For whose agricultural modernization?

I am very glad to have such an opportunity to communicate with you. I was very kind to listen to the speeches of teacher Tang Zilai, Dean Li Zhenyu and Dean Zhang Shangwu. Just now, Mr. Tang did a small survey and found that few of you were really born and raised in the countryside, and few of you stayed for a month. But 80% of my graduate students come from rural areas, and my requirements for my students, especially my PhD, are to live in the village for more than 400 days. Originally, we did not understand urban planning and urban and rural planning. When we looked at it from the perspective of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, we felt that many issues could be discussed.

I was asked to make a speech at this meeting. I think there are many specific issues that can be discussed. Every sentence that Mr. Tang and Dean Li said just now has given rise to a lot of places that I can discuss, but time is very limited, so I will start with the theme of my speech. The topic I am talking about is-for whose agricultural modernization?

The theme of today's seminar is "Beautiful Countryside", which is a vision and a wish. Modernization is also one of our wishes. We want to realize the modernization of China and agriculture, but behind this beautiful village, how can we achieve this goal? I'm afraid there's a lot of way to go.

What I am talking about today is that there is a big gap between the beautiful countryside and the modernization we generally understand. The discipline of planning must be open, pluralistic, and have an understanding of the complexity of the whole country. To have such an understanding, I hope to use my speech below to talk about agricultural modernization from a point of view that is different from the mainstream point of view. Whose agricultural modernization is agricultural modernization? How can we realize agricultural modernization? Is agricultural modernization a means or a goal? What on earth are we going to do? If you look into it carefully, there will be many different conclusions.

China is very complex and its territory is huge. Shanghai, for example, is not big enough and has not enough population relative to the whole country, but it is particularly important because it is the economic center of our country. In the developed eastern coastal areas represented by Shanghai, the rural areas have become part of the urban belt, and enjoy many benefits brought by urban development. This makes the rural areas of Shanghai and urban areas have completely different characteristics from other rural areas. The farmers here also have completely different needs from those in other places. This demand is finally expressed as interests, such a huge interest in the coastal areas, in the urban belt areas, so that our institutional arrangements in the past do not adapt, so it is necessary to carry out institutional innovation. Therefore, there is a lot of innovation in the coastal system, which will arouse the interest of scholars, the public and central policy makers. For example, the family farm in Songjiang in Shanghai is very important, and there are not only in Shanghai, but also in Guangzhou and Wuhan. Our relevant departments or scholars will investigate and study, and then say, why can't such good experience be popularized throughout the country? Similarly, there will be a lot of experience in the suburbs of big cities and coastal cities, not only in agriculture, such as family farms, but also in community building. In the end, these experiences are often extended to the whole country.

However, if we only spread the experience gained from the research in these areas to the whole country in a policy way, we may encounter great problems. It is an objective fact that there are great differences between our eastern coastal areas and the vast central and western regions, as well as between the southern and northern regions. In addition to the coastal areas and the suburbs of some mega-cities, the economic development of many rural areas still lags behind, the traditional agricultural methods are still effective, and the demand for new methods is not very strong.

Therefore, there is no problem with beautiful villages as a vision. I have also seen good planning experience and models, and I think it is also good to do so in some developed areas. However, most of the beautiful villages we see have made some high-end planning, and then concentrate a lot of resources in the way of projects. as a result, villages in very poor areas, which account for nearly 80% of the total, get even less resources. these areas will encounter a lot of problems. I seldom see the planning of these areas in the newspapers and the media, because they are too atypical, but also because they are too atypical, they are very representative. If we simply put the experience of the developed coastal areas across the country, you will find that it is not applicable, and the system will become the system in the newspaper and the system in the news broadcast. If it is forcibly implemented, there will be a lot of jokes.

What I am talking about below is critical speech as well as critical thinking. I hope to enlighten you in a way that I am not necessarily correct. Who will be the main body of our agriculture in the next 20 to 30 years? The question of who will farm is a big problem. National leaders also ask who will farm, which is indeed a big question. Yesterday, I talked to Mr. Han about how I met an 80-year-old man and an old lady planting more than 100 mu of land in South Korea, and they didn't need to ask anyone else to help. This is very interesting. We often say that there are no young people farming. Today, the average age of the rural labor force is 47, which is too old. However, according to South Korea's experience, if you can still farm until you are in your 80s, you will be 47 today, you will be in your 50s in 10 years' time, and you will be in your 60s in 20 years' time, that is to say, you can still farm for 30 years. In this way, China does not have to worry about the problem of no one farming at all. Because according to this calculation, only 2000 elderly couples can solve the problem of 2 billion mu of arable land in our country. At present, China has at least more than 200 million rural labor force, which can be further reduced by 90%. But we generally think that it is impossible to still farm at the age of 80 and still plant 100 mu of land, because we simply can't stand it when the farmer is busy. So in this sense, who will farm is not a false question.

