A probe into the Development of Farmers' specialized Cooperatives with Chinese characteristics

In the past decade, with the increasing support of the central and local governments to farmers' professional cooperatives, the development of rural cooperation in China has entered the track of rapid growth. The development of farmers' cooperative economic organizations represented by farmers' professional cooperatives is accelerating, which has become a new bright spot in the innovation of China's agricultural management organization system. Especially since the third Plenary session of the 18th CPC Central Committee, the central government has continuously improved the functional orientation of farmers' professional cooperatives, and is equipped with more clear and powerful financial support policy signals to guide the development of cooperatives to show the phenomenon of ultra-high-speed "blowout". According to the latest statistics from the State Administration for Industry and Commerce, by the end of April 2014, the number of farmers' specialized cooperatives registered for industry and commerce had exceeded 1.1 million, with a registered capital of 2.23 trillion, continuing to maintain a trend of rapid growth.

According to the preliminary statistics of the Department of Economics and Management of the Ministry of Agriculture, the development of farmers' professional cooperatives has achieved full coverage of the agricultural industry, of which farming is the main industry, accounting for more than 70% of the total. Although there are all kinds of doubts about the quantity and quality of the development of farmers' specialized cooperatives in society and academia, and there are also a large number of "fake, empty and dead" ① cooperatives in reality, there is no doubt that after nearly a decade of great development, farmers' specialized cooperatives play an increasingly important role in the rural economy, and the overall service function of cooperatives continues to strengthen. The integration of service content, the specialization of service level and the integration of service mode have become the major trend of the development of farmers' professional cooperative organizations.

I. the status of farmers' professional cooperatives

(1) to improve the basic management system in rural areas and explore an important carrier for unified management.

The main body of agricultural management in China is characterized by the ultra-small scale of production and management. in the process of promoting agricultural modernization, how to guide the broad masses of farmers with household management as the main body to participate in the process of modernization? It is not only an economic issue, but also a political issue. The third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee proposed that "the two-tier management system based on household contract management and the combination of unification and division is a basic rural management system that adapts to the socialist market economic system and conforms to the characteristics of agricultural production. It is the cornerstone of the party's rural policy and must unswervingly adhere to it." However, how to realize unified management has not been solved for a long time. The reality in rural areas is that "two-tier economy" has been formed within the traditional rural collective economy, rather than "two-tier management" ②.

In the villages with better development of cooperatives, cooperatives innovate the two-tier management system of the combination of unity and division, replace the original village collective to realize the unified management above the level of household management, and overcome the institutional defects of family management. it has improved the allocation of production factors of farmers and enhanced their market competitive position.

At present, there are three main ways for cooperatives to develop unified management. First, the household production management of members and cooperatives provide one-stop socialized services from planting to harvest. That is, "(farmers) produce at home and serve in (cooperative) societies". The farmers who join the cooperative shall keep the original contracted management right unchanged and continue to engage in the production of agricultural products on the original contracted land, but the field production management services such as the purchase of seeds, chemical fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs, plant protection and watering, as well as the harvesting and sale of products shall be provided by the cooperative. ③. Some of the stronger cooperatives have also registered their own trademark brands. Through the unified management services of cooperatives, we can realize the scale purchase of scattered farmers' inputs or the common use of agricultural facilities, as well as the scale sales of agricultural products, reduce the production and operation costs of farmers and achieve economies of scale. In particular, the unified cultivation of land and unified plant protection not only improve the utilization rate of land, but also reduce environmental pollution.

Second, the contracted management right of farmers should be bought into shares and cooperatives should be managed uniformly. Farmers will contract the land into the cooperative, and the cooperative employs production and operation personnel to carry out unified planning, planting varieties, unified production management, and finally unified product sales. On the other hand, peasant household members have completely withdrawn from the field of production and management. The net income of the cooperative shall be paid dividends according to the shares of the members of the land. In order to improve the enthusiasm of farmers to join the society, cooperatives usually pay monetary or in-kind land rent in advance according to the original income of farmers' land, and give priority to willing members to work in cooperatives. In recent years, this form has become a form vigorously promoted by some local governments, such as Jinzhong area of Shanxi Province, Yancheng area of Jiangsu Province, and Haixi Prefecture of Qinghai Province investigated by the research group. Local governments have formulated special policy provisions to encourage farmers' land (grassland) to participate in the development of cooperatives.

Third, farmers' land ownership, subcontract management, cooperatives to provide intermediary services. Farmers will invest the contracted land in the cooperative, and after the cooperative centralizes the land, it will be contracted out to its members or leased to other enterprises and large growers to contract for management. On behalf of the cooperative farmers, the cooperative negotiates the land use price with the contractor (or the lessee) and signs a contract. Cooperatives represent the interests of farmers who buy shares, coordinate the relationship with land users, and protect the income of land rental fees of farmers. At the same time, it also reduces the cost of negotiation between large growers, leading enterprises and farmers.

