Why the small-scale Farmers in China are prosperous forever

China has been a large country of small farmers in history, especially today. As far as the main body of agriculture is concerned, the number of 230 million household contracted farmers is 100 times that of 2.3 million in the United States and 1000 times that of 230000 in Britain. Why Chinese small farmers occupy the leading, main and main position of agriculture for such a long time, in addition to the characteristics that agriculture needs to take the family as the basic management unit, it also has a profound historical background and special institutional environment.

First, excellent genes

Chinese civilization is one of the oldest civilizations in the world and the only uninterrupted civilization in the world. Why is that? The key is that Chinese agriculture in the era of agricultural civilization has four excellent genetic genes.

One is the geographical cooperation of one river and one river. Dry farming in the Yellow River basin and rice farming in the Yangtze River basin have given birth to China's ten thousand years of agricultural history. The biggest problem facing agriculture in ancient China was water control. The five-thousand-year history of agricultural civilization is a history of controlling rivers and rivers. Water control must make concerted efforts in upstream and downstream, left and right banks, cooperate geographically and spatially, cultivate the spirit of cooperation, and form a community of interests in cooperation. As early as hundreds of years before Qin unified China, many water conservancy projects had been carefully designed by some vassal countries, and local chronicles were full of records in this regard. The Yellow River in the north was severely silted, often flooded and brought great disasters called "river war". The diversion of the Yellow River even ruined the new dynasty of Wang Mang; almost all the agricultural water in the densely populated Chengdu Plain of Southwest Sichuan Province came from Dujiangyan built by Li Bing and his son during the warring States period, which still benefits sentient beings; in the southeast, rice cultivation requires careful control of irrigation water. The management of water resources is very important, a river and a canal flow through the village to form a group to protect the interests of small farmers, while different groups are combined into a cooperative circle beyond the scope of the village in order to share water resources. Based on the state's overall control of water conservancy facilities, a central unified national community is formed. Water control is so important that some scholars call China a "water conservancy society". The "benefit" of water comes from the geographical cooperation between upstream and downstream, left and right banks from generation to generation, and the alliance of atomized small farmers on the issue of water control is the key to turning water disasters into water conservancy.

Second, the cultural unity of the group Weili. Since the reunification of the Qin Dynasty, China has been using Chinese and Chinese characters, and no country or nation has such an advantage. India still has more than 100 languages. At present, 1.4 billion people in the world speak Chinese as their mother tongue, while only 400 million people speak English as their mother tongue. If China does not have a unified language, we may see a multilingual situation similar to that in Europe, and of course it will not be able to form a super-energetic creativity like China. The Chu bamboo slips of Guodian unearthed in 1993 shows that although there are different dialects and unique local cultures, with the help of the intercommunion writing system, all countries in the warring States period around 300 BC participated in the same philosophical debate and discussion, forming a large number of philosophical schools and a wide range of cultural areas. As early as the warring States period, most of the contents of Daojing have been spread in China. No matter how the history changes, it has not annihilated the inheritance of Chinese culture. The inclusiveness and great ideological domination of Chinese culture have created a strong cohesion of the Chinese nation, which is more convenient for the creation, dissemination and inheritance of culture.

The third is the first-mover advantage of following the law. China's traditional agriculture is life-centered agriculture, which follows the laws of nature and does not confront nature. In a closed inner circle, the fruits of crops are left for human consumption, the roots and leaves are fed to livestock, and then human and animal manure is returned to the field as fertilizer for crops. The cycle moves forward year after year. Western modern agriculture is production-centered agriculture, which breaks this internal cycle and injects two external forces-pesticides, fertilizers and machinery, resulting in a great increase in output and efficiency. The simple pursuit of production efficiency has caused many drawbacks. Rachel Carson's Silent Spring reveals the serious consequences of a profit-only society: chemicals that are widely used for the development of industry and agriculture, especially the production and use of synthetic pesticides are quietly threatening human life and the environment. The traditional agriculture created by small farmers in China develops slowly without the help of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and machinery, but it is relatively stable and in harmony with nature, and has the characteristics of green, ecological and organic. With the drawbacks of late-developing agriculture in the West increasingly criticized by the society, the first-mover advantage of Chinese traditional agriculture has become increasingly prominent, showing vitality, and has received more and more attention.

The fourth is the theoretical guidance of agricultural philosophy. Today, more than 500 kinds of Chinese works on agriculture can be seen, and more than 300 kinds of original works can be seen. The vast works have laid the foundation of Chinese agricultural philosophy and revealed that the real relationship between heaven and man is partners and friends. We should follow the natural law of the unity of man and nature and the symbiosis of man and nature. These works are the crystallization of our ancestors' agricultural practice. The agricultural philosophy of "harmony between heaven, earth and people" is recognized by the world as the golden law of human civilization, which is applicable everywhere and is the theoretical guidance of the highest realm. The reason why China's agricultural civilization has become the only uninterrupted civilization in the world is one of the important secrets.

Second, high-quality historical accumulation

With a history of five thousand years of civilization, Chinese agriculture has been passed on from generation to generation, accumulating a rich history and culture.

One is animal and plant culture. In traditional Chinese society, "five grains are abundant and six animals are prosperous" is often used as an auspicious word to pray for the New year. Judging from the unearthed relics, the Yangtze River basin and the Yellow River basin have become two different sources of crop cultivation ten thousand years ago. About 9000 AD, the Chinese ancestors who harvested wild rice began to cultivate rice along the Yangtze River. Before 8000 AD, they began to cultivate millet in the Yellow River valley in the north, that is to say, the social system of north rice and south rice began to be established before 8000 AD. Before the modern breeding technology based on the theory of biological genetics was invented, our ancestors had mastered a set of techniques and methods for selecting crops in their own system, and on this basis, they cultivated rich and colorful traditional crop varieties and formed a unique native agricultural culture, of which the most representative ones are millet culture, wheat culture, rice culture, sericulture culture, tea culture, livestock and poultry culture and so on.

The second is agricultural technology. Our ancestors created a set of unique agricultural activities and intensive farming technology system, and its essence is still an element worthy of reference and development in the development of modern agriculture in the world. The agricultural calendar is still used to calculate traditional festivals and arrange agricultural activities. Intensive farming technology, animal domestication technology, forest and fruit breeding technology and fermentation brewing technology have played a pioneering and enlightening role in the long history of civilization accumulation.

The third is the business model. From a technical point of view, it has created business models such as rice-fish symbiosis, swamp fish, intercropping and interplanting, three-dimensional breeding and so on. From a macro point of view, the traditional small-scale peasant economy is mainly engaged in production and consumption by families, and is self-sufficient, and relatively affluent families even have a rule: family members should not eat or wear food that they do not produce. At the same time, the small-scale peasant economy maintains the combination of small-scale agriculture and family sideline, and the combination of self-sufficient production and commercial production. Under this economic model of "walking on two legs", it shows the characteristics of typical ecological agricultural culture, forms a special model of circular agriculture, and uses less land to feed a large population, with high economic efficiency and strong competitiveness. it even defeats the urbanization handicraft industry model and the large farm managed by employees.

The fourth is agricultural philosophy. Traditional agriculture has not only given birth to the agricultural production philosophy represented by the theory of "three talents" of heaven, earth and man, but also produced the life philosophy of Chinese farmers, which is mainly reflected in folk proverbs and customs. Folk philosophical words are quoted in many ancient works such as the Book of songs and Laozi, many of which are valuable and positive and healthy.