Food Security and cultivated Land Protection

Cultivated land is a non-renewable resource, which is very precious. At the same time, land is the basis for all kinds of human activities, especially at present, China is rapidly promoting urbanization, it is necessary to turn agricultural land into construction land, and the new urban construction land is in the millions of mu every year. so that the people of the whole country have such a consensus: the occupation of cultivated land by urbanization will endanger the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land in China, and who will feed China will become a problem if there is no land to cultivate in the future. Therefore, China has implemented the strictest cultivated land protection system in the world. In order to save and protect cultivated land, the state has introduced many systems, and the whole society has also paid a high price for the protection of cultivated land.

However, the above consensus is at least out of misunderstanding in some aspects, while some systems for protecting land and the high price paid are obviously unreasonable. There are even some systems or costs that simply talk about protecting land.

From a macro point of view, China is in the middle of industrialization, rapid industrialization and urbanization. Industrialization and urbanization are bound to expropriate agricultural land for construction land in order to accommodate more and more urban population and larger and larger economic output. Once the farmers go to the city, they will naturally withdraw from their homestead and all kinds of production and living infrastructure construction land in the countryside. At present, there are still more than 200 million mu of rural homestead in China. Even if farmers only withdraw from 1x2 homestead in the future, farmers' urbanization can also withdraw from more than 100 million mu of homestead, which is enough for China's rapid urbanization to occupy agricultural land for 20 years. In another 20 years, China's urbanization is almost complete, urban expansion will be completed, or urbanization will no longer need to occupy agricultural land. In this way, urbanization does not occupy agricultural land, but only uses the facility land (homestead) that farmers used to produce and live in the village for urban construction.

Some people say that at present, farmers go to the city, the city is expanding, occupying agricultural land, but farmers do not withdraw from the homestead, resulting in a serious waste of land. This statement obviously does not understand the reasons why farmers go to cities to work and do business but do not withdraw from the homestead. Farmers now go to the cities, but most of them do not get stable jobs and secure income in the cities, and they also need to stay on the rural homestead in case they fail to enter the city and return to the countryside. At the current stage of China's economic development and its position in the international economic structure, it is impossible for all farmers in cities to live respectfully in cities, and there will always be a considerable number of losers who return to their hometown and return to the village acquaintance society and the small-scale peasant economy. it is extremely important to solve the problem of food and clothing, obtain decency and find a home. This is their basic human right. With the further development of China's economy and the improvement of its position in the international economic division of labor, more and more urban farmers can live respectably in the city, so they no longer want to return home, and the rural homestead will naturally be reclaimed into arable land.

From a micro point of view, at present, China's land still has a strong ability to produce grain, which is enough to feed China. The eleventh consecutive increase in China's grain output is proof of this. Not only that, but also there is a widespread abandonment of land in rural areas across the country, especially the decline in the index of multiple cropping in farmland, which was planted two seasons ago, but now only one season. In the case of widespread abandonment and low multiple cropping index, grain production can still be maintained to increase continuously, so that the national grain depot is full, the purchase of grain at protective prices is difficult to implement, and food prices are weak, which shows that as long as grain production decreases and food prices rise on the market, farmers are fully capable of raising the multiple cropping index of land in the short term and replanting abandoned land, so as to rapidly increase grain production in a short period of time. In this sense, the issue of food security should not understand how much grain is produced each year, but how much grain production potential there is on China's arable land. Potential is the key, and how much grain is produced each year depends on the demand for grain and the market price.

Under the circumstances that China still has a large amount of land abandoned and a larger area of arable land has reduced the multiple cropping index, China can still obtain the 11th consecutive increase in grain output and adequate grain supply, which shows that China has great potential to increase grain production and there is no problem with food security.

Let's look at the abandonment of land. At present, the abandonment of land in China is not the abandonment of suitable arable land. In areas where the land is suitable for cultivation, arable land is being carefully cultivated by farmers. It is not that there is no man-made land but there is no land to grow. Farmers in almost all areas hope to form appropriate scale management by expanding the cultivated area.

Have you abandoned the wasteland? Of course, these abandoned areas are concentrated in two types of areas, one is the mountainous areas, especially the alpine areas, and the land that is not suitable for farming should be returned to forests; the other is suitable for ploughing, but because the irrigation system built during the period of the people's commune has been destroyed, it is difficult to effectively irrigate, so that farmers abandon the cultivated land that has been dry for ten years and nine years. These two types of abandoned arable land are about 100 million mu. Concentrated in some areas, abandoning the wasteland will leave a deep impression.