So the question is, why can an old man in his 80s in South Korea still grow 100 mu of land, but we don't seem to be able to do so? A few years ago, I investigated in rural areas, and the results showed that local people also said that there was no difference between 50-year-old and 70-year-old people in farming, and the output was higher than that of large-scale operation. This is very interesting, which means that our farmers can also farm in their old age, 50, 60, 70, and even 80-year-old people can still farm, and the output is reliable, which is higher than large-scale operation. In this way, there is no question of who will farm in the future. So why don't 70-year-olds produce less than 50-year-olds? Why can a couple in their 80s grow more than 100 mu in South Korea? Because the whole process of mechanization has been realized. In the place I investigated, local officials and people revealed that it only takes about a week for local farmers to be busy, transplanting and harvesting are all mechanized, and the rest of the time is field management. Whether the management is good or not and whether the income is more or less is their own business. Even there is an interesting phenomenon in field management, that is, to see the growth of crops is a very fulfilling thing, and I feel psychologically particularly satisfied every day. Under such circumstances, how can industrial agriculture in the form of industrial and commercial capital compete with that of small farmers?

Today, most migrant workers in the city are called elderly migrant workers when they are over 50. Now there are 47 million elderly migrant workers. Only more than 10 million of these elderly migrant workers really leave their hometown to work. The rest work near their families and work part-time. In this way, they can take care of the family and agriculture, which is more convenient. But this phenomenon is also related to the fact that it is difficult for older migrant workers to find a job outside. It is difficult for 50-year-old people to find a job in the city, and it is almost difficult to find a job at the age of 55. Therefore, although many migrant workers actually want to stay in the city, because the city is of course much more comfortable than the countryside, but many people can not find a job, it is difficult to survive, there is no way to live a decent life, so they have to go back.

In that case, we have to leave a way out for the peasants to have a certain income when they go back to farming, and there are many harmonious relationships between people and nature, between people and people, between people and ecology, and there is also a sense of achievement. It is a good choice to go back and live a life of falling leaves. It is a very basic, very basic and very important right for farmers who have failed to enter the city to return. If we promote the transfer of land to large-scale operation and industrial and commercial capital, and carry out agricultural modernization on the basis of such large-scale operation, is it possible for the peasants to go back to the city if they fail to go to the city and live a disgraceful life in the city? There is no possibility. They can't go back. If the failed farmers cannot go back, there will be powder kegs in the cities, and the stability of the cities and even the country will be a problem.

So, can we provide modern equipment for this group of people's agriculture, for the small-scale peasant economy, for this part of migrant workers who may return to the countryside, and to realize agricultural modernization for them? This is a key issue. If we can do that, our society will be very stable, our development will have more flexibility, and we will have more room to deal with the financial crisis. As a large developing country, there will be many ways to get rid of the middle-income trap.

However, our whole society seems to pay more attention to high-end things, what everyone is willing to think highly of. We all compare Chinese agriculture with American agriculture, no matter how bad it is with Taiwan, and no one can compare it with India. No one can compare with anything worse than us. However, in this way, it is very possible to make decisions that are not in line with our actual situation at all, which will bring great problems to our future stability and development. So I'm going to talk about five aspects today.

First, is "strong, rich and beautiful" agricultural modernization our goal?

The No. 1 document of the CPC Central Committee in 2015, "some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on increasing the intensity of Reform and Innovation and speeding up the Construction of Agricultural Modernization" put forward the goal of "strong, rich and beautiful" if China wants to strengthen agriculture, China must be rich if it wants to be rich, and China must be beautiful if it wants to be beautiful in rural areas. a large amount of resources flow to rural areas, and profound changes are taking place in rural society. However, in the agricultural modernization that is currently being promoted throughout the country, there may be a transcendence of goals and means, and even the goal of agricultural modernization is also wrong. the core question is divorced from China's national conditions and agricultural conditions. should we modernize now? or 10 years, 20 years or 30 years later?

Which places can carry out beautiful rural planning, and what other places should be planned conservatively? This is a question that needs serious consideration. In some areas, all 8000 villages in a city should be demolished and rebuilt. They say that the biggest difficulty is that they are short of money and it is easy to do things with money. In this case, what is missing is not a penny. It takes money to demolish a house and to build a house. All this money is lacking, and there is no shortage of time. Of course, the plans I am talking about are not those made by comrades here, but those made by our officials who have made some great leaps forward. The agricultural modernization of the central government requires "strong, rich and beautiful", and "strong, rich and beautiful" is very good, but can it all be achieved?

