The question of scholars: who will farm and how to farm?

The continuous flow of cheap rural labor to cities is a realistic manifestation of the improvement of the efficiency of resource allocation in China. China's rapid economic growth benefits from urbanization. With the deepening of urbanization, the continuous improvement of modern agricultural industrial chain and the continuous progress of agricultural science and technology, the contribution of technology and capital to agricultural output in modern agricultural economy will far exceed that of land and labor. The continuous growth of grain production in China for more than a decade also shows that the number of farmers is decreasing, but thanks to technology and capital, the land managed by a single labor force has increased greatly, and the labor productivity has been continuously improved, so the problem of who will farm the land will be resolved.

Recently, they read the paper "Research on the Aging of Rural Labor Force in Beijing" written by Zhang Yinghong and Liu Nina, researchers of Beijing Rural Economic Research Center. through the analysis of the data of agricultural labor force human resources in Beijing, they once again issued the worry of "who will cultivate the land and how to farm the land".

The data cited by Zhang Yinghong and Liu Nina show that the increasing aging of the agricultural labor force in Beijing is not optimistic: the young labor force under the age of 45 has dropped sharply, and the 45-year-old labor force at the age of 60 has become the main force of agricultural production in Beijing. From 2000 to 2010, the agricultural labor force under the age of 45 in Beijing decreased by more than 50%. At the same time, the proportion of young people under the age of 25 who represented new entrants to the agricultural industry also dropped from 8.6% in 2000 to 4.3% in 2010. as of 2010, the proportion of agricultural elderly labor force over the age of 45 in Beijing reached 60.1%, an increase of 13.5 percentage points over 2000. Zhang Yinghong and Liu Nina believe that according to this situation, the aging degree of Beijing's agricultural labor force will further deepen, and the speed may be faster.

In fact, the aging of the agricultural labor force is accelerating not only in Beijing, but also in other parts of the country. By 2010, the proportion of agricultural labor force aged 45 and above is 71.8% in Zhejiang, 69.5% in Jiangsu, 65.2% in Shanghai, 60.9% in Chongqing, 53.5% in Hubei and 51.4% in Fujian.

Huang Ji , a researcher at the Agricultural Policy Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, also pointed out in a paper in 2015 that at present, the intergenerational differences in employment choices between the two generations of rural households are extremely significant. For example, the proportion of parents working in agriculture and part-time work is 69.8% and 21.4% respectively, while the proportion of children working in agriculture and part-time work is 5.1% and 6.2% respectively. The proportion of the agricultural population will continue to decline in the next five years. In the future, while the proportion of farmers working in agriculture decreases, the average age of agricultural labor force will increase by more than 1.1 years a year, showing an aging trend.

William Petty, founder of British classical political economy, once said: "Labor is the father of wealth, and land is the mother of wealth." Agriculture is stable and the world is safe. However, with the advance of China's industrialization, urbanization and urban-rural integration, a large number of rural surplus young and middle-aged labor force is constantly transferred to cities and towns. the problems such as hollow village, idle or abandoned land, "old and young women" of rural resident population are becoming more and more serious. "who will farm the land" has always been the concern of agricultural economic researchers.

The main reason for the aging of the rural labor force is the rapid development of urbanization. due to the needs of urban development and the two-way mechanism of the choice of young and middle-aged labor force, more and more young and middle-aged labor force enter cities and towns to work or receive education. in the process of industrialization, the migrant population in rural areas is mainly young and middle-aged labor force, while most of them remain in rural areas are the elderly population.

As there are fewer and fewer young workers, the worry about "who will farm the land" is becoming more and more serious. However, from the research of scholars, there are still great differences in academic circles on the impact of rural labor transfer on agriculture. Scholars Li  and Xu Na believe that the loss of agricultural labor force, aging and feminization will make agricultural production and agricultural modernization face challenges. The massive loss of agricultural labor force leads to the lack of agricultural labor force and the decline of the overall quality, which is not conducive to the adoption of advanced production technology and production and management. Wang Yuemei and Li Lan believe that the outflow of rural labor force may also change farmers' intensive farming and production decision-making behavior, resulting in extensive management or even abandonment. However, there are also different opinions that the outflow of rural labor force has increased household income, promoted productive investment, effectively alleviated the contradiction between people and land, and improved the efficiency of the allocation of production resources. it provides favorable conditions for agricultural scale and industrial production and operation. They believe that the transfer of labor has not had a significant impact on agricultural production, and there is no need to worry too much about the agricultural crisis.

From a worldwide point of view, the decline in the proportion of agricultural labor force is an inevitable trend, and the aging phenomenon is a global problem. The average age of the agricultural labour force in the US is 58, while in Japan it is as high as 67, while in Europe 1/3 of farmers are over 65, while the proportion of young and middle-aged people under 35 is less than 5 per cent. According to research data, the average proportion of global agricultural employment in 2010-2012 was 30.5%, down 7.4% from the past decade. For China, according to the United Nations World population Outlook 2012, if calculated on the basis of medium fertility, China's total working-age population (16fu 60 years old) will fall by about 1.6% by 2020 compared with 2011. Agricultural employment will account for about 24% of the national employment, nearly 200 million agricultural labor force. In the future of the continuous development of professional farmers, there should be no need to worry about the number of rural labor force.

The continuous flow of cheap rural labor to cities is a realistic manifestation of the improvement of the efficiency of resource allocation in China. China's rapid economic growth benefits from urbanization. With the deepening of urbanization, the continuous improvement of modern agricultural industrial chain and the continuous progress of agricultural science and technology, the contribution of technology and capital to agricultural output in modern agricultural economy will far exceed that of land and labor. After World War II, the land has basically not increased, and the agricultural labor force has been greatly reduced, and the increase of the total agricultural output in the world several times shows that the main contributing factors to promote the growth of modern agricultural economy have turned to technology and capital. The continuous growth of grain production in China for more than a decade also illustrates this problem: the number of farmers is decreasing, but thanks to technology and capital, land managed by a single labor force has greatly increased, and productivity has been continuously improved. the problem of who will farm will also be resolved.