Farmers are splitting up agricultural capitalization and threatening China.

Recently, Yan Hairong, a scholar from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and four young scholars published eye-catching feature articles in the "Open Age" in an attempt to voice a different voice from the mainstream on the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. In their eyes, Chinese agriculture is undergoing unprecedented changes.

They not only criticized the mainstream agricultural development model, but also talked to Huang Zongzhi and he Xuefeng. These two famous experts on agriculture, rural areas and farmers believe that China's agriculture is still dominated by small-scale farmers or small-scale operation, and the small-scale peasant economy not only has value and functional rationality, but also has indomitable vitality in reality. He Xuefeng called this view the small-scale peasant economy school.

In contrast, Yan Hairong, Chen Yiyuan, Sun Xinhua, Chen Hangying and Huang Yu believe that China's agricultural capitalization has opened the road of agricultural capitalism, and the driving force of capital accumulation and social differentiation in rural areas are accompanied by the transformation of Chinese agriculture. In this process, although the number of small farmers is still large, they are losing their subjectivity and begin to belong to capitalized agriculture directly or indirectly. They just want to remind people of the dangers of agricultural capitalization.

"Urban industrial and commercial capital goes to the countryside on a large scale to compete for interests with the broad masses of farmers, rather than to form a complementary with it, which is a new challenge facing the current three rural issues."

In Yan Hairong's view, the old problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers-- farmers are really poor, rural areas are really bitter, and agriculture is really dangerous, are concerned about the weak position of farmers, rural areas, and agriculture in urban-rural relations and state policies, while in the new three rural issues, farmers are no longer a whole, but are clearly divided and divided.

Is agricultural modernization the way out for China's agriculture? What kind of agricultural modernization is in line with China's national conditions of agricultural modernization? For a long time, the mainstream model has been scale and capitalization, that is, the New World model represented by the United States, while China has a large population and little land, so it is not suitable for this model. The worship of the market makes capitalized agriculture and chemical agriculture become the only way of agricultural modernization, but is this really the case? A reporter from thepaper.cn interviewed the above five scholars on a series of questions.

Thepaper.cn: in 2006, the central government formally abolished the agricultural tax, reducing the tax burden on farmers. In your opinion, what are the new severe challenges facing the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers today?

Sun Xinhua: it should be said that after the abolition of agricultural taxes and fees, the burden on farmers has been greatly reduced, and the state has also invested a large amount of funds to benefit farmers in rural areas, ushering in a new era of "industry feeding agriculture" and "cities feeding rural areas". It should be said that farmers have caught up with an excellent era of farming. However, in this process, urban industrial and commercial capital marched into rural areas on a large scale; governments at all levels also adopted various means to encourage and attract urban industrial and commercial capital to go to the countryside to transfer farmers' land under the slogan of developing scale operation and modern agriculture. and also put the country's various preferential agricultural projects focused on urban industrial and commercial capital management land. Therefore, the benefits that should be shared by the broad masses of farmers are seized by the urban industrial and commercial capital.

In this way, although agriculture has made some improvements in some indicators, such as mechanization, scale, marketization and labor production efficiency, and so on (the land output rate is not necessarily increasing or even many are decreasing), but what does this have to do with farmers? Many farmers not only can no longer share agricultural interests and national resources input, but also have to leave their homes to make a living, so that the original dynamic villages are also in decline.

Therefore, I think that urban industrial and commercial capital goes to the countryside on a large scale to compete for interests with the broad masses of farmers, rather than to form a complementary with it, which is a new challenge facing the current three rural issues, which is very disadvantageous to farmers, rural areas and agriculture.

Yan Hairong: although the central government's policy of abolishing agricultural tax will help farmers reduce their burden, the original issue of agriculture, rural areas and farmers has evolved into a new issue of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. In my opinion, the new issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers include the differentiation of farmers, agricultural capitalization, and rural ecological crisis. The old problems of agriculture, rural areas and farmers-- farmers are really poor, rural areas are really bitter, and agriculture is really dangerous. They are mainly concerned about the weak dominant position of farmers, rural areas and agriculture in urban-rural relations and national policies. In the new issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, we see the division and variation of subjectivity. It is a basic fact that farmers are no longer a whole, but are obviously divided.