In high and cold mountain areas, the cultivated land that should be returned to forests should be returned to forests, because ecology is as important as grain. If the cultivated land is abandoned in areas that are suitable for farming but only in areas where irrigation or operation is inconvenient, land consolidation should be used to make it easier to cultivate. According to a recent survey in H Town, L County, there were large areas of wasteland in several mountain villages of this town. For example, in Stone Village, a total of 360mu of arable land (paddy fields and dry land) were abandoned all the year round; 1035 mu of arable land in Bamboo Village was abandoned, and about 400mu of arable land was abandoned. Wang Village has 2090 mu of arable land, leaving behind about 700mu. Several remote villages in H town about 500 above sea level have abandoned areas accounting for one of the top three of the total arable land. There are two reasons for abandoning the wasteland, one is that the land is too scattered and inconvenient for farming, and the other is the disintegration of the relatively perfect irrigation system built during the period of the people's commune, which has been dry for ten years and cannot be cultivated. In particular, Chongtian and Hengtian are small and difficult to irrigate. Rural cadres in H Town estimate that if 3000 yuan per mu is invested in small and large transformation, and the previous irrigation system is well maintained, the currently abandoned cultivated land should be made suitable for farming, farmers are willing to cultivate, and the yield per mu can reach more than 1000 jin.

In other words, as long as about 3000 yuan per mu, tens of millions of mu of arable land currently abandoned can be reclaimed to produce grain, that is, tens of millions of mu of arable land can be increased. 3000 yuan per mu to reclaim tens of millions of mu of abandoned arable land requires more than 100 billion yuan, which is only equivalent to the national investment in land consolidation for one year.

At present, in order to protect cultivated land, the state has taken two specific measures, one is the balance between occupation and compensation, and the other is the link between increase and decrease. The so-called occupation-compensation balance refers to the construction of various provinces and cities throughout the country to occupy cultivated land, to supplement the same area of new cultivated land, there are generally three ways, the first is to open up wasteland, the second is to sort out, and the third is to reclaim. The so-called "increase and decrease link", that is, the occupation of land for urban construction is linked to the withdrawal of farmers from the area of rural construction land. If the occupation-compensation balance is strictly implemented, in theory, the national urban construction will not affect the red line of 1.8 billion mu of cultivated land because the new cultivated land has been added before the occupation of cultivated land. It is costly to replenish new arable land, because it costs to open up wasteland, reorganize and reclaim land. At present, the price of supplementary cultivated land varies greatly in different parts of the country, ranging from more than 100,000 yuan per mu in coastal areas to thousands of yuan per mu in the central and western regions.

Like the "balance between occupation and compensation", the "link between increase and decrease" will not reduce cultivated land, because according to this policy, only when rural reclaimed construction land is cultivated land can cities increase the area of cultivated land occupied by the same area. The difference is that the collective construction land reclaimed by the "increase and decrease link" is generally farmers' homestead, so reclamation of homestead is bound to demolish farmers' houses, demolish farmers' houses and build houses for farmers first. In this way, the increase and decrease are linked, and for every mu of rural collective construction land reclaimed to obtain the same index of one mu of construction land, it may cost more than 100,000 yuan or even hundreds of thousands of yuan, and even a huge cost of more than 1 million yuan in some areas. And this has not taken into account the social costs, such as the governance problems brought about by the withdrawal of villages and living together in Shandong.

Whether it is the balance of occupation and compensation or the link between increase and decrease, the purpose is to protect cultivated land, and the cost of protecting cultivated land costs hundreds of thousands of yuan per mu, which can be used to build land in the Gobi. On the other hand, in the low mountains and high hills of L County, there is a large amount of abandoned arable land, which can be turned into a high-yield grain field with a little investment, but it is abandoned there. isn't it ironic that no one cares about it?

More ironically, the current central policy of intensive land conservation requires the transformation of the so-called urban inefficient land to achieve the goal of land conservation. In fact, there are dense buildings on the so-called urban inefficient land, and the cost of demolition and reconstruction is as high as millions of yuan per mu. In order to save land and achieve such a sky-high price, under the current situation that China's economic development is still not enough and building strength is still insufficient, it is not only a waste of resources, but also unreasonable. China's precious resources should be spent on the development of high technology, not wasted in the name of protecting arable land. The value attached to China's land comes from economic development. Only by continuing to use land to support China's economic development, promote industrial upgrading and develop high and new technology, can China hope to get out of the middle-income trap.

In recent years, in the context of protecting cultivated land, a huge amount of resources have been wasted on land. It seems that whether the whole of China can get out of the middle-income trap and change from a country on the edge of the world system to a country at the center of the world system, the key is that China has lost 100 to 200 million mu of arable land, so that we have wasted a great deal of resources that should have been used for scientific and technological progress and industrial upgrading in order to protect cultivated land. This is a misunderstanding of the main contradiction in the current stage of China's development.