Small farmers can also develop modern agriculture.

A few days ago, the State Council issued the National Agricultural Modernization Plan (2016-2020), which proposed to "guide farmers to voluntarily and orderly transfer land management rights in accordance with the law, and encourage farmers to eliminate ridges and continuous cultivation through exchange of contracted land, joint cultivation and other ways, so as to solve the problem of fragmentation of rural land." In reality, through the innovation of management forms, many farmers in rural areas promote the development of agricultural modernization on the basis of not carrying out land transfer and changing the main body of agricultural management, and explore a variety of agricultural modernization roads with ordinary farmers as the main body. Among them, the more typical ones are the household-to-household farming model of Shayang in Hubei Province, the co-cultivation model of Sheyang County in Jiangsu Province and the centralized circulation model of agricultural land in Fanchang County, Anhui Province.

The household-by-household farming model in Shayang County means that farmers adjust the decentralized and fragmented land to one or one piece, so as to realize the centralized cultivation of land and expand the scale management of land. According to preliminary estimates, continuous farming by household can increase the efficiency of machinery by 40%, reduce the cost of money input by 25%, reduce labor input time by 75%, and increase the comprehensive production capacity by four times. Take a peasant household in Xinhe Village in the county as an example: the farmer has more than ten mu of contracted land, which is divided into more than 20 pieces, and the more than two moonlight irrigation during the period from transplanting rice seedlings to drying the field consumes a lot of labor. After the land is connected, the farmer puts water into the highest field and allows it to irrigate by itself. He is not afraid of water flowing into other people's fields, nor does he need to move water pipes and pumps frequently. Farming is much easier.

The mode of co-cultivation and co-cultivation in Sheyang County means that farmers unite to break the ridges of the fields, uniformly carry out farming operations such as spinning, raking and leveling fields, and select unified varieties for unified sowing, thus realizing the scale of agricultural services. Through the integration of property rights, the mode of co-cultivation and co-cultivation can connect scattered small farmers with large-scale social services, which can increase the comprehensive income of agriculture by more than 500 yuan / mu. Including adopting machine transplanting technology and strip sowing technology to reduce seed cost 47 yuan / mu; breaking the ridge of the field to unify the use of machinery, improving mechanical efficiency and reducing mechanical cost 35 yuan / mu; unified technical popularization and guidance to improve the yield and quality of crops, wheat yield can be increased by more than 100 jin / mu, and the sales price can be increased by 0.1 yuan / jin.

The centralized transfer mode of agricultural land in Fanchang County means that farmers divide the contracted land into "self-ploughing functional area" and "transfer functional area". Farmers who need to cultivate land in the "self-ploughing functional area" obtain concentrated and continuous contracted land according to the second-round extension area of the land. Farmers who do not need to farm land transfer the land out, and family farms that flow into the land obtain concentrated and continuous land from the "circulation functional area". As a result, the problems of decentralized land transfer and "flower arrangement land" caused by farmers' different willingness to land transfer have been solved. In addition, farmers gather their willingness to transfer land every 5-10 years, thus forming a "reversible" mode of land transfer. Migrant workers do not need to worry about having no land to grow when they return to the countryside one day.

The above three forms of agricultural management innovation not only promote the development of agricultural modernization, but also contain, protect and realize the interests of small farmers in varying degrees.

First, it has solved the production dilemma of small farmers in different ways and promoted the development of agricultural modernization. The household-by-household farming model solves the problem of land fragmentation caused by the equal distribution of land rights, the co-cultivation model solves the problem of diseconomy of agricultural service scale of small farmers, and the centralized transfer model of agricultural land solves the problem of land fragmentation caused by the separation of human and land. These explorations have improved the degree of socialization and technical level of agricultural production in varying degrees, and farmers can generally share the benefits of agricultural modernization.

Second, the employment and survival of farmers are guaranteed in the process of agricultural modernization. The main bodies of household-by-household farming model and co-farming and co-cropping model are small farmers. The former emphasizes the principle of "household-by-household", that is, continuous cultivation of land responds to the demands of small farmers rather than new agricultural operators. The latter emphasizes the principle of "union", that is, small farmers unite to realize the scale of agricultural services. The mode of centralized transfer of agricultural land emphasizes the principle of "reversibility", that is, to protect the right of migrant workers to return to their hometown to cultivate land. The above three explorations do not deprive farmers of the right to cultivate land, which can not only improve the efficiency of agricultural management, but also enable farmers to obtain certain employment and social security from the land.

There are many ways to develop modern agriculture. Especially in the case of a large number of rural population in our country, and most farmers still need to rely on land for employment and social security, exploring the road of agricultural modernization with small farmers as the main body is not only conducive to improving the development level of agricultural modernization, but also conducive to meeting the employment and social security needs of farmers. All localities should fully respect the pioneering spirit of farmers, explore the road of agricultural modernization with farmers as the main body according to local conditions, protect farmers' interests, solve the problem of land fragmentation of ordinary farmers, and regard it as an important part of the development of agricultural modernization.