In Xinhua's answer, we still regard "farmers" as an undivided whole, and this is a misunderstanding that we should get rid of from experience to concept. "striving for profits with the broad masses of farmers" is not only the urban industrial and commercial capital that goes to the countryside, but also the big growers in rural areas.

According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in terms of per capita net income in rural areas, the income of the top 20% of rural households in 2012 was 8.2 times that of the bottom 20%. Further research also shows that between 2001 and 2011, the income of rural residents with the highest per capita net income grew twice as fast as that of the lowest 10 per cent.

Some people think that the differentiation in rural areas is mainly caused by migrant workers or operation, but there is no significant differentiation in agricultural management. In fact, the Gini coefficient of agricultural operating income in the decade of the new century (2001-2011) is larger than that in the previous decade (1991-2000), that is, the gap in agricultural operating income tends to expand. In fact, since the rural reform, the policy of the central government has been promoting the differentiation of farmers, encouraging the emergence of large rural households and professional households, and helping to achieve today's new main body of agricultural management, which is a process from quantitative change to qualitative change.

With the differentiation of farmers, agriculture has begun to be capitalized. We believe that in agricultural capitalization, the accumulation of large households and professional households arises from the differentiation of farmers, which can be regarded as a bottom-up capital driving force. comparatively speaking, capital going to the countryside is a top-down capital motive force. there are also new business entities, such as many cooperatives, that combine these two forces. How to treat agricultural capitalization? The mainstream welcomes and encourages capitalization. Scholars of the "small-scale peasant economy school" oppose capital going to the countryside and the government to help capital go to the countryside, but encourage or acquiesce to the bottom-up capitalization of rural areas. Professor Huang Zongzhi believes that China's agricultural capitalization has not caused proletarization, that is, the proportion of agricultural wage labor is very low, only about 3-5%. However, our study found that the proportion of new agricultural operators employing agricultural labor force is about 20-30%. The gradual concentration of land and the significant increase of wage labor, which is also an embodiment of the differentiation of farmers, makes China have a tendency to move towards agricultural capitalism.

The great challenge facing China's rural areas is the environmental and ecological crisis. Chemical agriculture, which relies heavily on chemical fertilizers, pesticides and agricultural film, has become the first major factor causing non-point source pollution in China. For example, in terms of unit area, the amount of fertilizer used in China is 1.93 times the internationally recognized safety limit. The environmental ecological crisis threatens the public health of urban and rural areas and the sustainability of development.

Huang Yu: as Yan Hairong mentioned, China's "chemical industry and agriculture" has caused serious pollution, but the state has not paid attention to it. Factory pollution may not necessarily affect production, but agriculture cannot be maintained without a healthy ecological environment. In addition, the current state support for agriculture, in addition to subsidies, is often in the form of projects. On the face of it, the bidding of the project is open and fair, but an application for a project needs at least hundreds of pages, and it is very difficult for ordinary farmers to get it. Therefore, most of the projects are monopolized by leading enterprises, but it is difficult for ordinary farmers to obtain.

Thepaper.cn: is agricultural modernization inseparable from scale and capitalization?

Chen Hangying: the way out of China's agriculture is bound to be modernization, so the question is not whether agricultural modernization is China's way out, but what kind of agricultural modernization road China should choose.

At present, the road chosen by our country is to realize agricultural modernization led by capital, which is the so-called "new continent model" or "old agricultural paradigm". This agricultural modernization brings a lot of problems, first of all, it is not in line with the basic situation of China's large population and little land, and what is more serious is that it will put us back on the old road of making the broad masses of peasants proletless and semi-proletarious. and bring serious environmental problems, ecological crisis. It brings these problems, whether in the social level, or in the natural level, we can not afford.

Therefore, can we find another way of modernization in addition to the current capital-led agricultural modernization?

