Who is responsible for the predicament of agriculture?

Judgment of the current macroeconomic situation

By analyzing the economic data since 1978, we can observe a phenomenon: since the reform and opening-up, almost every "Three Central Committees" has encountered economic crises: Deng Xiaoping encountered a crisis caused by the conversion of accumulated foreign debts into fiscal deficits in the 1970s, resulting in the closure of a large number of enterprises and the unemployment of tens of millions of people; Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji encountered three major crises: financial turmoil, overproduction and deflation; Hu and Wen also suffered from the systemic crisis caused by the global financial tsunami at the beginning of the century. It seems that our economic cycle and political cycle can coincide to some extent. So why are crises cyclical? Because up to now, our way of dealing with the crisis is to stimulate the economy by issuing national debt, but stimulating the economy by issuing additional national debt will lead to inflation, and once inflation occurs, the inherent power of economic growth formed by issuing additional national debt will be exhausted, thus falling into the next round of recession.

This approach to crisis resolution is based on the strategies adopted by countries around the world in dealing with the great crises of the 29th-33rd century. For example, the United States solved the "Roosevelt New Deal" of the 29-33 crisis by issuing additional national debt to transfer excess productivity to inland economic construction; Germany solved the 29-33 crisis by digesting excess production capacity through inland infrastructure construction such as road construction.

That's how we approach crisis resolution. During the Zhu Rongji period, 5 trillion yuan of investment was used to carry out the plan for the large-scale development of the western region and the revitalization of the old industries in Northeast China. During the Wen Jiabao period, 15 trillion yuan of investment was used to stimulate domestic demand and resist the global financial tsunami. All of them are based on the above-mentioned huge amount of state-level investment through the issuance of additional treasury bonds to relieve excess production capacity and alleviate the pressure of economic crisis.

But what are the consequences of this strategy?

Whether it is 5 trillion or 15 trillion, it is impossible to invest in small and medium-sized enterprises because such investment costs are too high. 90% of this investment at the national strategic level is invested in large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises. Large and medium-sized state-owned enterprises to obtain this huge investment, will squeeze the market space of small and medium-sized enterprises, which is often said that "the country retreat and advance", but also aggravated the crisis of non-performing assets and debt risks. We are currently facing the dilemma caused by these two previous import crises.

Intensification of the "deindustrialization" trend

Throughout China and the world economy, there has been a trend of "deindustrialization" since 2009, that is, there has been a downward trend in industry. A prominent manifestation is that those enterprises that transform agriculture with industrial models are not in a good position at present. The international strategy to deal with the problem of "deindustrialization" is "cost shifting", that is, transferring domestic economic contradictions abroad. For example, since the 1990s, the western mainstream countries that have entered the financial era have changed from overproduction to production shortage and financial surplus. Only by suppressing power and inducing ideological revolution can they transfer contradictions to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and other countries and maintain their old order.

So what kind of problems are we facing? It is also the surplus problem of financial capital, industrial capital and commercial capital, the three major capitals in the world.

Financial capital surplus, manifested as financial capital through raw materials and agricultural futures investment to aggravate price fluctuations, to agricultural producers and consumers to pass on the crisis. Industrial capital surplus is manifested in a large number of ways to absorb excess capacity by lengthening the production chain, resulting in an oversupply of global food production and food calories, while the proportion of producer income in food expenditure is gradually decreasing, that is, it is increasingly difficult for farmers to make money. The surplus of commercial capital is manifested in the dilution of profits in multiple circulation links, which further intensifies the vicious competition in circulation links.

These three surpluses together lead to a series of severe problems such as low farmers 'income, unsafe food quality, lack of credit, failure of supervision, food waste and hunger of poor people.

An Analysis of the Causes of China's Agricultural Dilemma

From the above analysis, we can already see why the predicament of Chinese agriculture has become.

In the first place, agriculture does not have the right to set prices for its own factors of production. In the unified market, the prices of land, labor power, capital, means of production and tools required by agriculture are determined by external markets. How can traditional agriculture, whose profits are already extremely thin, pay these prices pushed up by surplus capital? The consequence must be a massive exodus of land, population and capital, a growing loss of competitiveness in agriculture, and an ageing population exacerbating the decline of industry, which is now a common dilemma for agriculture in East Asia.

Secondly, the use of capital concentration to develop agriculture, that is, with the help of industrial capital large-scale,"secondary production" professional production, although greatly increased output, but the larger the scale of production of a single category, the greater the market risk, on the one hand is "poured milk","vegetables rotten in the field", on the other hand, large-scale agricultural industrialization leading enterprises are still not profitable, let alone small and medium-sized enterprises.

Thirdly, the agricultural production mode with the sole goal of pursuing capital gains will ignore the pollution of water and soil resources and environmental pollution caused by it, and will also ignore the problem of food quality and safety. The uncontrolled application of pesticides, fertilizers and feed veterinary drugs will lead to food safety crisis and social trust in food quality will fall into a trough.

Finally, agricultural "going out" is not a good way to save the world. If we do not fully understand the political, social and cultural characteristics of the places where agricultural capital is invested, we will inevitably face many obstacles and investment failures.

How to get out of trouble

To sum up, in order to reverse the agricultural predicament caused by the macroeconomic situation, the three major capital surpluses and the wrong agricultural production mode, we must change our concept and take ecology as the idea. we should build a sustainable goal that integrates social, economic, cultural and other functions, and develop resource-saving and environment-friendly "two-type agriculture". The combination of traditional agricultural technology, natural agricultural technology and sustainable agricultural technology has entered a new stage of low capital, low energy consumption, low "technology", low cost and simple methods. Pay attention to solving practical problems of "socialized ecological agriculture" and "urban-rural cooperative agriculture".