It is a common phenomenon that capital goes to the countryside to rent land. Document No. 1 tightens relevant policies.

At the beginning of 2013, will the No. 1 document of the Central Committee pay attention to the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers for the tenth year in a row? This possibility is becoming a consensus.

Since 2003, the documents discussed and adopted by the Central Rural work Conference will become the No. 1 document of the Central Committee in the second year. Recent information obtained by Caijing reporters from various sources shows that the No. 1 document of the CPC Central Committee in 2013 is most likely to focus on the reform of agricultural production relations for the first time, involving the deep-seated reform of the relevant management system.

At present, on the one hand, China's grain output has achieved "nine consecutive increases", on the other hand, the degree of external dependence has increased year by year; at the same time, the problem of "hollowing out" in China's rural areas is prominent, and the worry about "who will farm the land" is becoming more and more serious.

To this end, many agricultural experts suggest that the reform of the agricultural production and management system should be put on the central agenda as soon as possible and should become the core topic of the Central Committee's No. 1 document in 2013. It is reported that these proposals have basically become a consensus in decision-making.

An expert who participated in the research of the Central No. 1 document said that the reason why people want the 2013 No. 1 document to focus on the reform of rural production relations is mainly to adapt to the current new situation of rapid industrialization and urbanization. At the same time, through the reform of agricultural management mechanism, we can improve the "tight balance" of grain, increase farmers' income and realize agricultural modernization.

In fact, the recent signals about the reform of the agricultural management system have been frequently mentioned in high-level meetings. The executive meeting of the State Council held on November 28, 2012 proposed that the reform of the rural management system should be in line with local conditions and take effective measures to make some young people willing to stay in rural areas to engage in agriculture.

The meeting held by the political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee on December 4 made it more clear to encourage the development of a new model of agricultural production and management. It is rare in recent years to talk so intensively about the agricultural management system.

A reporter from "Caijing" interviewed several people involved in the drafting of the document, and they all believed that the new Central No. 1 document could continue and refine the relevant formulation in the report of the 18th CPC National Congress: "adhere to and improve the basic management system in rural areas. Build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization, and socialization."

In the specific direction of reform, three aspects are gradually concerned by agricultural experts: standardize and refine the "capital going to the countryside", and the company's model of large-scale land transfer and re-employment of farmers will be strictly restricted; clearly put forward the development of "family farm" as an agricultural management mechanism, the establishment of agricultural socialization service system, encourage enterprises to participate in agricultural socialization service.

"who will farm the land in China in the future? How to farm? In the end, is it the large-scale operation of companies and enterprises, the hired workers' farms dominated by capital, or the development of farmers' cooperation on the basis of farmers' family management? My view is that if farmers are allowed to grow their own land, beat their own grain, improve their organized behavior, and become stronger, they will certainly be able to grow well. " A recent speech by Chen Xiwen, director of the Office of the Central Rural work leading Group, is seen by the outside world as a commentary on the gist of document No. 1 of 2013.

It is reported that since July 2012, 18 ministries and commissions, including the Central Agricultural Office, the National Development and Reform Commission, and the Ministry of Agriculture, have conducted joint research on agricultural management system and other issues. the research team has successively gone to Henan, Shandong, Anhui, Sichuan and other agricultural provinces to learn about the operation of agricultural cooperatives and major grain growers. After the National Day in 2012, the new Central No.1 document entered the drafting stage.

Capital leases or restrictions

In recent years, it has become a common phenomenon that capital goes to the countryside to rent land, and "company + peasant household" is its main mode. Agriculture-related companies transfer the management rights of farmers' cultivated land on a large scale, and after leveling the cultivated land, they hire back some farmers for farming through "anti-lease".

This practice has caused many disputes: on the one hand, industrial and commercial capital can inject capital elements into the transformation of traditional agriculture, reduce the demand for agricultural labor, and improve the level of agricultural management and market competitiveness; on the other hand, there is also a phenomenon that farmers become employed workers and cannot reasonably share the income of land management.

What's more, some companies carry out "non-grain" and "non-agricultural" production after the transfer of cultivated land, and even use it in real estate development in disguise.

It is understood that a survey conducted by the National Development and Reform Commission in 2012 shows that in some western provinces, the degree of non-grain conversion has reached about 90% after industrial and commercial enterprises have transferred arable land. In order to attract investment, local governments often do not interfere.

