How to improve the scale Management level of small Farmers

Since 2013, Sheyang County, Jiangsu Province has implemented the agricultural large-scale production mode of "stable land rights and cooperative management" and achieved remarkable results. According to the author's preliminary investigation, in 2014, in the farming areas where this mode of production was tried out in Sheyang County, the output value / cost ratio of wheat increased by about 192%, the rice output value / cost ratio increased by about 30%, and the competitiveness of agriculture increased significantly.

Six characteristics of the model of "stable land ownership and cooperative management"

The core feature of "stable land rights and cooperative management" is that land is not transferred among farmers, and large-scale operation is realized through production and management cooperation to improve the efficiency of grain production. Cadres and people in Sheyang County call this large-scale production mode "joint farming and joint cultivation." In fact, this model is breaking through the farming link and developing in the direction of integrated cooperative management. This model has six main characteristics:

First, farmers set their own signs belonging to different plots, and the ridges and boundaries of the fields are cancelled during actual farming to facilitate machine tillage operation.

Second, unify the farming time, in order to reduce the loss of operation efficiency caused by the disunity of farming time of small farmers, and improve the utilization efficiency of light and heat resources in crop growing period.

Third, uniformly plan the machine ploughing route, eliminate the dead corner of the machine ploughing to the maximum, and minimize the occupied area of the machine ploughing road.

Fourth, village cadres or people in charge of cooperatives will coordinate, and farmers will determine the categories of means of production, such as seeds and chemical fertilizers, and use them uniformly on larger fields.

Fifth, if the land fertility of different farmers is different, let the harvester operate separately at harvest, and each peasant household will take the product on its own; if the land fertility of each peasant household is close, it will be sold through yield measurement, unified harvest and unified sale, and the monetary income will be recorded in each account. At present, the latter situation is still relatively rare, but with the advance of unified farming, the fertility of the land is getting closer and closer, and this way will become the mainstream.

Sixth, the whole production process ensures that farmers know or participate, and the coordinators of production (village cadres or heads of cooperatives) do not make their own decisions, nor do they do unified and independent management in accordance with the requirements of an agricultural enterprise.

Because of the above characteristics of "stable land rights and cooperative management", farmers psychologically think that the land is still their own, and the management right of the land has not been transferred. At present, this model is generally welcomed by farmers, the demonstration effect is strong, and the promotion speed is fast.

The innovative significance of the model of "stable land ownership and cooperative management"

Since the implementation of the land contract system, different forms and degrees of large-scale operation have been developed in the main grain producing areas in China, which has improved the economic benefits of agriculture. The mode of "stable land ownership and cooperative management" in Sheyang County has its own uniqueness compared with the existing main agricultural scale management mode.

First, compared with "small farmers + social services". "small farmers + social service" is the basic way for China's agriculture to realize "partial large-scale operation". It mainly benefits from the specialization of agricultural production, in which the nature of large-scale operation mainly occurs in the link of production and service. that is, agricultural service providers serve many small farmers. Compared with the whole process of small farmers' management, this model undoubtedly has great advantages, but its disadvantages are also obvious, mainly reflected in that social services in the face of small farmers will cause some inconvenience of large-scale operation, resulting in lower efficiency. Under the mode of "stable land ownership and cooperative management", due to the weakening of land boundary constraints and the enhancement of the unity of farming, these problems can be basically overcome.

Second, compared with "corporate agriculture". The overall efficiency of corporatized agriculture in China is not high. First, it is difficult to supervise employees because of the low degree of standardization of production and the complexity of operation measurement; second, corporate agriculture often relies on government administrative intervention to transfer land, and the psychological cost of farmers enters the determination of land rent rate. as a result, the land rent rate usually accounts for more than half of the agricultural net income, which greatly increases the operating cost of agricultural companies. Under the mode of "stable land rights and cooperative management", farmers do not break away from management, and there is no land rent cost, farmers' accounting can still be maintained, and the disadvantages of corporate agriculture can be largely eliminated at the present stage.