Chen Yiyuan: today's progress in agricultural technology, especially the promotion of agricultural mechanization, has indeed greatly improved agricultural productivity, which is in contradiction with the agricultural operation of less than 10 mu of land per household in China, and we do have the need for scale. I agree with Hang Ying that what we need to discuss is not whether we want "agricultural modernization", but what kind of "agricultural modernization" we need to discuss. In today's policy discourse, "agricultural modernization" is basically equated with "capitalization" and "scale", or agricultural scale dominated by "capital", whether it is leading enterprises, cooperatives, professional families or so-called family farms.

Although these types of subjects have different specific modes of operation, the basic logic is consistent: the use of a considerable proportion of wage labor, with the goal of maximizing profits and expanding reproduction. They are qualitatively different from the agricultural production of ordinary farmers in order to maintain their livelihood. Among these subjects, there are leading enterprises, which are the form of foreign capital going to the countryside, and family farms, which are endogenous from the differentiation of rural areas. it corresponds to the top-down capitalization and bottom-up capitalization driving force pointed out by teacher Yan Hairong and my article respectively.

The state has subsidized and supported these new agricultural operators, and the intensity of support has increased unabated in recent years; however, even without government subsidies, some enterprises and big growers have found suitable business strategies in constant trial and error and failure, and can make a profit. In other words, the emergence of such business entities is not accidental because of national policy support, their existence has become a structural force, and this increasingly powerful force is transforming the relations of production in China's rural areas.

Unfortunately, this capital-led scale constitutes our only imagination of agricultural modernization today. Although the agricultural management model in the era of the people's commune has been criticized, it needs to be discussed in the background and international environment at that time. Can the agricultural model in the collective era become an alternative imagination of agricultural modernization? Centralize the village collective land to achieve moderate scale, give full play to the advantages of mechanization, distribute according to work in the collective, and gradually accumulate; when accumulated to a certain stage, set up the collective's own agricultural products storage and processing enterprises, so that a small part of the labor force is in the field of agricultural management, while the rest of the labor force is organized in the collective industrial enterprises, so that the agricultural value-added benefits are left in the village collective, and each member of the collective shares equally. Can labourers-- rather than profits-- as the main body of scale become another path of agricultural modernization?

Sun Xinhua: I also think that agricultural modernization is definitely the way out for China's agriculture, but the key is what kind of agricultural modernization is in line with China's national conditions. As Yiyuan said, the mainstream model that has been recognized and practiced by the mainstream for a long time is to equate large-scale farms, that is, capital-led scale, with modern agriculture. In fact, this is only a path of agricultural modernization, that is, the New World model represented by the United States, which has fewer people and more land in the New World countries, is more suitable for this model. And a prominent feature of this model is "big and thick", the unit output rate is not high, although the labor production efficiency is relatively high.

China is a country with a large population and little land, our vast number of farmers need to cultivate land, and China's food security requires to ensure the unit output rate of land, all of which limit China's big and rough New Continental model. it is more suitable to follow the agricultural modernization model of traditional countries, that is, to continuously improve the social service system on the basis of small producers as the main body of agricultural management to realize agricultural modernization.

Therefore, if modernization must be inseparable from scale, scale does not necessarily have to be the scale of agricultural production, but also through "small-scale production + large-scale cooperation" to achieve scale.

Thepaper.cn: how did small farmers become proletarian or semi-proletarian? What does it mean for this group?

Sun Xinhua: it is the scale led by capital that is so popular in our country that small farmers become proletarian and semi-proletarian. Capital-led scale is bound to focus on a large area of land transfer, and the farmers who flow out of the land are divided, some perennial migrant workers do business, they are willing to transfer the land to capital and get higher rents. There are more farmers who do not want to transfer, some farmers want to cultivate, some farmers also want to flow into part of the land, and some may not plant for the time being, but they may have to plant in a few years. This is in contradiction with the demand for land for capital transfer.

In reality, capital-led scale is not only the demand for capital, but also a good way for local governments to make political achievements and create bright spots, so local governments will help capital to transfer land in a large area. its main approach is to take various measures to force farmers to transfer land. Of course, in reality, there is also a small part of capital with the help of village cadres and local gray and black forces to directly force farmers to transfer their land. That is to say, the proletarian and semi-proletarian of farmers are bound to go against the wishes of farmers.

