreme. Now it can become a servant of the city government. It needs to adapt to the requirements of the government step by step. Why do we want to put urban and rural construction land together for unified sales? I won't talk about this reason. There may also be some problems in it. To say the least, this procedure is wrong, this is a legal problem, the new law will bring adaptation problems, because law and the sword of law have a system coordination problem. The fourth is whether there will be accidental factors. We haven't seen too many cases of collective opposition from farmers. I haven't studied them specifically, but when I wrote my article, there was no economic downturn.

The economic downturn has affected many of us, so what happens if there is an economic downturn? Would you imagine that they will spend more money on scale operations? Will more money be invested in land transfer? Today's farmers know very well that they will have to bear even greater losses if they cannot sell the grain produced on one mu of land and the grain produced on 3,000 mu of land. So when the economy is in the doldrums and people are clutching their wallets, you can imagine what will happen to farmers. The second aspect, we may give up the old system will bring some problems, these problems, I do not need to talk about these problems, there is an old saying in China, it is hard to leave the native land, it means that the living, if you are a dead person, buried in peace, can not leave the soil, this is what we call family management, rural life, that is to say, this issue is worthy of our consideration. And the problem is often that when we examine the cost in this aspect, we do not fully consider it, so we give up their loss. We often do not measure it. With regard to the models mentioned earlier, when he discounted the land price for the farmers, it is impossible to calculate very clearly. As we said, the attractiveness of pastoral life, the brothers can no longer chat freely and play happily. This kind of cost will certainly not be taken into account, in fact, we should take it into account. The third aspect of the cost is the cost of persuading and pacifying farmers. This needs to be emphasized again. In some places, we now see that the social security system has been gradually established, or the role of the social security system is more obvious. But generally speaking, the security strength of our social security system for farmers is still limited. Whether it is pension or medical care, it is only a little money, you can imagine. How can these problems be solved? when they have a piece of land, it is actually attached to its social security function, which is not only the place of employment, but also social security, so how to convince them?

How to appease them?

I am afraid it is also a very important cost. If we understand the cost of farmers as the cost of the government, then the cost of farmers is actually very easy to understand. What is more difficult among the costs of farmers is actually the question of how much money to give him. Well, how much money do you give him, including your agricultural land and homestead? this is a difficult problem. When Guangdong and Shanghai carried out the reform of collective ownership in the 1990s. When changing collective ownership into a joint-stock cooperative system, they encountered this problem: how big our collective shares will be and how many individual shares will be maintained? this is a question. Another question is how to measure each person's contribution to the collective. It should be converted into shares, and it should be quantified into shares. How to measure it? All kinds of plans have been introduced, and all kinds of schemes will be found wrong. For example, some people have been cadres, some people have made outstanding contributions to the local area, and so on. How on earth should he weigh it with ordinary farmers, how much is more appropriate, multiply by 2 or 1.2, and so on. You can refer to these other costs. In fact, I think the most difficult cost is the non-refundable cost. I have seen too many examples of them handing over the land to their cousins for farming, and when they come back, their cousins are unwilling to give it to him. What are we going to do?

This is the cost of farmers. I would like to briefly mention that in the rest of my time, I may say a little more about a certain issue in history, that is, the enclosure movement. Before talking about this enclosure movement, we may have to mention the game between the government and farmers. In this game, farmers can only suffer. This is proved by history. A negative historical case is agricultural cooperation. The whole process of agricultural cooperation is not a negative case, and the final result is actually the deprivation of farmers. I just said that this number is very large. A positive example is after the establishment of the household contract responsibility system. In the golden period of agriculture that emerged in 1980, there was not a big gap between the 4 trillion tons of grain at that time and the present.