Third, compared with the "Totti Society". It can be considered that there is no transfer of land management rights in the "land support society" model, and farmers actually buy the whole service of the trustee. Usually because the land boundaries of farmers must still be retained, this model is actually similar to the model of "small farmers + social services". Moreover, this model is mainly suitable for areas with high degree of labor transfer and high remuneration for non-agricultural employment. In contrast, if there is a large proportion of elderly women in the village, the model of "stable land rights and cooperative management" can better meet the requirements of small farmers.

Fourth, compared with "small farmers + cooperative services". From international experience, it is very difficult for small farmers to form cooperatives in a real sense. Only cooperatives formed by large farmers or family farms can give full play to the advantages of professional and large-scale services. In agricultural developed countries, real cooperatives are not directly involved in land production, which is entirely the farmer's own business. Small farmers and real cooperatives are not a good "couple". Strictly speaking, most of the cooperatives in Sheyang County are not cooperatives in the real sense, but they are only production coordinators under the mode of "stable land rights and cooperative management", but this coordination plays a positive role in promoting large-scale production.

Generally speaking, the mode of "stable land rights and cooperative management" in Sheyang County meets the requirements of developing agricultural large-scale production under the condition of unstable agricultural population transfer and farmers' heavy complex of cherishing land, and the degree of scale is higher than other models, and the economic efficiency is also more obvious.

The popularizing value of the model of "stable land ownership and cooperative management"

The mode of "stable land ownership and cooperative management" in Sheyang County is beneficial to improve the agricultural competitiveness of the main grain producing areas with densely populated agriculture in China. It is estimated that about 80% of China's grain output is produced by areas with agricultural conditions similar to those in Sheyang County. The main characteristics of agricultural production in these areas are relatively dense population and unstable labor transfer. The elderly and women "wait" for agricultural land. In addition to a small number of corporatized agriculture and land-leased family farms, about 50% of the grain in these areas is still produced in the "small farmers + social service" model. Thus it can be seen that it is of universal significance to learn from and apply the model of "stable land rights and cooperative management" in Sheyang County to further improve the level of large-scale agricultural management in our country.

The significance of the "stable land rights and cooperative management" model also lies in its smooth transition to a higher level of large-scale mode of production. Small farmers can no longer intervene in production and operation, and no longer make any investment in production, and the existing organizers of production cooperation will become the main body of unified management, and it will establish a contractual relationship with small farmers, so that small farmers can only obtain fixed income. Or establish a "pawn right" contractual relationship, one-time access to "pawn" income, by this kind of income reflects the identity of farmers' land property rights. This has actually realized the transfer of land property rights (including management rights). Of course, we should also be soberly aware that the transition from the agricultural scale management model to the family farm model in Sheyang County still needs a long time, and the following conditions need to be met.

First of all, the agricultural surplus labor force should be transferred steadily and bid farewell to the "migratory bird" movement. According to the author's estimation, when there are about 30 million peasant households left in the country, they will form a level of "urban-rural income balance". It will take more than 20 years to advance this process. In order to achieve this goal, the government needs to have a more active urbanization policy to promote the conditional rural population to enter all kinds of cities and become urban settlement population.

Second, improve the social security system, gradually weaken the economic roots of farmers'"land conservation complex", and reduce the agricultural land rent rate to less than 10% of the net agricultural income. If the basic pension of farmers settled in cities is significantly higher than the net income of small farmers in densely populated areas (most grain production farmers are no more than 4000 yuan), and can pay the necessary expenses of urban life, farmers' land conservation complex will lose economic motivation. If this condition is met, the high land rent rate caused by land conservation will also decline, and there will be greater profit space for land-leased farms.

Finally, further adjust the national farmland policy. There is an obvious defect in China's rural land transfer market, that is, local government administrative intervention often plays a role in small farmers' transfer of land, which inevitably makes farmers worry about "losing land". Farmers trust the market more. If farmers can easily "buy back" their transferred land from the market, they will transfer the land management right and even the contract right more confidently. The central land system reform should be firmly promoted in the direction of marketization, while local governments should reduce their direct intervention in the land market.