For these farmers, the consequences must be tragic, only a small number of farmers are forced to leave the land after the living conditions have improved, most of them are not as good as they used to be. They either work hard but their income is not as good as they used to be, or they have nothing to do, nowhere to put their body and mind, and no time to pass the time.

Huang Yu: over the past decade, one of the obvious changes we have seen in rural areas is that it is increasingly common for capital to go to the countryside. This trend became more pronounced after the 2008 financial crisis. Due to the slowdown in exports, coupled with the crisis of declining profit margins in the manufacturing industry itself, many urban industrial and commercial capital began to invest in rural areas.

Of course, many of this kind of capital mainly rely on the support of recessive ways such as low-interest or interest-free loans to obtain the start-up capital to invest in agriculture. The state hopes that this capital can promote the "modernization" of agriculture and solve the problem of food security with mechanized production.

However, the environmental crisis encountered by this kind of industrial production goes without saying, and the more serious problem is the social problems caused by machines crowding out the labor force. Tens of thousands of farmers (workers) have devoted their lives to building China's "modernization", but in the end they have been replaced by machines. In the era when "dead labor" exploits "living labor", where will the vast number of "proletarian" workers go? This is a problem that both scholars and countries have to face.

Chen Yiyuan: today, the impact of capital-led scale on rural society is gradually prominent. As far as land transfer is concerned, it is often pointed out in policy propaganda that these farmers who transfer land to companies and large households will receive three pieces of income: one is the land transfer fee, and the other is the income for enterprises or large households to work as agricultural employees-- in the land transfer agreement, there is often a statement that when enterprises or large households hire workers, priority should be given to farmers who have transferred land, and one is the agricultural subsidy of the state. It is also publicized that after the transfer of land to enterprises or large households, farmers can rest assured to go out to work and get more income from working.

In fact, not to mention that capital, in order to maximize profits, must reduce labor costs as much as possible and replace labor with machinery; and these enterprises or large households usually do not employ local farmers. because local farmers are too easy to unite to form confrontation with enterprises / large households, which is not conducive to labor supervision. Even if we go out to work, can China's industrialization accommodate so many rural "surplus labor" today? What if these labourers who have been "liberated" from the land cannot work in the city and have no land when they return to their hometown? This is a problem that is blocked in the mainstream discourse of land transfer.

Some people may say that the policy now mentions "moderate scale operation" and will not crowd out too much labor force, but as mentioned earlier, will "moderate scale" be a stable state in the face of increasingly fierce external competition? Won't those operators who are in a "moderate scale" be divided? Will not be eliminated or "upgraded" in the competition?

These questions can be further discussed, but according to my current survey, the answer is not optimistic. I think it is in this process that this part of the farmers whose land is transferred have become proletarians and semi-proletarians. Even farmers who do not involve land transfer are also faced with the problem of proletarian and semi-proletarian.

Chen Hangying: in order to answer the question of proletarian and semi-proletarian farmers, a primary premise is to have a discussion on the Chinese "peasant" group. Teacher Hai Rong also mentioned this point. At present, a serious defect in the current academic circles, whether they are mainstream economists or pro-small farmers, is that they ignore the internal differentiation of Chinese peasant groups. in their discussion, Chinese farmers are still a homogeneous group relative to urban residents, and are still small farmers at the beginning of reform and opening up. But in fact, after the baptism of "de-peasanization", the internal differentiation of peasant groups has been very significant. We can no longer regard farmers as a homogeneous whole and easily talk about 900 million farmers.

With this premise, we can talk about which part of the "peasant" group is becoming proletarian or semi-proletarian. In my opinion, the farmers who are becoming proletarian and semi-proletarian are mainly ordinary peasant families who are "part-time workers and part-farmers". As for the reasons why these ordinary peasant households continue to be proletarian and semi-proletarian, I think the exposition of teacher Hai Rong and Xinhua has been very clear, which is mainly caused by the path of agricultural modernization dominated by capital. My research found that the three main bodies, agricultural material dealers, large agricultural households and agricultural products processing and sellers, combined with each other to form a community of interests, occupying the leading position of agricultural prenatal, mid-production and post-natal links, and controlling most of the resources in agricultural production. They are the leaders of capitalized agriculture. On the other hand, the land resources and labor resources in the hands of ordinary farmers are constantly flowing to the former group, so they are in a subordinate semi-proletarian position in production, service and sales.

