Gradually establish a retirement system for professional farmers

Recently, a report on the current situation of providing for the aged in China's rural areas in 2014 shows that 54.6% of the rural elderly are still engaged in professional labor, and more than 60% of the rural elderly do not like to go to the city for retirement, resulting in the situation of being forced to stay behind. (according to People's Daily on June 10)

The Constitution stipulates that citizens have the right to receive material assistance from the State and society in the event of old age, illness or incapacity to work. The state develops social insurance, social relief and medical and health services needed for citizens to enjoy these rights. Although farmers work hard in farming, they cannot "gloriously retire" at the age of 60, like urban residents, enterprise workers and staff of administrative institutions. It should be said that the government and society have done a lot of work on the issue of providing for the aged of farmers. For example, farmers who have reached the age of 60 can receive a certain amount of "pension" every month; for example, farmers are encouraged to pay social security, and so on, which is to give farmers a sense of security and security for their old age.

The author believes that with the enhancement of national strength and the economic and social development of rural areas, the retirement system for professional farmers should be gradually established. To establish a retirement system for professional farmers and strengthen the guarantee of the pension system for professional farmers is the successful experience of advanced developed countries in promoting the professionalization of farmers. For example, Germany established a retirement system for farmers in 1957. As Wang Fuyu, member of the National Committee of the Chinese people's political Consultative Conference and chairman of the Guizhou Provincial Committee of the Chinese people's political Consultative Conference, said, it is necessary to innovate the social security system and integrate the rural population into the urban social security systems such as medical insurance, old-age insurance and unemployment insurance. integrate the policy resources such as the old age allowance, the rural minimum living security and the "five guarantees" support, and formulate and issue public policies with reference to the social security standards for workers in industrial enterprises. We will establish a nationwide social security mechanism for professional farmers with old-age insurance as the core, let farmers who have reached the age of 60 withdraw from agricultural production and operation, allow the government to issue pensions according to the actual needs of old-age security, and change the mode of family pension and land support for the aged, so that the pension problem of professional farmers can be guaranteed by the system.

In fact, some western developed countries have long established a sound retirement system for elderly farmers, especially in France. After World War II, the French government formulated a land restructuring policy to accelerate the concentration of land through the establishment of "land renovation and rural enterprise companies". The French government's decision to grant lifetime pensions to farmers in the 1970s prompted 440000 elderly farmers to leave agriculture, which alone concentrated more than 9 million hectares of land, equivalent to 1 million of all agricultural land. After that, France adopted a series of policies to promote the rapid development of rural social welfare, one of which is the implementation of pension system for elderly farmers. In Taiwan, China, there are also "old farmers' allowances", that is, welfare allowances for elderly farmers, which can be simply understood as farmers' pensions. It is distributed to elderly farmers in Taiwan who have reached the age of 65. In 2011, the Taiwan authorities finally adopted a plan to adjust the old peasant allowance every four years according to the CPI, so as to institutionalize the old peasant allowance. At the same time, the conditions and targets for applying for "old farmers' allowances" have been relaxed, and elderly fishermen have also been included in the payment targets.

The establishment of a "peasant retirement system" has many positive effects on the economy and society. First of all, it can greatly enhance the cohesion and attractiveness of the collective; secondly, the retirement of elderly farmers has provided jobs for the new labor force, so that the age, cultural, and technical quality of the labor force have been improved; finally, to a certain extent, the old concept of "raising children to prevent old age" has been broken. Among them, the most important point is to solve the problems of "who will farm the land" and "how to farm the land". Nowadays, farming for the elderly in rural areas has become a common phenomenon, but at least some people are still farming. The real danger is that when the farmers are old and immobile, there is still "who will cultivate the land"? Therefore, we should take the establishment of farmers' retirement system as the starting point, guide traditional farmers to become "decent" professional farmers, establish the same occupational security and retirement system as other occupations, and attract more people to engage in agriculture. in order to finally realize the transformation of Chinese traditional agriculture.