Expert: the agricultural policy lags behind and the dilemma of increasing farmers' income remains unchanged for 20 years.

Li Changping is an expert on the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. In 2000, he shot to fame by submitting a letter to the Central Committee to reflect the issues of agriculture, rural areas and farmers. In Li Changping's view, the biggest problem in China's agriculture at present is that the form of "company + peasant household" will allow large capital to earn most of the income of the agricultural industry, rather than farmers.

Li Changping divides the development of China's agriculture into four stages. He believes that China's agriculture has already passed the stage of food and clothing and began to enter the stage of "pursuing the income of price growth", that is, increasing the income of farmers. However, we have been walking for more than 20 years in this second stage, but it has not been effective yet. He attributed the reason to the derailment between the agricultural policy and the actual situation. "our agricultural policy is still in the first stage, and we are still pursuing output and increasing production without increasing income."

Petrochemical agriculture will continue.

Li Changping's home is on the edge of Honghu. During the commune period, his parents fished in Honghu all the year round and could catch tens of thousands or even more than a hundred thousand jin a year. My sister is farming in the production team, and the per unit yield of rice is about 450 jin. Now, Honghu has very few people who make a living by fishing, and there are few rice plants, because the income from growing grain is too low, and the land is basically used for aquaculture.

Chemical fertilizers and pesticides began to be used in the late 1970s, and grain output increased, but fish in Honghu Lake became less and less with the intensification of industrial and agricultural pollution. Li Changping said: petrochemical agriculture has an impact on the environment and is harmful to the environment, but the grain yield is higher than in the past, and natural fish are gone, but more and more are farmed. "it depends on what people want, how to seek advantages and avoid disadvantages, and need to find a balance point."

Reporter: in recent years, some researchers have put forward the viewpoint of agricultural diversification and ecological integration, and began to reflect on relying solely on petrochemical agriculture to increase production in the past few decades. What do you think?

Li Changping: Petroleum agriculture and chemical agriculture will continue. However, petrochemical agriculture, genetically modified agriculture, energy agriculture, factory agriculture and ecological agriculture, organic agriculture, courtyard agriculture and cultural agriculture will develop simultaneously, and agriculture will become more and more important. Agriculture will eventually be affected by the trend of "weaponization of agricultural products" and demand, ecological, cultural and other factors, forming a scientific and harmonious, diversified and sustainable agricultural development model.

Reporter: Petroleum and chemical agriculture will continue. How to say this?

Li Changping: this kind of agriculture in pursuit of output is bound to continue because the population is growing and the demand for agricultural products and energy is growing. For example, we will use agricultural products such as corn to produce alcohol in the future. Agricultural products have been linked to energy, the pursuit of high production is certain, this will not change.

As for people to eat more safely, that is another kind. For example, organic agriculture and ecological agriculture will also develop and become a hot spot. However, it is not because we engage in organic agriculture and ecological agriculture, we do not engage in petrochemical agriculture. The two go hand in hand. If everyone can't eat organic products, why? Because the earth is so big, if we do not apply chemical fertilizers and pesticides and do not use diesel, the agricultural output will be much lower and we will not be able to support so many people, which is not necessarily a good thing for the ecology, but may be a bad thing.

Reporter: why is it not good for ecology?

Li Changping: if we now have 6 billion people in the world, in the present way, 6 billion mu of land can feed 6 billion people. If one day we only eat organic products, then 6 billion people may need 10 billion mu of land to grow. In this way, wetlands and so on may be used, which will have a greater impact on the ecology.

Reporter: but the ecological damage caused by petrochemical agriculture is also obvious, and the pollution of agriculture is more lasting than that of industry, and the harm may be greater.

Li Changping: this problem also exists, that is, the problem of choosing the lesser of the two evils. I think that at present, more than 50% of the fertilizer and medicine used by farmers in farming is wasted.

Therefore, this is a question of the popularization of science and technology. If used well, the effect will be greatly improved and the harm will be greatly reduced. However, at present, our agricultural production is still very extensive, that is, the use of pesticides and chemical fertilizers is very extensive, so it has a great impact on the ecology.

"companies + farmers" is likely to make China follow in the footsteps of the Philippines.

Li Changping is known and remembered for his letter to Zhu Rongji in his capacity as a grass-roots cadre in 2000, in which he said bluntly that "farmers are really bitter, rural areas are really poor, and agriculture is really dangerous." At that time, he said that the background of agricultural danger was that since 1997, there had been losses in a large area of the country, such as grain, cotton, oil, and so on, and it was very common for farmers to abandon. In Jianli County, where he works, the abandoned area is as high as 50%.

Nowadays, there are fewer cases of abandonment, because the abolition of agricultural taxes and agricultural subsidies make it profitable for farmers to cultivate land, such as Hebei, where farmers can earn at least 600 yuan in two seasons if they plant one mu of land. However, in Li Changping's view, with the promotion of the "company + peasant household" model, a new dangerous situation in agriculture is emerging.

