The training of professional farmers is challenged by the brain drain in rural areas.

Solving the Problem of Professional Farmer Training

The difference between farmers and new-type professional farmers lies in that the former is slash-and-burn farmer, while the latter has agricultural technical expertise, understands management and management, and is a compound talent. To cultivate such talents, we cannot follow the old path of agricultural technology extension training.

This year, the government work report once again emphasizes "cultivating professional farmers." In 2012, the No.1 Document of the Central Committee proposed "vigorously cultivating new professional farmers". In August of the same year, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture issued the Pilot Work Plan for the Cultivation of New Professional Farmers. On the basis of voluntary applications from all parts of the country, 100 pilot counties (cities and districts) were finally identified. However, so far, only Hunan, Anhui, Shaanxi and other provinces and cities have issued Opinions on Accelerating the Cultivation of New Professional Farmers.

At present, the measures generally taken to train professional farmers are as follows: one is to adopt the training mode of "vocational colleges + several bases" to carry out the training of "theory + practical operation"; the other is to strengthen the identification of agricultural vocational skills; the third is to establish a mechanism for the growth of professional farmers. Students graduated from colleges and universities who have obtained professional farmer certificates and engaged in agricultural production and operation for more than three years shall be given priority to be selected as university student village officials under the same conditions; fourth, special funds shall be established for the cultivation of new professional farmers. In the concrete implementation of these measures, due to the lack of pertinence and attractiveness, it is difficult to please with money.

At present, the biggest contradiction in cultivating professional farmers is that objectively, 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land cannot accommodate about 500 million labor force; subjectively, rural development needs to leave professional farmers with higher education level. Rural talents with higher education are more likely to be attracted by cities. The challenge of training professional farmers is huge.

Students majoring in agriculture are unwilling to follow agriculture

First, school-related majors are shrinking seriously. All agricultural technical schools before a certain province were merged into vocational and technical colleges. After the merger, only one vocational and technical college retained the department of agricultural technology, offering food technology and testing, garden engineering technology, animal husbandry and veterinary medicine, biotechnology and application, feed and animal nutrition. In fact, it is a shortcut to livestock breeding, food processing and garden engineering with the brand of agricultural technology department. Other vocational and technical colleges that retain agriculture-related majors also retain only one major, agricultural product quality testing.

County vocational and technical middle schools, there is no agriculture-related majors. Short-term training for migrant workers organized by counties and cities does not involve agricultural technology. The province's famous "211" agricultural university, agriculture-related majors accounted for only one-third. Those involving variety improvement, soil fertility and popularization and application of new technologies are less than one third of those involving agricultural specialties. Other agricultural universities and vocational and technical colleges across the country have similar specialty settings to those of a certain province.

Second, system reform cuts off the road to return. In 2005, the township agricultural technology service center was transformed from a public institution into a group organization, and the identity of township agricultural technology personnel was changed from a career establishment to a social person. The most direct impact of this change is to cut off the road for agricultural graduates to return to agriculture. After 2007, with the implementation of the "Three Supports and One Support","Western Project Volunteers" and "College Student Village Officials" programs, some university graduates, especially agricultural college graduates, were attracted. However, it cannot be denied that most of these college students are neither willing to be "farmers" nor willing to stay in the countryside. In the eyes of traditional farmers, they can't do the work of throwing grain and planting, sun and rain, dirty and smelly; in the eyes of agricultural technology experts, their professionalism and their level are not enough for agricultural technology research and promotion; in the eyes of many village cadres, they are temporarily "redundant people" with no place to go.

Third, the misunderstanding of employment has not been eliminated. Many students majoring in agriculture are not willing to enter the Academy of Agricultural Sciences, but because of college entrance examination scores or family economic constraints. Therefore, there is essentially a light farming idea. For example, less than 3% of the students who graduated from agricultural majors in a provincial agricultural university in the past five years returned to rural areas to engage in planting and breeding. Vocational and technical colleges and secondary vocational schools are basically zero. Many college graduates would rather not find a job than return to farming.

Fewer and fewer cadres understand agriculture

First, the loss of grass-roots agricultural management personnel. After farmers experienced the hardships of forced cultivation and breeding, they began to "do not need the Party committees and governments at all levels to control what they plant and raise, and do not need the Party committees and governments at all levels to control whether they adopt new varieties and new technologies." As a result, most township agricultural technology service centers exist in name only, and many township agricultural technology stations have professional and technical personnel transferred to their posts or job-hopping. The 200 township agricultural technology service centers surveyed have no professional technicians.

The second is the reduction of departments. In a certain province, the agricultural departments, institutes and stations of counties and cities dominated by industry have been cancelled. Although there are still 30 or 40 people, about 90% of them have been transferred to development and reform departments, investment promotion departments and industrial parks. Although the agricultural counties have a complete set of categories, about 90% of them are no longer engaged in the work related to the popularization and application of agricultural technology. Before 1998, less than 1% of graduates from agricultural universities and agricultural technology schools in a certain province are still in agricultural departments at county and city levels. Take a county as an example, in the past, the county's agricultural bureau, agricultural machinery bureau, water conservancy bureau, forestry bureau and animal husbandry bureau set up 36 agriculture-related departments, with 1592 people on board. At present, there are only three departments, namely, the Agriculture Bureau, the Water Affairs Bureau and the Forestry Bureau, with more than 100 people on board.

Third, functional transformation. Although agricultural departments at the county and city levels still have the responsibility of popularizing agricultural technology, they are mainly busy implementing laws, regulations and policies concerning agricultural and rural economic development and agricultural mechanization. The effect is very embarrassing, one is not to go up high. The opinions and suggestions put forward cannot attract the attention of all parties, cannot enter the decision-making process, and waste administrative resources; second, the body cannot fall down. Farmers have little direct contact with them, and they have become redundant institutions and redundant people in the eyes of farmers.