There are two biggest differences between realizing unified operation and developing large-scale operation of land through cooperatives and direct leasing of farmers' land by companies: first, it better ensures the dominant position of farmers and is conducive to maintaining social stability. The cooperative system maintains the status of farmers as the owners of land contract management. Under the company management model, farmers who transfer land only have the income from land rent and are unable to share or very limited share the value-added benefits of land output during the contract period, and under the first two modes of unified social services provided by cooperatives, it enables the middle-aged and elderly workers and sick and disabled farmers who are excluded by the labor market and are difficult to transfer from the land to achieve self-employment. It will help to improve the income level of the poor groups. Second, it is conducive to the sustainable development of agriculture and avoid the short-term behavior of the company. The profit-seeking nature of capital determines the short-term behavior of the company in managing land, and farmers are the owners of land use rights, especially the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee proposed to "give farmers more sufficient and secure land contractual management rights." after the existing land contract relationship should remain stable and remain unchanged for a long time, farmers' land contractual management rights are actually turned into real rights. Therefore, farmers will pay more attention to the long-term availability of land and sustainable development, which is conducive to the protection of the ecological environment.

In recent years, there has been a fourth form of land cooperation, that is, joint stock operation. The cooperative attracts agricultural enterprises to join the cooperative, farmers buy shares with land and companies buy shares with cash, and both parties bear responsibilities and share profits according to the shares. The company is usually responsible for the land consolidation, planning, development and management of cooperatives, and pays farmers'"guaranteed dividends" (actually land rent) with reference to the level of land income before joining the cooperatives, and then pays dividends according to the operating conditions of cooperatives at the end of the year. This kind of cooperative is the most typical in Hubei Province. Since 2010, Hubei Province has made great efforts to guide farmers to take land contract rights as shares to develop land joint-stock cooperatives. By the beginning of 2011, the actual circulation of rural land in the province has exceeded 5 million mu, and the "land share cooperative" has become the circulation mode that the province has made great efforts to promote. In November 2011, Hubei Province also issued the interim measures for the Registration and Administration of Farmers' specialized Cooperatives contributed by the valuation of Rural Land contractual Management Rights, which solved the problem of industrial and commercial registration of such cooperatives. With regard to risk-taking, the land owned by farmers is limited to the remaining contracted management period, which is a system breakthrough for the legal stipulation that farmers' contracted land can not be disposed of as creditor's rights. In order to limit the power of the company and protect the interests of farmers, Hubei Province emphasizes that the controlling stake of farmers is not less than 51%, and stipulates that farmers must serve as the chairman of the cooperative. For this form, there are different voices in both political and academic circles. In view of the fact that companies grasp key elements such as market, talent, capital and so on, even if farmers hold shares in cooperatives, their voice is also very limited, but the emergence of such cooperatives plays a positive role in improving land productivity in areas where a large number of labor is transferred, land is extensive, or even abandoned. ④. However, there is also a potential risk that the income of farmers can not be protected once the company goes bankrupt. And in some places, there are signs that some people use this model to put pressure on farmers and force them to leave the land. Therefore, adhering to the voluntary principle of farmers joining the society is the most basic and fundamental effective means to protect the rights and interests of farmers.

(2) important ways to improve the management model of agricultural industrialization

Agricultural industrialization is the management direction of modern agriculture. In the early 1990s, the government began to vigorously promote agricultural industrialization, and always emphasized to guide companies and farmers to form an interest association, and put forward the slogan "supporting leading enterprises means supporting farmers". However, due to the buyer's monopoly pattern in the agricultural product market, the market positions of leading enterprises and farmers are not equal and different, so the result must be enterprise control and farmers' dependence; without interdependence, it is naturally impossible to form a community of interests.

