A Useful Exploration on Solving the Conflict between Capital's Profit-seeking and Farmers 'Interests

The summer rain is like silver and Greater Heat's rain is like gold. At the beginning of the hottest "summer" season, Wuchang City, Heilongjiang Province, which borders the Songnen Plain in the north and the Shulanjiao River in the south, ushered in a rare continuous cloudy day, with crops greedily drinking Rain Water, and the heavier and heavier ears were wrapped in a bumper harvest.

With the happy summer rain, the reporter came to Heilongjiang, known as the "granary of China", to take a close look at the ongoing reform of agricultural production relations here. The most direct "fuse" of change comes from the inevitable tendency of "non-grain" and "non-agriculture" due to the large-scale entry of agriculture as "Tang monk meat" by industrial and commercial capital. the core purpose of the change is to focus on how to enable a wider number of farmers to fully benefit from it.

The problem is constantly thinking and exploring. In recent years, Heilongjiang Province has been exploring how to make farmers in and out of land fully enjoy the reform dividend, by vigorously supporting all kinds of new business entities, especially the standardized development of cooperatives. "We explore and find and more and more firmly believe that standardizing the development of farmers' cooperatives is the best way to solve the conflict between the nature of capital for profit and the protection of farmers' interests." Wang Zhonglin, director of the Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of Agriculture, told reporters that "cooperatives can successfully handle various complex relationships such as capital gains and land gains, agricultural benefits and farmers' benefits, and the benefits of a small number of farmers and the majority of farmers."

Cooperative is the best way to coordinate capital income and land income.

-- it is difficult for industrial and commercial capital to explore the value of the land itself with the goal of pursuing profits. Only farmers are best at farming and can reduce non-grain and non-agricultural risks. At the same time, under the premise of mechanization and cooperative management, the large-scale benefits of farmers' land management are also considerable.

In front of Xinghua Mountain on the outskirts of Wuchang, the cry of "Gaga" can be heard constantly, and pieces of white feathers flash in the green rice bushes from time to time. This is the rice and duck base of Wangjiatun Modern Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative in Wuchang City. Since 2012, the cooperative has begun to experiment with the new model of "co-cultivation of rice and duck". A total of 46 duck houses have been built in 500mu rice paddies, raising a total of 9000 parrot ducks, a new breed from Britain.

In this way, pesticides and chemical fertilizers are no longer used in rice fields. Weeding and pest control rely on the "help" of ducks. At the same time, duck feces are good organic fertilizers. "this is the new 'way' of natural agriculture that we farmers have explored by ourselves under the guidance of experts." Qiao Wenzhi, director of the cooperative, told reporters that when visitors saw strong rice and ducks, they wanted to buy not only rice without chemical fertilizers and pesticides, but also ducks that specialize in worms and grass. The cooperative is really a "double harvest"!

The cooperative, which was established in 2011, has 635 peasant households and more than 33000 mu of land. In addition to trying to "co-cultivate rice and duck", the cooperative organizes farmers' intensive cultivation, and all other rice fields are cultivated organically and ecologically. Among them, 10, 000 mu of rice fields meet the EU organic standards.

Compared with enterprises that have become a monk halfway into agriculture, farmers have deeper feelings for land. In Heilongjiang, after joining cooperatives with land management rights and forming comprehensive business cooperatives, most of the use of agricultural land is still growing grain, because this is the "strong point" of farmers. Qiao Wenzhi told reporters: "take the rice fields that meet the EU standards. We use manual work to weed all the weeds. We rely on the 'human-sea tactics' carpet to pull out, one person a day one mu of land, fine."

When it comes to the reasons for the establishment of co-operatives, we have to start with "Wuchang Rice". Everyone knows that Wuchang rice is good. Qiao Wenzhi, a farmer born and raised, had the idea of selling rice in the early years. He had a good brain and broad connections, and sold the rice to Beijing. It was very popular in the first year, but it was "held back" in the second year, because the taste changed, and Qiao Wenzhi realized that it was caused by different planting varieties. As a result, he took the lead in organizing farmers to set up cooperative management, unified varieties and unified management, and then farmers who saw the benefits of cooperation in the surrounding areas joined the co-operative one after another.

In Niujiamanzu Town, Wuchang City, which is more than 90 kilometers away from Wangjiatun, the establishment of Fengling Modern Agricultural Machinery Professional Cooperative stems from the combination of three "Zhuge Liang". The town is located in the north of northeast China's corn belt, one of the three major Sautéed Sweet Corn with Salted Egg Yolk belts in the world. Liu Yanjie, Chen Zhimin, and Wang Xiuwei, secretaries of the three villages of Xingfu, Zhengfu, and Ertun in the town, watched the cooperative set up by an ordinary farmer learning from the province's advanced typical Renfa cooperative flourish. "the three of us work together, not 'three cobblers', but 'three Zhuge Liang', which must be better than others."

