Jump out of the trap of farmland system and realize agricultural modernization

The so-called "well-off agricultural modernization in an all-round way" is the stage goal that agricultural modernization will achieve when it is realized in 2020. Its specific content was put forward by General Secretary Xi at a recent forum of responsible comrades of the party committees of seven provinces and cities in East China: during the 13th five-year Plan period, while stabilizing the output of grain and important agricultural products, ensuring national food security and effective supply of important agricultural products, speed up the transformation of the mode of agricultural development and speed up the pace of agricultural technological innovation Walk out a road of intensive, efficient, safe and sustainable development of modern agriculture "(Xinhua News Agency, Hangzhou, May 28)

General Secretary Xi's above important speech marks that the formulation of the economic and social development plan during the 13th five-year Plan period was formally raised to the top of the decision-making of the CPC Central Committee, and also marked that the agricultural modernization needed to speed up the realization of a well-off society in an all-round way has entered the final stage of development. The situation is pressing, and there is no time to wait.

How to achieve the goal of agricultural modernization needed by a well-off society in an all-round way during the 13th five-year Plan period? From the perspective of experience, one of the many problems that urgently need to be solved is to jump out of the trap of farmland system reform. The so-called "trap of agricultural land system reform" means that in the discussion of agricultural theory and policy planning and design, it is difficult to extricate itself from the dilemma of "public good" or "private good" of agricultural land for a long time, which seriously hinders the improvement of agricultural land system and the progress of agricultural modernization.

From the perspective of the basic theory of agriculture, some experts (Ding Ze, Exploration of the basic Theory of Agricultural Economics, China Agricultural Press, first edition, 2002) think that whether agricultural economics should study the land system or not, different theoretical frameworks have different argumentation methods and draw different conclusions. The mainstream schools of western modern economics, from neoclassical economics to neoclassical comprehensive school, all exclude the institution (land system) as an external factor, or assume that the system and its changes do not affect the economic effect analysis. According to this theoretical framework, the study of land system is superfluous. Therefore, the content of modern agricultural economics represented by American agricultural economics does not include the issue of land system. On the other hand, Marxist economics takes the study of production relations as the main object, and agricultural economics based on Marxist political economy should study the land system.

From the practice of agricultural modernization, the existing practices of industrial developed countries in the world and China have proved that agricultural modernization can be realized regardless of whether the land is public or private. When the author studied irrigation and water conservancy technology in Western Europe, I saw that most of their farmland is private, but public facilities such as water circuits can be provided by the public as usual. China's practice over the past 30 years has also strongly proved that modern agricultural projects, such as the construction of farmland public facilities, the establishment of interest compensation mechanism, the promotion of agricultural scientific and technological innovation, the acceleration of the development of modern seed industry and agricultural mechanization, and the strengthening of the construction of the market system of agricultural products, are not necessarily related to the farmland system. It turns out that there is a view that small farmers are not conducive to the use of large agricultural machinery. When I lived and cultivated in the countryside a few years ago, I realized that small hilly farmland with an area of a few cents or a few percent was also suitable for the use of farmland rotary tillers and rice combine harvesters. All kinds of social services before and after birth have little to do with the public and private, large and small of farmland and the degree of agricultural professionalization of operators, but only related to cost and price.

In the previous period, when people mentioned agriculture, they were frozen by the farmland system, system and mechanism. an important reason is that China's rural reform and agricultural development for more than 30 years began with the separation of the ownership, contracting and management rights of agricultural land, that is, "collective ownership, household contracting and free circulation". And then formed a psychological set, and even become an immovable "dogma", a program. "Agricultural development, words must be called land system", we can not see the stability characteristics of the system.

In fact, farmers awaken earlier than we do. A few years ago, when the author was living and farming in the village, the old farmer of the same generation said to me from time to time, "call my nephew, I often think that in the old society or in the collective, if there were so many chemical fertilizers, pesticides, machinery and high-yield seeds now, food would not be a problem."

Looking back on the millennium, the richest practical experience in China is rural land management, from the coexistence of different public ownership and private ownership in the primitive commune and feudal society, to the land reform of state ownership (state-owned farms) and the privatization of farmers at the beginning of New China, and then to complete state-owned and collective-owned, collective management, and then to state-owned or collective-owned household management, from property rights to contracting and management rights. There is already a wealth of practice and experience, and there is no need to be burdened by a certain "dogma". We can completely let go of the experiment.

Some policy planners and scholars advocate the "property right (privatization)" reform of farmland, and he can give it a try. If they choose a collective land to carry out the reform of property rights, how can they determine the rights of members and the time of distribution and remain unchanged forever? How to ensure that the farmland is effectively used and not wasted? How to solve the population change? How to inherit? How to build public facilities? If these problems have been solved, it is also possible for farmers in other places to follow suit.

Some insist that the existing collective ownership of agricultural land and household contracts remain unchanged, and there are ways to solve the problem of how to operate after a large number of people enter the city. All the members of a production team have gone to the city and can be managed by the village committee, including the determination of membership rights, income distribution and contracted farming. It is not difficult for the whole village (administrative village) to be managed by the township government when all the people in the administrative village are in the city.

As for those non-agricultural land, regardless of urban expropriation or public occupation, what is left is the right of members to participate in the sharing of money, let alone many problems. In the words of the peasants, "if there is no difficulty, it is not difficult."

It can be said that after the "decision" of the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the farmland system has been quite perfect. In general, it is divided into categories and decisions, and there is only one word left: doing. The real problem is that either dogmatism prevails or inaction prevails, which must be changed in order to realize the agricultural modernization needed by a well-off society in an all-round way.