I don't agree with Xinhua teacher on what proletarian and semi-proletarian means to ordinary peasant households. Proletarian and semi-proletarian does not necessarily represent the decline of living standards, but that this group is in a position of being exploited and squeezed in the relations of production, and has to accept the family life of "family separation" in the flow of urban and rural areas.

Thepaper.cn: for the current mainstream agricultural circles, what do you most want to refute?

Sun Xinhua: agricultural modernization is scale and capitalization.

Yan Hairong: I think the point of view and policy that needs urgent reflection is the worship of the market and let the market play a decisive role in the allocation of resources. This involves the positioning of food. We know that national security, people's livelihood security and ecological security are public goods, and food is closely related to these public goods, so the state also regards food security as a national policy. In this case, food should have the nature of public goods and should not be entirely commodities.

What still needs to be reflected is the vision of capitalized agriculture, thinking that capitalized agriculture and chemical agriculture are the only way to agricultural modernization, and there is no choice. In fact, this old agricultural paradigm has been challenged by sustainability. Internationally, the innovation of agricultural paradigm has begun, and the United Nations has designated 2014 as the "year of Family Agriculture." We should not be old-fashioned, but should explore new ways beyond the traditional small-scale peasant economy and capitalized agriculture.

Chen Hangying: refute the view that worships the market, especially those who think that importing grain is equal to importing land and water. This point of view is to equate public goods such as grain with ordinary goods, and let the food security of a country or nation be controlled by the market. The example of the fiasco of the soybean industry in Northeast China is enough to show that it is unreliable to rely on the market. We need to remember General Secretary Xi's words, "the rice bowls of the Chinese people must be firmly in the hands of the Chinese people themselves." And if we want to hold it firmly, we cannot rely on the American-style capitalized agricultural road that is being practiced at present. Under this road, on the one hand, serious inequality arises, land, labor and other resources are constantly concentrated in the hands of a small number of people, while the majority of farmers continue to be proletarian and semi-proletarian. Even with the emergence of any new agricultural technology, it can only be reduced to a tool for capital to grab surplus value. On the other hand, this road will also bring increasingly serious agro-ecological crisis. In order to increase production, predatory extraction of groundwater and excessive use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides are in danger of bringing agricultural ecology to the brink of collapse. Therefore, we must choose a sustainable eco-agricultural modernization road that is beneficial to the broad masses.

Thepaper.cn: what do you think is the most urgent need to change if you want to reverse this process?

Sun Xinhua: the most urgent need to change is the blind worship of the New World model and the excessive disparagement of Chinese small farmers.

Yan Hairong: I think what we need is to get rid of the superstition about the market and capitalized agriculture.

Chen Hangying: the collective "unified" side of strengthening the household contract responsibility system with the combination of unification and division. Whether it is the "separation of powers" or the determination of land rights, the current policy is constantly improving the aspect of individual "division". As the main body of "unification", the rural land ownership of the village collective is constantly being erased by the individual contractual management right. The current situation of "unified division without integration" has made the construction and management of specific basic and public water conservancy and other agricultural production infrastructure stagnant. Even if the state invests a lot of money to carry out farmland transformation projects in various places, it does not play its due role because of the lack of management after the completion of the project. Therefore, the "unified management" of the village collective must be strengthened in these aspects. Strengthening the collective "unification" of the village is also conducive to truly uniting the broad masses of ordinary farmers and strengthening their producer sovereignty, so that they will not "fight alone" in the market and will not be exploited by all kinds of "middlemen." we will also hear less news such as "cheap vegetables hurt farmers", "cheap fruits hurt farmers", "cheap milk hurts farmers" and so on. Moreover, the collective "unified management" is also in a better position to abandon unsustainable chemical agriculture and turn to sustainable ecological agriculture, which not only ensures the safety of the ecological environment, but also ensures food safety and consumers' food sovereignty. As far as the country is concerned, it also helps to ensure national food security and agricultural security, and safeguard national food sovereignty.