During a survey in some agricultural areas, a reporter from "Caijing" found that the company went to the countryside to rent land in the name of farmers going out to work and abandoned arable land, and most of them hoped that the whole village or even several villages as a whole would promote the circulation of cultivated land. In this process, farmers who are still farming often have conflicts with them.

At present, there are still 200 million farmers and more than 600 million people living in rural areas in China. Once the cultivated land is transferred, there will be problems in the livelihood of the landless farmers.

In this regard, Chen Xiwen has repeatedly expressed his concern. "how to modernize China's agriculture is not just a technical problem. We can technically learn from American farms, but the question is, how many farmers do we need for 1.8 billion mu of arable land? Where are they going? Do what? " Chen Xiwen said.

In view of the chaos of "capital going to the countryside", the decision-making level will refine the specific measures to adjust. Han Changfu, minister of agriculture, said recently: the state encourages industrial and commercial enterprises to invest in agriculture and promote agricultural industrialization and large-scale operation, but does not encourage industrial and commercial enterprises to directly lease farmers' cultivated land on a large scale and for a long time. "Enterprises should promote the development of farmers rather than replace them in production, and should leave the links of planting and breeding to farmers."

Experts involved in the discussion of the document also confirmed to reporters that many people paid more attention to this issue in the drafting of document No. 1 of 2013. The practice of developing agriculture with industrial concept and replacing farmers with corporate management will be restricted to a certain extent. The Ministry of Agriculture will also speed up the construction of the management and service system for the transfer of contracted management rights of rural land, and explore the establishment of a strict access system for industrial and commercial enterprises to lease contracted cultivated land to farmers.

The reporter learned that during the drafting stage of document No. 1, to what extent the provisions of the relevant provisions should be "tightened". The Ministry of Agriculture once held an expert consultation meeting. At the meeting, experts put forward a number of opinions on the specific provisions of the provisions.

Kong Xiangzhi, member of the drafting group of the Law on Farmers' Professional Cooperatives and vice dean of the School of Agriculture and Rural Development of Renmin University of China, who participated in the meeting, believes that as long as it is in line with the "three forbids" put forward by the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee on cultivated land-- no change in the relationship of land ownership, no change in the agricultural use of land, and no harm to the interests of farmers-- there should be no restrictions on who contracts the land.

"policies should reflect fairness and should not be targeted only at a certain type of enterprise and a certain category of people." Kong Xiangzhi said.

It has been suggested that reference be made to the Japanese experience. Japan also restricted the entry of industrial and commercial capital into agriculture and implemented "agricultural land use", but later began to allow industrial and commercial capital to operate agriculture and implement "agricultural land for all use". The related disadvantages "can be solved by improving the system and strengthening supervision". Zhang Hongyu, director of the Department of policies and regulations of the Ministry of Agriculture, recently wrote for Caijing magazine.

Zhang Hongyu put forward several specific principles: adhere to the household contract system and fully respect farmers' right to contracted management of land; adhere to the voluntary principle of land circulation and do not allow any organization to forcibly transfer; persist in establishing and perfecting the interest connection mechanism between enterprises and farmers, form an interest community with farmers, and reasonably return land management income to farmers; persist in operating in accordance with the law, and do not change the agricultural use of land.

Because it is unable to solve the similar problems of farmers'"work without effort" in the period of the people's commune, the high production cost and low production efficiency have made the large agricultural companies, including Bangji and Cargill, sprout the will to gradually withdraw the leased arable land.

"the farmer farmed the land for his boss and weeded the grass without removing the roots. one day he saw that there were no weeds in the field, but he grew again the next day." This is how one scholar involved in the research described it.

Push the family farm model

Since 2007, in order to cope with the increasing trend of non-agriculturalization and aging of agricultural labor force, Songjiang District, which is located in the southwest of Shanghai and the upper reaches of Huangpu River, began to practice the family farm model of about 100 mu.

By the end of June 2012, the family farm in Songjiang District, with a total area of 604 square kilometers, had grown to 1173 households, accounting for 77.3 percent of the region's grain field area, with an average operating area of 114.1 mu and an average annual income of 101000 yuan.

The "Songjiang model" is promoted by the local district government to transfer the cultivated land in the hands of farmers to the village collective by the way that farmers entrust the village committee to transfer. By the end of 2011, the area of cultivated land transfer in the region has accounted for 99.4% of the area of cultivated land in the region, almost all of which are entrusted by farmers to village committees for transfer.

After the land was transferred to the village committee, the district government came forward to renovate the cultivated land into high-standard basic farmland. Then the village collective came forward to contract the cultivated land to the lessee. Nearly half of the arable land goes to family farms.

