Farmers' exploration of "returning land" needs more top-level design.

Agricultural "moderate scale Management" calls for Land centralization Mechanism

In November 2014, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the "opinions on guiding the orderly transfer of Rural Land Management Rights to develop appropriate scale Management of Agriculture". It is pointed out that "land circulation and moderate scale operation are the only way to develop modern agriculture." It should be promoted actively and steadily.

This judgment has been proved correct by practice in many areas, including Liangping County, Chongqing: while many farmers in Liangping County assert that there is no "money road" for farming, other people who carry out moderate-scale operation, however, with the reward and support of the government, introduce social services to a bright "money road".

"everyone says that growing grain doesn't make money, but at first I didn't think it was a good idea." Zhang Liangfu, a villager in Wannian Village, Pingjin Town, Liangping County, in his early 30s. Last year, he transferred more than 200 mu of rice fields in Wannian Village to grow rice, earned more than 100,000 yuan, and married a wife. The most key factor in his "counterattack" is moderate scale operation.

In the long run, promoting the transformation of agriculture from the decentralized management of traditional farmers to a new management system with the combination of intensification, specialization, organization and socialization is the only way for our country to build a modern agricultural power.

However, as pointed out in the National New urbanization Plan (2014-2020), China has an overpopulation in rural areas and a shortage of agricultural soil and water resources. under the dual system between urban and rural areas, it is difficult to carry out large-scale operation of land and difficult to change the traditional mode of production. This is the root of the problem of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. The per capita area of cultivated land in China is only 0.1 hectares, and the average land management scale of farmers is about 0.6 hectares, which is far from reaching the threshold of large-scale agricultural management.

Then, in order to achieve appropriate scale, it is necessary to centralize the scattered rural land. Previously, the main way to concentrate land was "circulation", which is now more mature and implemented throughout the country, while the "surrender of land" in Liangping and other places is a new thing and is still carefully "touching stones in the river."

Both "circulation" and "withdrawal" involve the transfer of farmers' contracted land management rights, but the latter obviously goes further. If we say that when the land is "transferred", the taker is similar to "rent"; then, after the peasants "return the land", the taker is closer to "buying", so they have more courage and courage to increase investment and move towards modern agriculture in a strict sense.

The word "surrender" began to appear in official documents.

The reporter noted that in recent years, the words "farmers voluntarily withdraw from land contractual management rights" began to appear in official documents.

In August 2015, the General Office of the State Council issued the opinions on speeding up the Transformation of the Mode of Agricultural Development, which clearly pointed out in the article "promoting appropriate scale operation of various forms of agriculture". On the basis of adhering to the collective ownership of rural land and fully respecting the wishes of farmers, we will safely carry out the pilot project of farmers' paid withdrawal of contracted land in rural reform experimental areas. We will guide farmers who have stable non-farm employment income and have lived in cities and towns for a long time to voluntarily withdraw from the right of land contractual management.

On January 22nd this year, Premier Li Keqiang of the State Council presided over an executive meeting of the State Council, which made arrangements to further promote a new type of urbanization with people as the core. The meeting pointed out that urbanization is the greatest potential for China's development. Among the four major measures identified at the meeting are the contents of "relaxing the conditions for the settlement of agricultural transfer population and exploring the mechanism of voluntary and paid withdrawal of land contract rights, homestead use rights, and collective income distribution rights of farmers settled in cities in accordance with the law."

Liangping County is one of the three areas that explored the "withdrawal of land contractual management rights from the pilot project" in the early stage.

On August 5, the Circular of the State Council on the implementation of several Financial policies to support the citizenization of the transferred Agricultural population, which requires that a mechanism for withdrawing the relevant rights and interests of farmers settled in cities be gradually established, and actively guide and support the voluntary and compensated transfer of relevant rights and interests of farmers settled in cities in accordance with the law.

On August 29, the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the China Insurance Regulatory Commission jointly approved nine regions to carry out pilot projects.

Be careful to "return the land" to increase farmers' income and accelerate the new type of urbanization

The early exploration of "returning land" in Liangping County shows that the steady implementation of "returning land" can increase the income of farmers with agricultural efficiency and accelerate the industrialization of new cities and towns.

As of August, 101farmers in Liangping County had voluntarily "returned" 297.47 mu of land, introduced six business entities, and realized moderate scale operations such as Liangping pomelo, facility fruits and vegetables, high-grade cold-water fish and lotus root, and increased agricultural efficiency, collective economic income and farmers' property income. as a result, the first group of Yihe Village in Panlong Town received a collective income of 137900 yuan, and the farmers in the former Garden Society of Hexing Town paid a per capita dividend of 900yuan last year.

The agricultural transfer population withdrew from the contracted land, realized its land property rights, increased the capital of entering the city, provided stable human resources for industry, and accelerated the development of new urbanization and industrialization.