Reporter: Chinese agriculture, Japan and South Korea are all small-scale agriculture, but the way of development is different. What is the main difference?

Li Changping: Japan, South Korea and China's Taiwan organize small farmers, turn unorganized and scattered small farmers into organized community small farmers, and develop agriculture with farmers as the main body. All the income in the agricultural industry chain belongs to the farmers, and the farmers themselves have become rich. Under such circumstances, the entry of farmers to cities is orderly, not forced, and there is little gap between the income of farmers and that of urban people.

Our country is mainly through supporting the development of leading enterprises, and then by leading enterprises to integrate small farmers, that is, in the form of "companies + farmers". The company dominates agricultural development, and farmers are attached to the company. Companies get most of the income from the agricultural industry, and farmers get less and less from the agricultural industry. Farmers going to cities is a process of being forced to do nothing.

Reporter: you have said many times that Chinese agriculture cannot follow the Philippine model. What does the Philippine model look like? Why can't China go?

Li Changping: the Philippines used to be a "model of Asia". The situation is the same as we are today. When big capital goes to the countryside and forces farmers to go bankrupt, farmers go to work in cities. When the economic crisis came, a large number of migrant workers lost their jobs, but they could never go back. They had to work, democracy and revolution in the cities. The military coup in the Philippines in the 1960s was against this background. In addition, after the big capital went to the countryside, it changed the country's food sovereignty. The Americans told the Filipinos not to grow rice, and we sold it to you cheaply, so we turned the Philippines into a raw material base for the United States. So when food prices went up, Philippine troops lined up to protect farmers to buy grain. This is the loss of food sovereignty. Once a country's food sovereignty is lost, economic sovereignty, social stability and even national sovereignty will be controlled by others. If China really supplies 15% of the grain gap from other countries, as some economists argue, it would be tantamount to ceding 50% control of grain prices up and down to foreign countries (like soybeans). Our country will have no food security, economic security, social stability, and even national sovereignty will be insecure, which is what happens in the Philippines today.

Therefore, in the process of modernization transformation, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are relatively successful, while the Philippines is relatively failed. Are we going to learn from Japan and South Korea to help farmers organize? Or should we continue to develop "companies plus farmers"? Or should we maintain the current family business model? Or should we further improve the collective economy and the cooperative economy? There is a problem of pattern selection. Comrade Deng Xiaoping had expected and warned against this point.

As early as 1985, Deng Xiaoping said: "the purpose of socialism is to make the people of the whole country rich, not polarized." If our policies lead to polarization, we will fail. " In 1993, Comrade Deng Xiaoping again pointed out: "how to achieve affluence among the 1.2 billion people and how to distribute wealth after they become rich are all big problems." A small number of people get so much wealth, most people do not, if it goes on like this, something will go wrong one day. We talk about preventing polarization. In fact, polarization occurs naturally. It is necessary to use various means, methods and solutions to solve these problems. "

In 2005, Bo Yibo said in a letter to the third Congress of the China Association for Poverty Alleviation and Development: "in the development of rural areas, there is a major issue that we need to study and pay attention to in depth. This is the thought of" two leaps "put forward by Comrade Deng Xiaoping. Deng Xiaoping said: "there will be two leaps in rural reform and development. The first leap is to abolish the people's communes and implement the household contract system based on output, and the second leap is to develop the collective economy." And said: 'the rural economy will eventually achieve collectivization and intensification.' It is impossible to realize agricultural modernization without the development of collectivization and intensive economy, relying solely on hands-on labor and household-by-household farming. Even after a hundred or two hundred years, we will eventually have to go this way. "

Bo Yibo also said: "the collective economy of Hancun River Village in Beijing, Huaxi Village in Jiangsu Province, Hangmin Village in Zhejiang Province, Liuzhuang and Nanjie Village in Henan Province have shown their own advantages in development and the superiority of taking the road of common prosperity. There are also many rural areas that, on the basis of decentralized household management, guide farmers to unite voluntarily to develop community-based and professional cooperative economic organizations, and to guide these cooperative economic organizations to connect the production, processing, and sale of agricultural products, and gradually realize industrialization, intensive and scale operation. This will become a new important form for the development of rural collective economy, and it is also an important way to meet the requirements of socialist market economy and realize the intensification, socialization and modernization of agriculture and rural economy. "

Interviewer: these are three completely different roads.

Li Changping: yes, so my proposition is that we should not only practice Deng Xiaoping's idea of a "second leap", but also learn from the comprehensive peasant association model of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, and never learn from the Philippines. However, the current policy is still dominated by capital going to the countryside and supporting leading enterprises to deprive small farmers. This is precisely the truth of the Philippines.

If the farmers in the 1980s raised 20 pigs and planted 10 mu of land, it would be a household of ten thousand yuan, compared with more than a hundred thousand now. But today, raising the same pigs and growing the same land earns only a few thousand yuan. Where are the benefits of agriculture? Because the higher the level of "company + peasant household" in agriculture, the greater the benefit of capital and the smaller the income of farmers.