There are a series of strict regulations on family farm production: the farmer must be a member of the village organization; the cultivated land on the farm must be used for grain production and cannot be subcontracted in any form; after comprehensively considering the absorption of local labor, income and other related factors, the local government sets the basic size of each farm at 80-150 mu.

In order to ensure the efficient operation of family farms, the Songjiang District Government has specially set up agricultural machinery professional cooperatives to provide them with full-process mechanized order operation services.

In addition, Songjiang District has also set up a series of social service systems covering prenatal, mid-production and postpartum, including agricultural material supply, agricultural machinery, seed breeding base, drying facilities and so on.

Because the social service system is completely outsourced, the family farm can reap a higher harvest by relying only on the labor of the couple and hiring at most one labor force when the farm is busy, coupled with some small agricultural machinery.

Xu Xiaoqing, head of the Rural Economic Research Department of the Development Research Center of the State Council, who has conducted a field survey of the area, said: at the current management level, a family farm can be run by a couple, and their annual income can reach about 100000 yuan.

According to a reporter from Caijing, with the continuous improvement of the family farm system, the area has begun to establish a "breed-and-raise" family farm: each couple raises more than 1000 pigs a year. Piglets, technology, feed and sales are all provided by leading enterprises, and farmers can get 50 yuan for each pig they raise. In this way, the annual income of each household can be increased by about 50,000 yuan.

"in the first year, no one cared, and now more and more people are bidding for family farms. If you work hard outside, you might as well go home and contract a farm. " Xu Xiaoqing said.

According to the data provided by Sheng Yafei, the mayor of Songjiang District, due to the establishment of the family farm system, the agricultural productivity of the whole Songjiang District has increased greatly: in the past, more than 200,000 mu of arable land in the whole district had to be cultivated by tens of thousands of people; now, the labor force of about 2000 people on the family farm can cultivate 170000 mu of rice a year and raise nearly 300000 pigs.

It is understood that the Songjiang family farm model is expected to be popularized. The new business entity that the new No. 1 document will focus on does not emphasize the extremely scattered small farmers at the initial stage of the implementation of the household contract responsibility system. "through the gradual transfer of land to expand the scale, the use of intensive means for production, in the application of technology, capital concentration and other aspects to improve, and slowly grow up, that is, family farms." Kong Xiangzhi said.

Family farm will be a new concept put forward in the first document next year. According to the ideas of the drafters of the relevant documents, agricultural production units such as family farms will become the main body of China's agricultural modernization, the main units of the production of commercial agricultural products (5.70pence 0.0010%), and the recipients of a series of agricultural support policies.

According to the statistics of the Ministry of Agriculture, the number of large planting households with an operating area of more than 30 mu in China has reached 8.874 million.

Take growing grain as an example, one family manages 100 mu in the north and 50 mu in the south, which is more in line with economies of scale and can also meet the employment needs of the rural labor force.

An interview by a reporter from "Caijing" in Guangxi also confirmed the advantages of this approach: Tan Chengjun, a major grower in Luanshan Village, Qiaoxun Township, Xingbin District, Laibin City, contracted 400 mu of land for about 20 families in the village and planted it on his own. under the condition that the output of sugarcane is generally 4-6 tons, his family's sugarcane output has reached more than 10 tons. In addition, because it is a transfer between acquaintances and there is no need for the government to come forward, Tan Chengjun can do the work of the villagers himself.

Adopting this family farm-like model for land transfer can not only increase sugarcane production without causing conflicts, but also receive land benefits from local farmers.

According to a reporter from Caijing, the family farm experiment promoted by the Ministry of Agriculture was carried out at the beginning of last year, involving Jilin, Hunan and other provinces and cities. The local self-driven family farm practice is even earlier. Songjiang District of Shanghai has been practicing the concept of family farm since 2007.

Whether the family farm system can be promoted on a large scale is still faced with a series of institutional defects. For example, at present, family farms cannot be registered with the Bureau of Industry and Commerce, and the pilot areas are all "special tasks" of local governments. In addition, whether the new organization can enjoy a series of support, such as tax exemption, subsidies, relaxation of the types of loan collateral, and so on. It is reported that the pilot project may continue in 2013.

Social service multi-path

Whether the family farm can grow rapidly or not is also related to whether it can get enough social service support.