Liangping County has preliminarily explored and formed a diversified land return model of "multi-party linkage and combination of withdrawal and use", in which "the issuer has the exit channel, the withdrawing party has the willingness to withdraw, the receiver has land demand, and the government has policy support". It can meet the differentiated "land return" needs of some places and farmers, and make the complex and sensitive "land return" standardized and orderly, and the risk can be controlled. It is a kind of Pareto improvement which is win-win and in line with the trend.

Hundreds of millions of farmers'"citizenization" can not avoid the problem of "returning land".

In the long run, more and more farmers will leave the land and become citizens in the future. if there is no proper channel to "return the land", more land may be abandoned. From this level, the exploration of Liangping County is of far-reaching significance. In the future, in the context of "the core of China's urbanization is the citizenization of farmers", more and more "citizenized" farmers will be difficult to avoid the problem of "returning to the land". Whether to allow "return to the land" and how to "return to the land" in an orderly manner need more attention and research.

Official data show that in 1978, China's urban resident population was 170 million, and in 2015 it reached 770 million, and the urbanization rate increased from 17.9% in 1978 to 56.1% in 2015. The rapid promotion of urbanization has absorbed a large number of rural labor transfer employment, promoted the sustained and rapid development of the national economy, brought about profound changes in the social structure, and promoted the overall improvement of the living standards of urban and rural residents.

However, the urbanization rate of China's registered population is much lower than that of resident population, with a difference of 16.2 percentage points in 2015. The main reason lies in the urban-rural dual structure: in the past, the rural population was the agricultural population, and the population living in the city was the urban population. in the wave of "working", the rural population flocked to the city to work and buy homes, although they produced and lived in the city. but the hukou has not changed, thus forming this kind of data difference.

At present, migrant workers and their families living in cities constitute a large population of hundreds of millions of people, and these "pseudo-urban population" living an "amphibious" life do not get a hukou in cities and towns. To further improve the quality of China's urbanization, especially to speed up the citizenization of migrant workers, which has long been agreed by both officials and people.

According to the goals set out in the National New urbanization Plan (2014-2020), by 2020, the urbanization rate of China's resident population will reach about 60%, and the urbanization rate of registered residents will reach about 45%. We will strive to achieve the settlement of about 100 million agricultural migrants and other permanent residents in cities and towns.

What path will be taken to achieve these goals? How do those farmers who have settled in cities and towns deal with their contracted land and how to solve the phenomenon of "human-land separation" of agricultural transferred population? How to solve the problem that the current land system is incompatible with the development of urbanization by deepening reform? These problems are particularly eye-catching.

The rural land contract system should adapt to the mode of agricultural production and management.

The Rural Land contract Law was implemented in 2003. Over the past 13 years, with the rapid development of China's economy and society and the rapid progress of urbanization, hundreds of millions of rural labor force have gone to cities and towns to work, and a large number of new operators such as professional cooperatives, family farms and leading enterprises of agricultural industrialization have emerged. the new situation calls for innovation and reform of the rural land system to adapt the rural land contract system to the mode of agricultural production and management.

What can not be ignored is that in recent years, some rural areas have begun to show the situation of farmers leaving their hometown, hollow villages and abandoned land. after the abolition of agricultural tax in 2006, the cost of idle rural land is very low, and the severity of abandonment can not be ignored. behind it is the choice of "returning land" made by some farmers "voting with their feet".

The reality of "partial abandonment of land" makes the value of the land lost in vain. People need to come up with countermeasures to awaken the value of sleeping in the land.

Obviously, for some farmers, the time is ripe to "return the land". In the wave of migrant workers, some farmers have completed the accumulation of certain skills and assets, they have become "urban and rural swing people" or "quasi-urban people", contracted land has become less important. The risk of their "returning land" is relatively small, and the compensation obtained from the realization of the right of contracted management of land can also help them gain a faster and better foothold in the city and speed up the process of citizenization and new-type urbanization of farmers in cities.

On the other hand, the individual situation cannot be equated with the whole. For farmers, "returning the land" after all means "playing the last card". Although from the practice of Liangping County, some farmers' dependence on land is getting lighter and lighter, as a whole, farmers'"returning land" still means certain risks. therefore, risk prevention and control should always run through the whole process of reform. In the long run, the most important way to get to the root of the problem is to improve farmers' viability in cities and towns.

The problems faced by "returning the land" need to be answered by legal authority.

The China Youth Daily Zhongqing online reporter noted that Liangping County, as one of the "pilot areas for the withdrawal of land contractual management rights", has explored ideas and paths that can guide grass-roots practice. However, this kind of exploration still faces some uncertainty, and the work of "returning to the ground" still needs more top-level design.

The first and foremost problem is the need to incorporate a more complete withdrawal mechanism of contracted land into the Rural Land contract Law so that this work has a law to follow.

The current "Rural Land contract Law" involves the "withdrawal" of contracted land.