The document of the Fifth Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee states, "in the in-depth development of industrialization and urbanization, we should synchronously promote agricultural modernization, referred to as the synchronization of the three modernizations." The meaning of synchronously promoting agricultural modernization is that when farmers go to cities, the land is transferred out to carry out large-scale operation, and then with the support of the state, the land of large-scale operation can promote the modernization of production. Since modernization is to be carried out, the right to land transfer must be stable, farmers will not come back when they go to the city, and they will not come back, and the rural areas have undergone a thorough change in the structure of life, resulting in thorough and unprecedented changes in rural areas.

The expression of the 18th CPC National Congress is a little more complicated, "adhere to the road of new industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics, promote the deep integration of informatization and industrialization, the benign interaction between industrialization and urbanization, and the coordination between urbanization and agricultural modernization, and promote the simultaneous development of industrialization, informatization, urbanization and agricultural modernization." Now there is more synchronization of the "four modernizations". There are more expressions about agricultural modernization in the documents of the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, such as "speeding up the construction of a new agricultural management system", "encouraging the transfer of contracted management rights to large professional households, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and agricultural enterprises in the open market." encourage and guide industrial and commercial capital to develop modern farming industries suitable for enterprise management in rural areas, encourage rural development of cooperative economy, and encourage social capital to invest in rural construction. "

The first document of 2013 put forward: "strive to build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization and socialization." We will continue to increase the scale of agricultural subsidies, concentrate new subsidies on major and advantageous producing areas, and tilt towards new main bodies of production and operation, such as large professional households, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and so on. We will adopt various measures, such as incentives and subsidies, to support joint household operations, professional large households and family farms. " Obviously, we hope that through the market economy, industrial and commercial capital will go to the countryside or spontaneously form large farmers in rural areas. But there is a problem, that is, the large-scale agriculture of these employees is often no more competitive than old men and women in their seventies and eighties-- as long as the social service system is good. Why can't you compete? Because it is necessary to hire workers as long as they engage in scale, and farming is a task, and a sense of responsibility is crucial. But those old men and women, they grow food that is their own business, but also as a hobby, a sense of achievement, their labor input can be regardless of the cost. How can you compete with them under such circumstances? What should I do if I can't plant it? The state says to give money, support a new type of agricultural economy, and defeat small farmers through state support.

The No. 1 document of the CPC Central Committee in 2014 put forward: "We should speed up the construction of a new agricultural management system guided by solving the problem of how to grow land, solve the resource and environmental constraints of land shortage and water shortage, and further promote the transformation of the mode of agricultural development." under the guidance of satisfying the safety of eating, we will vigorously develop high-quality and safe agricultural products. We will strive to work out a new road of agricultural modernization with Chinese characteristics with advanced production technology, moderate scale of operation, strong market competitiveness and sustainable ecological environment. "

On the whole, all these documents continuously put forward "strong, rich and beautiful", and not only "strong, rich and beautiful", but also proposed to vigorously support the development of tourism industry and the sixth industry in rural areas. In addition to the documents of the Central Committee, all sectors of society are also very concerned about agriculture and agricultural modernization. During the two sessions every year, the hottest topic for NPC deputies is who will farm? Is the abandonment of land serious? Who will feed China? And everyone also holds the same view: can agriculture for the elderly support China?

As a result, the whole society has such views and worries, and the government also says that agriculture is very dangerous and food is not safe. To promote agricultural modernization has become an important measure, and is to cultivate a new type of business main body as the direction, land circulation as the most basic condition. As long as the central government advocates it, the local government will certainly go further than the central government. The principal responsible person of the provincial party committee of a certain province made such a remark not long ago, saying that the new type of agricultural operators are the main force in promoting the development of agricultural modernization, and we should pay attention to the cultivation of new types of agricultural operators, just like attracting investment and the development of enterprises.

So is there anything wrong with small-scale peasant agriculture? Very few of you are from the countryside and may not know much about the situation. There are many Laozi on our side in the countryside, including my own students. After our exchange, we found that the phenomenon of abandonment in rural areas was very few, and there was little research in Shanghai, but it did not seem to be abandoned, which was similar to my research in many parts of the country. When I was doing research in Qianjiang, I asked the local farmers, "are there any abandoned people here?" They said: "how can be abandoned, farmers just do not have land, who will abandon the wasteland?" The land is extremely expensive, how can there be abandoned. " In this way, the benefit of large-scale operation is not as good as that of the old man and the old woman's way of small farmers, and there is little land abandoned in rural areas, so grain production is actually very safe. Although we have been talking about the issue of food security, the result is that food is not safe, and all the grain depots can no longer hold it. Grain prices have been rising every year in the past, but not last year, because we have already exceeded international grain prices.

