The agricultural model of peasant household, peasant association and village community

Introduction, a sketch of the production and life of a typical Chinese farmer

Zhang Zhongnong is a farmer in his thirties in northern China who specializes in farming. The farmers in the village are all old, middle-aged and young, and the income of farming is basically the same as that of working in the city.

Zhang Zhongnong contracted 30 mu of land in the village, and the field he planted was a complete one. The village has reorganized the land of the whole village and adjusted the original small plot of land to 600 square fields, thus increasing the area of land. At the villagers' meeting, the contract fee was agreed on according to the size, fertility and distance of each piece of land, and the contract fee of the contractor should be handed over to the village, which would be paid according to the head of the villagers after deducting some necessary public expenses. The village has also organized and repaired water conservancy facilities that have been in disrepair for many years.

Zhang Zhongnong participated in the ecological circular agriculture project run by the Farmers' Cooperative Association. now, except for chemical fertilizers, pesticides, agricultural films, herbicides and additives can no longer be used. The amount of chemical fertilizer used is only about 1/3 of the same area of land previously planted. Zhang Zhongnong not only has to grow a crop of wheat and corn, he also raises 10 cattle. The feed for raising cattle is mainly silage straw. Cow dung is used to produce biogas, biogas slurry is a "pesticide" to control aphids and red spiders, as well as foliar fertilizer, and biogas residue is a very good organic fertilizer. Zhang Zhongnong also raised some chickens and geese because the physical method was used to get rid of insects in the fields. Insect traps and armyworm boards were used to feed the chickens. Cow dung also raises earthworms, and earthworms are also fed to chickens. Cow dung fed with earthworms is a better fertilizer. One of the functions of raising geese is to weed the fields. Soybeans are interplanted in the field to fix nitrogen. Zhang Zhongnong himself has to go to the fields to weed manually, which is the most tiring and painstaking work.

Peasant associations and farmers' professional cooperatives are not the same thing. There must be one peasant association in every township or every two townships, and there can only be one, and peasant associations have been set up in the counties and provinces up to the central government.

The grain, beef cattle, chickens, geese, eggs and goose eggs produced by Zhang Zhongnong are all sold to the peasant association. The county farmers' association has set up beef cattle and firewood chicken processing plants, and the county farmers' association has opened agricultural products supermarkets in several cities. There is a technical instructor in the farmers' association who often comes to the village and can ask him for advice on some problems in the process of planting and breeding. At present, Zhang Zhongnong only uses the chemical fertilizer provided by the peasant association, which is cheap and good. When Zhang Zhongnong bought calves and built straw silage ponds, he borrowed money from the fund department of the rural peasant association. The loan procedure is simple and the interest rate is low. In addition, the Peasants' Association has agricultural aid shops in every township, and they also sell some daily necessities. It turns out that fake and shoddy consumer goods are much less common in the village. Most of the profits earned by the Peasants' Association from supply and marketing, processing, and finance have to be returned to farmers, which accounts for about 40% of Zhang Zhongnong's income according to the transaction volume of each household.

Zhang Zhongnong has two children. The older children go to junior high school in the countryside and can help do some farm work after school. In the kindergarten in the village, the kindergarten used the collective land and houses of the village, and the farmers' association also subsidized a sum of money. The kindergarten teacher has two girls who are kindergarten teachers in the village. Zhang Zhongnong is a filial son, and it is also one of the reasons for him to return to the village in order to take care of his parents. Zhang Zhongnong needs to take care of not only his parents, but also his uncle and his son, whose children are all far away.

In the evening, Zhang Zhongnong sometimes plays basketball on the basketball court in the village. The basketball court in the village is open-air, and the Farmers' Association paid for it. When winter comes, the peasant association in the village organizes a dragon and lion dance performance, which has not happened for many years.

Zhang Zhongnong's village is a livable community with economic vitality, perfect public service and cultural life. In the vast rural areas of China, there are tens of thousands of Li Zhongnong and Wang Zhongnong, who have more or less the same production and life as Zhang Zhongnong.

By describing the production and life style of a typical Chinese farmer, the above intuitively expresses the reasonable development model of Chinese agriculture, rural areas and farmers. There are four key words: farmers, farmers' association, village community and village. Of course, the above is not realistic, but an ideal model with realistic possibilities.

In the above description, a number of important issues are involved, including: why should agriculture be dominated by household management? Why should China adhere to the diversified operation of small-scale farmers? In tradition and reality, what is the real dilemma faced by China's small-scale peasant economy? Why must China adhere to the village land system? Why should we build a comprehensive peasant association? Why do the existing cooperatives under the framework of professional social law not solve the problem? Are Chinese farmers pure farmers? What are the characteristics, future and significance of Chinese villages?

I. the advantages of China's small-scale peasant economy and the lost way of transformation

China's traditional small-scale peasant economy is characterized by small-scale land diversification based on families. "backwardness" and "no future" have always been the consensus of the mainstream, so it is necessary to "transform" or "eliminate" them. These views influenced a series of policies after the founding of the Communist Party of China. The direction of this series of policies is often contrary to the characteristics of Chinese traditional small-scale peasant economy, such as whether collective farms or agricultural companies pursue agricultural collective production rather than household management; such as encouraging the expansion of the scale of unit land management rather than small-scale intensive farming; such as emphasizing the road of specialized production rather than diversified economy.

(1) Why agricultural production is suitable for household management

The agricultural collectivization movement in China in the 1950s actually did three things: collective production, the establishment of collective land ownership or village land system, and the establishment of communes as the carrier of agricultural socialization service system and rural public service system. However, among the believers and practitioners of the theory of agricultural collectivization, the reason for agricultural collectivization is mainly the first thing. They believe that the development of organized agriculture should be more conducive to the development of agriculture than the traditional small-scale peasant economy, increase the output of agricultural products, and be more conducive to providing funds for industrialization. The understanding at that time cannot but be said to be a historical regret.

For agricultural production, we should not ignore the different laws between the primary industry and the secondary and tertiary industries, and romantically and improperly apply the laws only in the secondary and tertiary industries to agriculture. This is the imagination of the so-called scale operation and professional division of labor in agriculture. Mass production of homogeneous products from manual workshops to industrial production lines means that the same products may now require only a tenth of the labor and time they used to be. However, the benefit of division of labor and cooperation in the process of agricultural production is very weak. Agricultural products are not manufactured, but plants and animals that grow naturally. The scale operation of agriculture cannot change this basic fact. The growth cycle of plants and animals is extremely limited, even if it can be artificially shortened. Agricultural production is an activity that lasts at least several months on a vast expanse of land. It is a continuous work of sowing in spring, planting in summer, harvesting in autumn and hiding in winter. Different kinds of labor are formed in season, but different kinds of agricultural work can be done by the same person at different times. At the same time, exactly the same work is done on all the land. Basically, it is not necessary for agricultural labor to specialize and cooperate. At the same time, because agricultural labor is a long-term nourishment, it is deeply affected by climate and other unexpected factors, so it is difficult to measure labor performance and supervision in the intermediate period.