Article 26 of the law stipulates that during the contract period, if the whole family of the contractor moves into a city divided into an area and changes to a non-agricultural hukou, the contracted cultivated land and grassland shall be returned to the contracting party. This can be understood as a "legal withdrawal".

Article 29 of the Act provides that during the period of the contract, the contractor may voluntarily return the contracted land to the sending party. If the contractor voluntarily returns the contracted land, it shall notify the issuer in writing half a year in advance. This can be understood as "voluntary withdrawal".

However, these regulations are so broad that it is difficult to regulate and adjust the complicated behavior of "returning land". The law must make a clearer definition of the two core issues: how to protect the rights and interests of farmers who have "returned land" and how to ensure the effective use of unreturned land.

At present, the reporter has not found that the legislature has issued laws and regulations related to "withdrawing from the contracted land". For example, apart from the contracted land, can homestead and private land be "withdrawn"? The second round of land contract still has a term of more than 10 years. Is the return of land "due" or "permanently valid"? After the expiration of the contract, how to define the rights and obligations of the current "renderer" and "receiver"? This series of questions are waiting for an authoritative answer.

At the same time, "returning the land" will inevitably give rise to the problem of redistribution of contracted land, which also requires top-level design: who has the right to participate in the redistribution? How is it allocated? How can distribution not only facilitate centralized farming but also achieve relative fairness?

Article 3 of the Rural Land contract Law stipulates that rural land contracting adopts the household contracting method within rural collective economic organizations, and it is not suitable to adopt barren hills, barren ditches, barren hills, barren beaches and other rural land in the form of household contracting, it can be contracted by means of bidding, auction, public consultation, and so on.

The reporter noted that the existing exploration of "returning land" in Liangping County is to make use of the word "etc." in this law. the withdrawal of paid farmers from land is defined as land that is not suitable for household contracting (household contracting is free-press by reporters), so that the "withdrawn" land can be "relayed" by other ways besides circulation. Whether this practice is legal and compliant also needs to be made clear.

There is a need to provide more security for farmers who "return land".

"returning to the ground" also calls for more operational policies.

When the state expropriates agricultural land, there are relatively perfect security policies such as endowment insurance for land expropriated farmers. However, there are no farmers who "voluntarily surrender their land". At present, the old-age insurance for rural residents is only about 100 yuan per month, which is not enough to "shelter from the wind and rain". Therefore, it is necessary to establish a security mechanism for "returning land" farmers in land, housing, social security, employment, education, medical care and so on.

"good blacksmiths are needed to make good steel." external "blood transfusion" cannot replace its own "hematopoietic" function, and it is also necessary to help farmers "return to the land" to achieve stable employment through training to solve their worries. This requires the government to make arrangements in terms of funds, teachers, and mechanisms.

According to the situation of the pilot project in Liangping County, although the government strongly advocates the development of family operation on an appropriate scale after the "return of the land", most of the operators who "take over" are engaged in high-input, high-income, and high value-added industries.

It is not known whether this model has universal value for solving the "three rural issues". After all, solving the problem of "eating" depends more on "narrow agriculture" such as planting, rather than "new agriculture" such as sightseeing, experience and leisure. With reference to the experience of agricultural developed countries, in order to form a more mature and competitive primary industry, a more ideal model may be "professional farmers" family-run "family farms", supplemented by cooperatives to provide pre -, mid-and post-natal services.

Why are large grain growers and professional farmers absent from taking over the land "withdrawn" by farmers in Liangping County? This may be accidental because the number of samples is too small, or it may be because they are unable to pay enough "compensation".

China has decided to adjust and improve three subsidy policies, namely, subsidies for improved varieties of crops, direct subsidies for grain farmers and comprehensive subsidies for agricultural materials, from 2015, which will be used as a whole to support moderate scale operation of grain. This work will be carried out on a pilot basis in five provinces, supporting moderate-scale producers and operators of major grain crops, with emphasis on new business entities such as large grain growers, family farms, farmers' cooperatives, and agricultural socialized service organizations. It reflects that "whoever produces more grain will give priority to supporting others."

From this point of view, it is worth pondering how the government can enable professional farmers and large grain growers to have the ability and willingness to undertake the land "returned" by some farmers through institutional adjustment.

The difficulty of the government in raising working capital (or "compensation") for "returning land" may be the biggest bottleneck for the reform and exploration of "returning land". How to set up a capital pool, how to balance the capital pressure, how to establish a financial support system, through measures such as government and social capital cooperation, government purchase services, guarantee and interest discount, award instead of compensation, private office assistance, risk compensation and other measures, to provide financial support for the withdrawal of land contractual management rights, these issues need to issue more details.

If the exploration of "surrender" is pushed out on a larger scale, it is necessary to establish a market supply and demand information platform based on Internet technology, it is very necessary to realize the services of market information collection and release, resource asset evaluation, transaction agency, financial and insurance services, laws and regulations and policy consultation and agency.