When will China have "professional farmers"

In China, farmers exist more as an identity than as a profession. European and American agriculture is dominated by a group of professional farmers armed with modern professional technology, while Chinese agriculture relies more on the traditional experience of relying on heaven for a living.

Reading carefully the 2015 government work report, the reference to "training professional farmers" is very interesting. In the traditional concept, "farmer" is more of an identity than a profession. Since it is a profession, then who can be a farmer is an inevitable topic, because it is not born to be a farmer is suitable to be a farmer.

The degree of professionalization of Chinese agricultural practitioners is not high.

Who will be the farmer? This question seems very nonsensical, in the past concept, farmers are of course done by farmers, except that in a certain era, the population flows from cities to rural areas, that is to say, from citizens to farmers. but most of the time the population flows from the countryside to the city. The rapid economic growth over the past 30 years has been accompanied by a large-scale transfer of agricultural labor force. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, the proportion of agricultural employees in the total number of employees has dropped from 70% in 1978 to 59% in 1990 and to 31.4% in 2013.

So many farmers leave the countryside for the city, not only improve their own situation, but also supplement the shortage of labor released by the city after the reform and opening up.

The fact that more and more farmers are leaving the countryside has not actually led to a decline in agricultural production. On the contrary, total grain production has reached a new high year after year. One comparable figure is that China's total grain output was 304.765 million tons in 1978 and 601.9384 million tons at the end of 2013. However, although agricultural output has reached a new high year by year, the quantity and amount of agricultural imports have been increasing. Since China joined the World Trade Organization, the scale of grain trade has been expanding, and the overall focus is on imports. China's grain imports rose from 14.17 million tons in 2002 to 77.96 million tons in 2013.

Why do grain imports on a large scale after a bumper harvest? There are several explanations for this. One is the cost advantage. The grain imported by China mainly comes from Europe, the United States and other developed countries, whose grain production scale is large and the unit cost is low, so the price is cheap. Second, the taste needs are diverse. Although many imported agricultural products win on the basis of price, people are also flocking to expensive imported agricultural products. In this regard, the diversification of consumption caused by the increase in public income is a factor.

Why domestic agricultural production can not reduce the price of agricultural products, domestic agricultural products can not meet the diversified needs of consumers? Of course, agricultural products are closely related to the natural endowments of a region, and we cannot expect to produce litchi and bayberry in northern China, but for many agricultural products, in addition to natural endowments, the skills of practitioners may also have a lot to do with.

The emergence of professional farmers needs to reform the farmland system.

Compared with the large-scale agricultural production operations in Europe and the United States, the biggest problem of Chinese agriculture may be that the scale is not enough and the professionalization of practitioners is not high. In China, farmers exist more as an identity than as a profession. European and American agriculture is dominated by a group of professional farmers armed with modern professional technology, while Chinese agriculture relies more on the traditional experience of relying on heaven for a living. It is precisely for this reason that Premier Li Keqiang proposed to "train professional farmers" in the government work report.

How to cultivate professional farmers? Many people think of, like practicing lawyers and professional accountants, through "professional skills and professional ethics training, to obtain qualifications to increase the average income." But is this idea really feasible? I don't think so. A very important point is that when agricultural production is scaled up, the professional farmer is more like an entrepreneur, collecting and judging all kinds of market information. If the entrepreneur is unable to judge his ability through the practice certificate, so is the professional farmer.

In my opinion, the most important thing for professional farmers is to lower the barriers to entry for farmers. In the existing institutional framework, farmers exist as an identity, which means that many urban residents can not go to the countryside to become professional farmers. Due to the limitations of the farmland system, they are unable to engage in agricultural production; or engaged in agricultural production, but due to various factors, they are unable to expand their scale. This is somewhat similar to the government restrictions on farmers going to work in cities in the early 1980s. The State Council issued the Circular on strictly controlling the entry of rural labor to work in cities and the conversion of agricultural population to non-agricultural population on December 30, 1981. Urban units are required to strictly control the recruitment of workers from rural areas, conscientiously clean up the rural labor force used by enterprises and institutions, and strengthen household registration and grain management.

But later facts have proved that the trend of farmers' transfer to the city is out of control. Since farmers can go to cities to work as workers, why can't urban residents go to the countryside to work as farmers? This may be an inevitable phenomenon in the process of urbanization in the future. Of course, this requires the reform of the farmland system, and only in this way can there be professional farmers in China.