Large-scale agriculture should have Chinese-style choice

Combing the remarks of domestic scholars and local officials and talking about the modernization of farmers and agriculture, they all say in a very firm tone that the way out is scale, industrialization or capitalization. However, with the passage of time, in the face of a series of problems contrary to our expectations, we have to rethink the development of agricultural industrialization. From 2010 to 2013, China's three major food crops, corn, rice and wheat, were all net imports. High-priced rice has already appeared in supermarket grain cabinets. All this has come too fast for every Chinese. The author always feels that when we talk about agricultural modernization, we seem to ignore the differences in land endowments and the unreplicability of the comparative advantages of agricultural production given by nature and climate. If there is no adjustment of thinking and strategic restructuring and arrangement, the result will be very dangerous.

Theoretically, according to the requirements of the changing law of the quantitative combination of productivity factors, we should consciously select and control the production scale, increase the output, reduce the cost, and obtain the best economic benefit. Economies of scale or the economy of the scale of productivity is also a matter of determining the best scale of production. However, the problems accumulated over the years have warned us that if food production is too large-scale, the deep-seated consequences will be the unemployment of farmers, the demise of rural communities and the destruction of ecological diversity. As a result, two possible effects are fatal: high-priced commodity grain gives rise to a variety of social and economic problems, a sharp increase in social management costs and increased risks. Therefore, we need to correctly deal with agricultural industrialization and capitalization, and beware of falling into the trap of capital monopoly behind industrialization.

In China, from the rapid rise of agricultural seasonal wages in different regions, we can see that the era of rural labor shortage is coming. During the investigation, the author found that the land investment density of agricultural industrialization is much higher than that of traditional retail agriculture; since 2000, agricultural subsidies have produced a kind of path dependence, a rising tide lifts all boats. As grain production has extremely high requirements for climate, environment and soil structure, it is difficult to escape the basic requirements of "relying on the sky"; under the background of relatively low grain prices, small farmers give up grain cultivation; moreover, the national grain planting subsidy has played a role in boosting the shift of grain growers to capital owners. Especially in recent years, the transfer of rural land has staged the drama of "Land ownership".

Scale is the result of the division of labor and the allocation of other elements in the whole society, and it is an endogenous process. Agriculture, especially grain production, is restricted by the productivity boundary of land, and there is also a boundary to increase unit yield by relying on technological progress such as chemical fertilizer and seed improvement. Until today, we do not see large-scale grain (corn, rice and wheat) in the greenhouse, only vegetables, melons and fruits or other high value-added flowers and so on. An important factor is that the productive value of land is determined by the type of agricultural products. The type of agricultural products to be planted is determined by the price and the amount of initial capital investment. As for who the main body of agricultural land management is, how to realize it, and how to distribute the value-added value, it is closely related to the goal setting of the main body of capital investment. In recent years, the author has obtained specific evidence in different areas of the East, Central and West, such as watermelon cultivation, blueberry and strawberry cultivation, high-price flower cultivation and Panax notoginseng cultivation and so on. Driven by economic interests, agricultural scale and non-grain are accompanied.

In view of the judgment of the inefficiency of small-scale farmers' production, the author estimates the production function by tracking the five-year survey data of small-scale farmers' rice planting in Hejiang County, Sichuan Province, in order to reveal the boundary accessibility of production possibility. The results show that the proportion of artificial controllable inefficiency is 72.3%, and that of random inefficiency is 27.7%. The price expectation of socialized small farmers has a direct impact on planting willingness, once the market price is lower than expected, the probability of reducing acreage is as high as 13%. When small farmers withdraw from farmland management, transfer concentration is only the result, in which the decisive factors are grain market (acquisition) price, non-agricultural sector wage level, farmland rent and so on. In terms of sublease rent of agricultural land, there is little difference in the rent of grain cultivation in different areas, usually about 300 to 500 yuan per mu; the rent of non-grain cultivation varies greatly, depending on the type of crops, the land rent is between 1200 and 25000 yuan per mu. Here, as an economic variable to explain the concentration of land, land rent is also the benchmark for small farmers to bargain with capital owners, and the platform for making profits with the people is agricultural land and agricultural products market; with the rapid development of rural land transfer concentration, it has become a normal phenomenon for small farmers to withdraw from land actively or passively. In view of this, it is necessary to treat agriculture and rural development cautiously, pay attention to the construction of the internal balance system between society and economy, form a price mechanism conducive to stabilizing the grain production of small farmers, and reconstruct the development understanding of "cheap grain harms both farmers and people".

When the level of urbanization reaches a certain level, it is limited to the discussion of the management mode of land, adjust measures to local conditions and take advantage of the situation to guide and retain land farmers, then there may be the guarantee of agriculture and food security. Different stages of development, different people-land relations, different regions, can have different ways of agricultural development. In this regard, it is extremely necessary to re-recognize the social and economic functions of production efficiency and farmland management. In the era of urbanization and industrialization, the strategic security of grain production is always higher than that of output security. Based on the actual situation in China and the particularity of grain production, only when the external conditions cultivated by the market and the government are fully prepared, can the mode of production of small farmers be supplemented or replaced by new types of management.

In terms of the development experience of the United States, Japan and European countries, the fate of farmers is always in the hands of the government; agricultural production and farmland management are always accompanied by the process of benefit redistribution and bargaining. Grain production and agricultural production methods are determined by government subsidies, not production efficiency. Nowadays, China has come to the crossroads of agricultural land management and agricultural development. The main variable that determines the mode of grain production is "subsidy", and the main variable that determines grain output should be "price". The power that determines the management form of agricultural land should not come from the intervention of the government or the market, but from the adjustment of the relationship between man and land. China's grain production, which has great population pressure, is not allowed and impossible to embark on the American-style commercial development road, let alone the Japanese-style intensive farming power management road. China should have its own path choice.