Resource reorganization releases rural economic vitality

The setting sun reflected the rice fields under the valley, and the cool breeze blew across the spacious village road of Xincheng Village in Yingde City, with neat cottages with gray walls and colored tiles on one side and 100 mu of fertile fields to be operated on a large scale on the other.

Not long ago, excavators and bulldozers drove into the ravines of Xincheng village and leveled the messy paddy fields into open fields. With the consent of the villagers, the small pieces of land originally abandoned by many villagers will be centrally integrated by the village to prepare for the next step of agricultural industrialization.

In Qingyuan City, solving the problem of land fragmentation through rural land integration has become a local innovation to break through the bottleneck of rural economic development. Since 2014, on the basis of carrying out the reform of rural governance model and improving the level of rural organization, Qingyuan has explored to promote the "three integration" of rural land resources, agriculture-related financial funds and agriculture-related service platform, and reorganize the elements of rural resources. we will promote appropriate scale operation of agriculture and improve the efficiency of agricultural production and the level of rural development.

The fragmentation of fields restricts the rate of agricultural output

Do you want to plant cash crops on the readjusted paddy fields, or buy shares in a professional cooperative with the land, waiting for a dividend at the end of the year? Zeng Fanyong, a villager of Xincheng Village, and his fellow villagers are facing this new "worry".

In the past, Zeng Fanyong's family had 4 mu of farmland, scattered in six places, some on the roadside at the entrance of the village, and some at the foot of the mountain at the end of the village, so they had to spend an hour on the road every day.

The fragmentation of the land has been a common problem for the villagers of Xincheng village for many years. In the early years, the Xincheng village collectively distributed the fields to each household according to the "matching of fat and thin", and each household in the village had several or even more than a dozen scattered fields.

In Yangshan County in the northern mountain area of Qingyuan, the situation of land fragmentation is more prominent. When Yangshan County carried out the pilot project of confirming land rights in 2013, it was found that some towns had an average of 4.4 mu of land, which was divided into 9.9 pieces of land on average, and some farmers even had more than 30 pieces of land, which were several kilometers apart, and several plots of land would be missed in farming every year.

The distribution of land to households has stimulated farmers' enthusiasm for production, but with the passage of time, the restriction of decentralized land management on farmers' production and income has become increasingly prominent, the economic value of traditional food crops is relatively low, and the benefit of agricultural output is not high. Especially in the past 10 years, due to the poor income from land farming, many young adults have gone out to work, and more and more land has been lost.

"the land is too small to create economies of scale and is in a weak position in the market." Lu Xiaopeng, deputy secretary general of the Qingyuan Municipal CPC Committee and director of the Office of the Rural work Committee, said: because the overall efficiency of land use is not high, and it is difficult for fragmented land to obtain the necessary financial support through circulation, mortgage, and other means, rural development has long been caught in the plight of "no land available" and "no money to use". It is not only difficult for farmers to increase their income, but also the rural collective economy is also very weak.

If farmers want to go from "food and clothing" to "well-off", they need to improve the level of rural economic development by improving the efficiency of agricultural production, and the fragmentation of land has become a bottleneck restricting rural development.

In 2014, Qingyuan has promoted the "three priorities" of party organization building, villagers' autonomy and rural public service for nearly two years. On the basis of the gradual success of rural organizational construction, the pilot project of Qingyuan rural comprehensive reform has been pushed forward in depth. Explore the "three integration" of rural land resources, agriculture-related financial funds, and agriculture-related service platform.

GE Changwei, secretary of the Qingyuan Municipal CPC Committee, said that land integration is the key and difficult point of the "three integrations." if land resources cannot be integrated, an appropriate scale and industrial division of labor cannot be formed. the subsequent integration of agriculture-related funds, agriculture-related services, agricultural management system and farmers' cooperative finance will have no place to focus.

Villagers' Autonomy promotes Land replacement and Adjustment

In fact, before the decision-makers in Qingyuan realized the necessity of land integration, some local villages had spontaneously carried out the exploration and experiment of land integration, which also provided valuable experience for Qingyuan reform.

As early as 1992, Xincheng Village, Yingde City, concentrated 1200 mu of mountains and distributed contracts to the villagers to grow Ma Bamboo and sugar tangerines. By 2004, the village collective had collected 200 mu of dry land to contract out contracts, and the village collective economic income had reached 120000 yuan that year. In 2013, the village once again integrated all the mountains and dry land, raising rents and re-contracting. At this time, the remaining 300 mu of paddy fields in the village are still managed separately by the villagers.

In Yewu Village, Yingde City, more than half of the villagers went out to work. By the end of 2009, more than 50 mu of wasteland had been lost in the village, and the per capita annual income of the villagers was only about 3000 yuan. Since 2009, Yewu Village has replaced 902 mu of land in the village after more than 30 controversial meetings of villagers' representatives under the organization and coordination of the villagers' management committee. After the adjustment, the villagers began to plant sugar tangerines, mulberry sericulture and fish pond culture on a continuous scale, with gratifying benefits. By 2013, the net income of each household in the village exceeded 150000 yuan.

The experience of villages such as Xincheng and Yewu has since become an important reference for Qingyuan to promote land integration. In July 2014, Qingyuan issued relevant documents, clearly requiring all counties (cities and districts) to select more than two towns as pilot projects in that year to carry out land exchange and land exchange within the village collective through villagers' self-determination. The villagers of Xincheng Village also reached a consensus at the end of this year and decided to integrate 300 mu of paddy fields in the village first, and then replace and adjust them to households.