So is there no abandonment at all? Not exactly. We investigated several major districts in Wuhan last year, and the leaders of the relevant Agriculture Bureau said that the abandonment of wasteland in Wuhan was very serious, and finally promoted the transfer of land. As for why to abandon the wasteland? Because it is very close to Wuhan, farmers do not want to farm land and go to Wuhan to work casually, making much more money than farming money. However, our research found that there is indeed a phenomenon of abandonment in Wuhan, but it depends on where in the end! In the high hilly areas close to the mountains, there is no way to plant the land. It will be reaped once every ten times, nine times in ten years and no harvest in ten years. But this land is reserved for industrial and commercial capital, but industrial and commercial capital is not-- farmers can't grow it, but I can grow it? Industrial and commercial capital needs good land and fertile land, but when the peasants are unwilling to transfer the land, the government mobilizes and the rent is very high. If the rent is 1,000 yuan per mu and capital is used to grow grain, can there be any harvest? Is there a profit in the end? Either the government can make up for it, but the government cannot afford it. In places like Wuhan that are abandoned, capital cannot enter, and what capital can enter is land that farmers are willing to grow. This is very important.

I am very surprised by the research of Qianjiang City. In the last four years of Qianjiang City, there has been a transfer of land to large households, and it is a long-term irreversible flow planned through the market. In fact, this phenomenon is the same all over the country. But what happens after it is transferred to capital? Capital farming does not make money, in the end, the government subsidizes, the government continues to subsidize, and in the end, a large amount of land is put in the hands of capital and in the hands of large households. the grain grown by our small farmers cannot be subsidized by the government, and the burden on the government is very heavy.

As for agriculture, which is considered to be a failure, I think there is no way to compare the agriculture of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan with that of the mainland. In these places, the government generally spends a lot of money, but the number of farmers is very small, and in the end, the farmers do not get rich. Ten years ago, China was still collecting taxes from farmers. From an agricultural point of view, we are not bad, but from another point of view, we do have some problems, that is, food is not safe. What I am talking about here is food insecurity, not food security, because the latter is mainly responsible for the problem of satiety and not starving to death. For today's China, what is more important and fundamental is the issue of food safety.

The production of small farmers has no problem in supporting China's agriculture, but it is in direct conflict with the process of agricultural modernization in which new types of agricultural operators are cultivated. When a lot of capital goes to the countryside, it is bound to occupy the production and even living space of small farmers. If these industrial and commercial capital cannot make money and local governments cannot afford it, they will be lost and bring a lot of problems. At present, we still have more than 200 million households and 600 million farmers, including 200 million workers. Our agricultural modernization, which is now dominated by a new type of industrial and commercial operators, requires most of these small farmers to go to the cities. But they can not enter the city in a short period of time, there are many migrant workers to return to the countryside, the mode of production of small farmers is their source of employment and income. But now industrial and commercial capital occupies a large area of employment space for farmers for a long time, which will make it impossible for many farmers to return. A large number of migrant workers can not return, or need more migrant workers to return home in a short time in the face of economic crisis. This modernization tendency of strengthening non-food and non-agriculture contains a lot of hidden risks.

On October 25, 2015, the Ministry of Agriculture issued an opinion on strengthening the supervision and risk prevention of industrial and commercial capital leasing of agricultural land, which shows that the central government attaches great importance to this. The document clearly requires that there should be no coercive orders, administrative orders, or blind commands in the circulation of rural land, and emphasizes that there should be a strict threshold for industrial and commercial capital leasing of agricultural land. The attitude of the central authorities is very different from that of the past. Not long ago, General Secretary Xi stressed that the transfer of agricultural land should be carried out in a gradual and orderly manner, in line with local conditions, and that there should be no Great Leap forward, no coercion, no blind command.

The central government has recognized this problem, so there is a tension between the public and the news media and the central government's emphasis on promoting land transfer and cultivating new business entities, as well as the development of agricultural modernization on this basis. Once these hidden dangers reach a certain extent, or even there are certain problems, the central government will issue an emergency notice.

Therefore, we have not actually thought clearly about the way of agricultural modernization today. These understandings of how to do it and who is the subject are not yet in place. The important reason for this is that we do not really fully understand our national conditions and agricultural conditions. This year, the No. 1 document of the Central Committee advocates the sixth industry, calling for increasing investment in rural tourism and leisure infrastructure, strengthening online and offline marketing capabilities, improving management level and service quality, studying and formulating land financial management support policies to promote the development of rural tourism and leisure, implementing preferential tax policies, integrating rural resources, and increasing farmers' income. Finally, in order to increase farmers' income, in order to be "rich and beautiful", so as to support the profit part of rural tourism and rural leisure through financial, taxation, fiscal and land policies. There are a lot of problems here. I think that "being strong, rich and beautiful" is not the goal of our agricultural modernization. The understanding of our whole society is very misleading and misleading, and my point of view is not necessarily correct. Comrades who are engaged in planning must have critical thinking. My criticism can also be regarded as critical thinking and can be discussed.