After the development of cooperatives, the "company + peasant household" model is gradually replaced by the "company + cooperative + peasant household" model. Although the latter contains four different industrialization management models, no matter which form it is, it is the improvement and perfection of the original model. The main contents are as follows: (1) the perfection of the "company + peasant household" model under the company-led cooperative. It makes the original short-term contract between companies and farmers long-term, and companies and farmers strengthen the contractual relationship through the organizational carrier of cooperatives, so as to achieve effective supervision over farmers and self-supervision among farmers. (2) both the peasant household and the company have invested in the co-operative, and the company has solved the problems of the quantity, quality, specification and delivery time of raw materials or supplies, and there are stable channels for the sale of agricultural products by farmers. And the income of production and operation has been basically guaranteed. (3) the most prominent effect of the docking between farmers' own cooperatives and the company is to improve the negotiation ability with the company. Through the collective action of the cooperative, farmers have the right to speak and the right of self-choice in the competition with the company. The company is only a big customer of the cooperative, and the two sides are essentially a free trading relationship in the market. (4) Farmers run cooperatives on their own, and cooperatives build processing enterprises to realize the agricultural integrated management model with farmers as the main body. It not only enables farmers to obtain the benefits of primary agricultural products production, but also extends the industrial chain and shares the benefits of value-added processing of agricultural products. For example, Beijing Aojinda Cooperative, at the beginning of its establishment, was the raw material supply base of Baihuafeng products Company. Baihuafeng Company was 200 yuan / ton higher than the market price to buy the cooperative's raw honey. In 2008, with the support of the government, cooperatives built a bee product processing production line for Baihuafeng Company, increasing the net income per ton of raw honey by 500 yuan. In 2009, the registered "Huatong" trademark bee products went on the market, and the net income per ton of original honey increased by 3000 yuan. In 2011, the sales volume of the cooperative's own brand accounted for 30% of the cooperative's output. In 2013, the cooperative's "Huatong" trademark was rated as a famous trademark in Beijing.

This agricultural industrialization management model with farmers as the main body not only ensures that ordinary farmers can share the profits in the processing and circulation of agricultural products, but also helps to improve the structure of market competition. it is an impact on the market pattern of buyer's oligopoly in agricultural product processing industry. From the point of view of promoting and protecting the interests of farmers, it provides a successful example for building an ideal road of agricultural industrialization with Chinese characteristics.

(3) an important force in the construction of agricultural socialized service system

The third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee proposed to establish a new type of agricultural socialized service system. We will build a new type of agricultural socialized service system based on public service institutions, cooperative economic organizations, leading enterprises as the backbone and other social forces as supplements, the combination of public welfare services and business services, and the coordination of special services and comprehensive services.

From the perspective of institutional arrangement, carrying out agricultural socialization services with farmers' professional cooperative organizations as the carrier has advantages that agricultural public service departments and private sectors do not have, and can effectively make up for the shortcomings of agricultural public service departments and private sectors. Form a complete agricultural social service system in which the government, enterprises and farmers' organizations complement each other. On the one hand, the membership of farmers' professional cooperative organizations has the characteristics of relatively strong homogeneity, regional concentration of production and the same industry. The demand for technical services is highly homogeneous, which is conducive to accurately targeting the target groups, developing agricultural socialized services at low cost and realizing economies of scale in the development of agricultural socialized services. On the other hand, the goal of farmers' professional cooperative organization is to serve its members, to be member-oriented, and its members integrate owners, promoters and users. The technical services provided by cooperatives reflect the requirements of members' demanders, rather than the unilateral wishes of service providers and providers. Compared with public social service departments, it improves the effectiveness of services. The members are not only the owners of cooperatives, but also the promoters and users of agricultural technology and services, and their trinity is a special attribute that any other agricultural socialized service organization does not have. The economic interests of the promoters are completely consistent with those of the users, which is conducive to improving the effect of technology promotion.

From the practice in recent years, by participating in the construction of agricultural socialized service system, cooperatives play a more and more important role in promoting agricultural modernization. First of all, promote the pace of modernization of agricultural inputs. The most prominent thing is to introduce and promote new varieties, new materials, new machinery and new methods to popularize among the members. At present, more and more farmers' professional cooperatives directly establish long-term technical cooperation links with agricultural colleges and universities and scientific research institutions, and become important experimental sites and frontier positions for the transformation of agricultural scientific and technological achievements and agricultural scientific and technological demonstration. For example, in Suning, Hebei Province, 15 cooperatives have become experimental bases for colleges and universities such as China Agricultural University and Shandong University.

Secondly, promote the modernization of agricultural production management. It is closely related to the modernization and large-scale production of inputs. The introduction of new varieties and new equipment requires matching production management technology, which promotes the modernization and intensification of agricultural production management. Especially in the use of advanced large-scale agricultural machinery, cooperatives have played a positive role. In the investigation of Yancheng, Jiangsu, Jinzhong, Shanxi and Xining, Qinghai, the research group found that no matter developed areas or underdeveloped traditional agricultural and pastoral areas, the effect of accelerating the promotion and use of large and medium-sized agricultural machinery and tools is obvious through the land transfer of cooperatives. In the investigation of an agricultural machinery cooperative in Yancheng, Jiangsu Province, the scope of operation has spread from Guangdong to Heilongjiang, which not only greatly increases the utilization rate of machinery, but also reduces the operating cost of machinery.

Thirdly, promote the large-scale operation and brand construction of agricultural products. With the increase of the intensity of unified production and operation of cooperatives, it has brought about the standardization of agricultural production, laid a solid foundation for the construction of agricultural product traceability system for safe production, and promoted the production and operation of agricultural products to be specialized and branded.