In 2013, three villages brought together thousands of mu of land voluntarily transferred by farmers to form a cooperative. The secretaries of the three villages were all very capable, but no one "grabbed merit." in order to achieve scientific management, Bai Yunpeng, a 47-year-old ordinary farmer, was selected as chairman, and the three of them became directors and supervisors respectively. Today, a total of 1054 farmers in the three villages have joined the cooperative, covering an area of more than 20, 000 mu.

In theory, the three villages can work alone, why should they unite? Bai Yunpeng gave the answer.

"scale, or scale!" "the space is so big that we can free up our large machines," he said. " In order to support the development of agricultural machinery cooperatives, Heilongjiang Province has "packaged" the national agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy, which is locally known as "national investment", accounting for 60% of the cooperative's purchase of agricultural machinery. "it sounds like the subsidy is higher than that of ordinary farmers, but because the cooperatives purchase agricultural machinery and tools in a unified way, it actually saves money on the state subsidy for each household." Bai Yunpeng said: "every household cannot afford and there is no need to buy large agricultural machinery, which is possible in the cooperative."

With large agricultural machinery, a sum of money can be saved when working. In addition to the depreciation of the machine from the cooperative provident fund, it is only necessary to bear the money for gas and the wages of the machine. It is understood that it costs 30 yuan for individual farmers to hire agricultural machinery to plough one mu of land, while the cost through cooperatives is only more than 13 yuan, saving more than half. At the same time, cooperatives can also save a lot of money by purchasing pesticides and fertilizers in bulk.

In addition, it is easier for cooperatives to promote the use of advanced agricultural technology, and the use of large agricultural machinery provides a basis for the application of technologies such as "big ridges and double rows". The yield of corn planted through specialized and mechanized cooperatives is more than 200 jin per mu higher than that of ordinary farmers, with an increase of more than 10%. The number of corn planted by ordinary farmers is more than 37000 per mu, while cooperatives can reach about 45000. When selling grain after autumn, due to the concentration of grain, large quantity and good quality, it can be sold for an extra 3-5 cents per jin. In this way, each mu of land can increase the benefit by more than 300 yuan.

"together, the large-scale benefits of land will be revealed." Li Lianrui, deputy director of the Heilongjiang Provincial Committee of Agriculture, said, "the comparative benefit of growing grain is low, and it is especially suitable for setting up cooperatives to increase farmers' income by expanding the scale; comparatively speaking, industrial and commercial capital has more advantages in the field of facility agriculture and cash crops."

Cooperative is the best carrier to balance agricultural benefit and farmers' benefit.

Industrial and commercial capital is naturally strong, taking away most of the benefits when the primary, secondary and tertiary industries are separated, while "small farmers" have a weak say in the face of a "big market." Through cooperatives to organize farmers and at the same time attract industrial and commercial enterprises to join cooperatives, coupled with government guidance and support, farmers can "warm up together", "strengthen themselves" to enter the market, and achieve value-added benefits.

In the Wangjiatun cooperative, there is a special member, she is Jinfutai Agricultural Co., Ltd. Relatively ordinary farmers buy shares with land, while companies buy shares all with funds. By the end of last year, the total investment of the cooperative was 71.03 million yuan, of which 17.98 million yuan was in cash, all of which was invested by Jin Futai.

Speaking of the relationship between the company and the cooperative, Qiao Wenzhi said: "the company is one and only one member of the cooperative, which is no different from every fellow-townsman in the village." The main purpose of the company's entry into the cooperative is to obtain raw materials with uniform standards and high quality. "from this point of view alone, companies depend on cooperatives." Why there is no difference between enterprises entering cooperatives and ordinary farmers, Wang Zhonglin explained as follows: this is determined by the cooperative law. Industrial and commercial capital entering cooperatives should act in accordance with the cooperative law. When making decisions, there is one person, one vote. Under special circumstances, additional voting rights can be increased through a general meeting of members, but not more than 20%. At the time of distribution, the cooperative surplus shared by the enterprise investment and funds from other sources shall not exceed 40% of the cooperative surplus; as for the subsidy given by the state to farmers, it can be enjoyed if the enterprise legal representative is a farmer, but not if it is not a peasant. If it is a policy fund to support agriculture, it can be enjoyed regardless of whether the legal representative is a farmer or not. These are the fundamental differences between industrial and commercial capital entering cooperatives and joint-stock enterprises.

According to Qiao Wenzhi, more than 30,000 mu of organic rice fields in the cooperative planted Wuchang rice with a unified variety called "Daohuaxiang 2". The use of chemical fertilizer adhered to a high standard, all weeding in the field was manual, and the "wide and narrow row" transplanting method was adopted in Honda transplanting. The "shallow wet-dry" method is implemented in irrigation to maximize the organic combination of scientific and agronomic technology with the water, soil and air environment of Wuchang to achieve the best growth effect. Ensure the excellent quality of rice.

Good quality achieves good price. Although Wuchang rice is good, the overall purchase price has only hovered around 2.5 yuan per jin in recent years, which is more than 60% higher than other northeast rice. Relying on the high quality of intensive cultivation, the Wangjiatun Cooperative sells its own rice to Jin Futai at a price of 8.34 yuan per jin.