Why did the farmers leave the land?

Farmers are farmers, the land can not move, crops will not move, so the farmer half of the body is like stuck in the land, bound to the land can not move. In the traditional society, farmers are inseparable from land, born and raised here; in the era of planning system, farmers were artificially bound to the land and could not move. After the reform and opening up, with the relaxation of restrictions on the movement of the rural population, farmers have become more and more "restless". Many farmers have "fled" the countryside through various ways, such as the phenomenon of thousands of troops crossing the "single wooden bridge" formed by going to higher school. the "tide of migrant workers" caused by going to work in cities. As the government recognizes the status of migrant workers as "part of industrial workers", it has become fashionable to flee the countryside to cities and towns. In China, in recent years, there are two most worrying social phenomena: one is the social psychology of "only going to college is talent" and "only going to college", which leads to the extreme waste of educational resources and the imbalance of educational structure; the other is the flow of people in rural areas that has been suppressed for a long time. If you don't go out to work, you will be considered a "fool" and "you can't even get a wife". As a result, an army of mobile workers has been formed. At the same time, empty shell villages have been formed in rural areas. Our survey of 20 villages found that the aging degree in rural areas has reached more than 30%, the average age of the labor force engaged in agriculture has reached 56 years old, and the oldest age is 84 years old.

When we investigated the relationship between farmers and agriculture, we included the following question: "are you willing to run agriculture?" Village cadres think that there is no need to ask this question, because "as long as there is a way, no one is willing to run agriculture." This is indeed the case in the survey, and none of the young people born in the 1980s who interviewed more than 200 people said they were willing to engage in agriculture. Under what conditions are you willing to engage in agriculture? The investigator replied, "if agriculture can make me rich, I would like to work in agriculture." However, agriculture is really not a career that can make people rich. We have analyzed the reasons why farmers are unwilling to engage in agriculture, and the results show that the main reasons why farmers do not want to operate agriculture include the following three aspects:

I. low agricultural income

Agriculture has the characteristics of multiple risks. Unlike industry, agriculture itself is restricted by geography, climate and season. Different geographical locations have different land resources, fertile and barren soil. Climate is a very uncertain factor, drought and flood are impermanent, so the risk or vulnerability of agriculture itself is one of its important characteristics. A jingle often said by farmers, "grow blind crops in the land, hold dead children in your arms", which vividly and helplessly shows the risk of agriculture. First of all, this risk comes from the disasters of climate and geographical environment. Although geographical environment determinism has been criticized in many aspects, its influence and restriction on agriculture are generally accepted. The quality of geographical environment directly determines the level of agricultural output and whether agricultural production can be carried out smoothly. In areas with suitable geographical environment, agricultural production is relatively stable and grain output is high; on the contrary, in areas with poor geographical environment, agricultural production fluctuates greatly and grain output is low. China is one of the regions with the most frequent and serious disasters in the world. the causes of frequent disasters are not only climatic factors but also physical and geographical factors. The south is often threatened by floods and floods, while about half of the land area of the northwest is arid and semi-arid, often affecting spring sowing and early spring crop growth. In addition, wind disasters, hail disasters, insect disasters and diseases of animals and plants in some areas can all lead to reduced agricultural production or no harvest.

Associated with the multi-risks of agriculture is the low-income characteristics of traditional agriculture. Traditional agriculture is a small-scale peasant economy, which partially participates in the market and has a very strong self-sufficiency. As Chiyanov said, "the agricultural family is not only a production unit, but also a consumption unit." In fact, traditional agriculture is a kind of small-scale peasant economy with no change in the mode of production for a long time, basically maintaining simple reproduction and long-term stagnation. This small-scale peasant economy and small-scale mode of production are the remarkable characteristics of traditional agriculture. This mode of production determines the meagre agricultural income and slow growth. It is generally believed that the contradiction between people and land is one of the reasons for the low agricultural income. With the increase of population, the land can only maintain the minimum survival of farmers. In order to meet the needs of food and clothing for their families and obtain the source of food and clothing for survival, subjectively, they have to face the loess and face the sky to engage in grain production. Farmers' labor motivation is not for profit, but for food and clothing. Producing more grain is not only the need of the country, but also the direct purpose of farmers' production. In the operation of agriculture, due to the low degree of commercialization, the mode of agricultural production and management based on individual households has remained the same, under this mode of operation, except for the development of intensive farming, which is constantly increasing investment in order to obtain more products, there is basically no substantial change. As a result, the low-income characteristics of agriculture have not changed. With the change of the mode of agricultural production and the transformation from self-sufficiency to marketization, farmers can get more income? The answer is no. Farmers continue to adopt new technologies, from self-sufficiency to market-oriented, but they do not get real benefits. This will inevitably lead to the transfer of rural labor to areas where higher incomes can be obtained. During the survey, we asked many farmers about their opinions on this issue. Here is a survey by Comrade Meng Ling.

The pro-agricultural policy cannot retain young people. With the implementation of a series of policies to benefit farmers, great changes have taken place in rural areas. roads have been built to their doorstep, and activities such as direct subsidies for agriculture and home appliances to the countryside have benefited farmers. The popularity of harvester and rice transplanter has fundamentally improved agricultural production conditions. However, why did the farmers not pick up? Lao Li, a farmer in Progressive Village in his late sixties, used three words when explaining the reason: "hard work, not much money, reluctant to give up." What we are saying is that farming is an asceticism and hard work, and only those who are used to it and those who are full of feelings for the land can persevere; planting an acre of land still needs favorable weather to help, but can not get it back in the event of natural disasters; reluctance is that the older generation of people regard the land as fundamental, do not have the heart to abandon the land, and it is difficult to give up their feelings for the land. Li Lao Han's words represent the post-50s farmers, who have experienced famine years, worked hard for decades, had an inseparable plot with the land, and regarded farming as their lifelong career, and no matter how difficult it was, they had to stick to it in the countryside.

However, the idea of post-80s Xiao Hu is quite different. He said that he has gone out to work since graduating from high school and now works in a foreign company with a monthly income of more than 2000 yuan. He has never been to his family's land. Even though he was busy for two seasons a year, he didn't come back to help. He had already asked his parents to transfer 4 mu of responsible land to others for planting, because he couldn't make any money at the end of the year. When asked how much he knew about farm work, he said calmly that he basically didn't understand it, didn't want to, and didn't want to do it.

"Why don't you let your children take over and farm?" Lao Jia's answer may represent the actual situation of most farmers.

"now basically every family has only one child, either going to college or going out to work. In addition, these young people have never been in the fields, and some of them don't even know where their own responsible fields are, so it's impossible for them to take over and farm. Most parents love their children and have no intention of letting them continue to be farmers. after graduating from school, they go directly to the city to find a job and buy a house to settle down. when they go home, they become 'relatives' and rarely have their parents wait on them when they go home. " Villagers all say that this situation is very common in rural areas.

"now that the government has agricultural subsidies, why can't it attract young people to come back to agriculture?"

"the subsidy is too small compared with a part-time job to attract people to go back to the countryside for farming."

Farmer Liu Lao Han's family has two sons, all of whom have gone out to work and settled in towns. The couple, both in their sixties, have planted 7 mu of land in spite of their poor health. "the sons won't come back to farm," he said. "We can plant as long as we can, and let it go when we can't move."