A number of experts suggested that this issue should be clearly reflected in this year's No. 1 document, but there is still uncertainty about how to express it. Although family management is the basic management system of Chinese agriculture, it does not mean that thousands of households have to complete the whole process from planting to harvest. In fact, a large number of production and circulation links can be completed by means of social service.

Some experts interviewed by Caijing believe that from the perspective of the law of world agricultural development, socialized service is not only the fundamental means to solve the aging of the agricultural labor force, but also an important way to promote the popularization and application of agricultural science and technology. "Family management + social service" is an important form of agricultural production.

In China's previous agricultural system, there has always been the disadvantage of attaching importance to agricultural technology research and development while neglecting the social service system.

It has been learned that the direction of China's policy adjustment in the future will also be to mobilize the enthusiasm of the vast number of cooperatives and agricultural enterprises under the circumstances of government-led public welfare services, and encourage them to set up new types of agricultural socialized service institutions with various forms of ownership. and bring it into the scope of state policy support.

According to Chen Xiwen, leading agricultural enterprises and other agriculture-related enterprises should focus on the research and development of fine varieties, advanced technological innovation, the construction of storage and transportation facilities, marketing and processing, agricultural employment and other fields.

Kong Xiangzhi believes that at present, we should strengthen the function of cooperatives in providing social services for agricultural production, rather than blindly pursuing the transfer of land by cooperatives.

Since the Law of Farmers' Professional Cooperatives was promulgated and implemented in 2007, it has become a trend for all kinds of production cooperatives to transfer cultivated land. Up to now, the area of cultivated land transferred by cooperatives has reached 44.88 million mu, accounting for 16.4% of the total area of cultivated land transfer in the country.

In view of the current situation of cooperatives emphasizing circulation rather than services, there is a view in academic circles that the main purpose of the establishment of cooperatives should be to provide services rather than transfer land, especially not to allow farmers to buy shares in cooperatives with land.

One of the reasons is that China's existing agricultural production and management system is a two-tier management system with a combination of integration and division, that is, farmers contract collective land to directly engage in the production and management of agricultural products, and the village collective provides unified management services to farmers.

After the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee, cooperatives were also brought into the same field of "unification" as the village collective. If the land is transferred in the name of a cooperative for production, it means that the level of "division" has been swallowed up.

Secondly, if the cooperative goes bankrupt after the farmers buy the land, the land has become an asset, and if they want to pay off the debts, the farmers will be in danger of losing their land.

In view of the above situation, Sun Zhonghua, director of the Rural Economic system and Management Department of the Ministry of Agriculture, said recently that the relevant departments will gradually expand the scale of financial support funds for farmers' specialized cooperatives, focusing on supporting cooperatives to carry out the construction of social service areas such as processing and storage, cold chain transportation, direct sales and direct supply, and production and management informatization.

There is a further consensus in the field of agricultural research that the new Central Committee No. 1 document should also clearly emphasize that we should continue to increase the construction of agricultural and rural infrastructure, focus the development of national infrastructure construction on rural areas and agriculture, reform the land expropriation system, increase the distribution proportion of farmers in land value-added income, increase direct subsidies for grain, and increase farmers' income.

Data

Agriculture-related document No. 1 of the Central Committee over the years

Since 1982, in order to quickly promote rural reform, the CPC Central Committee has issued five agriculture-related documents in succession:

1982: minutes of the National Rural work Conference

1983: "some problems of current Rural Economic Policy"

1984: notice on Rural work in 1984

1985: "Ten policies on further activating the Rural economy"

1986: on the deployment of Rural work in 1986

Since 2004, in view of the continuous slow growth of farmers' per capita net income in recent years, in order to better solve the "three rural issues", the CPC Central Committee has once again issued a number of agriculture-related documents:

2004: opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on several policies to increase Farmers' income

2005: opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on several policies to further strengthen Rural work and improve Comprehensive Agricultural production capacity

2006: some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on promoting the Construction of a New Socialist Countryside

2007: some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on actively developing Modern Agriculture and promoting the Construction of a New Socialist Countryside

2008: some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on strengthening Agricultural Infrastructure Construction to further increase Farmers' income in Agricultural Development

2009: some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on promoting the stable Development of Agriculture and the sustained increase of Farmers' income in 2009

2010: "some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on strengthening the overall Planning of Urban and Rural Development and further consolidating the Foundation of Agricultural and Rural Development"

2011: decision of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on speeding up the Reform and Development of Water Conservancy

2012: some opinions of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council on accelerating Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation and continuously strengthening the supply and guarantee capacity of Agricultural products