After 30 years of reform and opening up, China's farmers are not rich. Since 1985, farmers' income from agriculture has continued to decline. On the other hand, the number of farmers has not decreased, but also increased by 200 million. This shows that our principle of modernization is dangerous.

Therefore, I warn this point in the "general climate". In this way, the development may be the second place in the Philippines. We should get some reflection from this, readjust the direction of development, and we must avoid the second place in the Philippines.

China's agricultural policy lags behind the actual development needs.

Li Changping's new book, the Great Climate, is a book looking for a way out for Chinese farmers. With regard to the development of China's agriculture, he believes that it is necessary to go through four stages, and there must be corresponding policies in different stages. However, the current situation in China is that the stage of development is not compatible with agricultural policy. Agricultural development has joined the second, third and even fourth stages, but the policy is still the first stage. In other words, agricultural policy is seriously behind the times. With the dilemma of increasing agricultural production and not increasing farmers' income, there is an urgent need to adjust agricultural policies.

Reporter: you once said that you would write a book "finding a way out for Chinese Peasants". Have you ever thought about writing a book about the way out of Chinese agriculture? What do you think is the way out for China's agriculture? Or where should Chinese agriculture go?

Li Changping: the Great Climate, which I recently published, can be regarded as "finding a way out for Chinese farmers." if Chinese farmers have a way out, there will be no big problems in China's agriculture. In addition, there are four different stages of agricultural development, and we must follow the laws of agricultural development at different stages.

Generally speaking, agricultural development in Asian countries and regions generally goes through four stages:

The first stage is the stage of shortage of agricultural products, and the greatest feature is to increase income as soon as production is increased. The core goal of agricultural development at this stage is to "pursue the benefits of yield growth". The key point of agricultural policy is "technology-intensive (technology that mainly increases production) + labor-intensive + infrastructure construction". The household contract responsibility system meets the requirements of this stage of development.

The second stage is a basic balance between supply and demand of staple agricultural products, with an increase of 1%, and prices may fall by 2%. Increasing production is often the most important feature of this stage without increasing income. The core goal of agricultural development at this stage is to "pursue the benefits of price growth"-to ensure that the increase in production does not reduce the yield, and the reduction of production does not reduce the income. The key points of agricultural policy are "technology (high-quality technology) intensive + organization (peasant cooperation) intensive + capital intensive + brand intensive". The cooperative economy and collective economy model, as well as the comprehensive peasant association model of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan, are in line with the requirements of this stage of development.

The third stage is the highly developed stage of agriculture, with absolutely excess production capacity of major agricultural products. The most important feature of this stage is a high degree of competition. The goal of agricultural development is to "pursue the benefit of market share growth"-to steadily occupy a certain amount of market share of certain agricultural products, to obtain absolute market pricing power, and to occupy market share income for a long time. For example, American agricultural groups have long occupied the market share of Chinese soybeans. The key points of agricultural policy are "technology (monopoly) intensive + organization (farmers' cooperatives + export leading enterprises) intensive + capital intensive + brand intensive + government industrial policy support (subsidizing exports)".

In the third stage of agricultural development, developed countries subsidize the "free trade" of their super agricultural groups to seize the market share of some important agricultural products in developing countries (to obtain certain pricing power), which will always be one of the key goals pursued by developed countries in the WTO negotiations. If developing countries do not understand this truth, if the markets of major agricultural products such as cotton and grain are occupied by developed countries-- manipulating market prices-- it will seriously endanger economic security, social security, and even political security. Farmers' cooperative economy and collective economic organizations-- agricultural intensive management, leading enterprises and trade associations-- expand overseas market share, and the "internal and external joint" development model supported by the government is more suitable for the third stage.

The fourth stage is the alienation stage of agriculture, in some places, agriculture will be industrialized; in others, agriculture will be service-oriented.

Reporter: what is the main stage of China's agriculture now?

Li Changping: the actual situation of our agriculture has long entered the second stage, but our agricultural policy is still in the first stage, and we still pursue output and increase production without increasing income.

The key to the agricultural policy in the second stage is to organize farmers to develop cooperative economy and collective economy, or to learn from the comprehensive peasant associations of Taiwan, South Korea and Japan. It took only six years for Taiwan to enter the second stage, and its first stage was also completed in six years. But we have not finished it for more than 30 years, it is because our agricultural policy is wrong, we do not investigate the price gains. Because only by investigating the price income can we have the pricing power and added value, and the acquisition of the pricing power and added value is actually to make the farmers organized.

Reporter: you just mentioned the policy issue, but in the past few years, the No. 1 document is all about agriculture, rural areas and farmers. And now it is not only the pursuit of agricultural output, but also "sound and rapid development".

Li Changping: document No. 1 shows that we attach importance to it, but it does not mean that the agricultural policy is necessarily correct.

We completed the first stage of agricultural development in 1985, that is, the stage of food and clothing has been completed. In the first stage, it is right to set up a household contract responsibility system with output linked to output. In three years, our grain output rose, and in 1985 there was a surplus of grain.

But how many years did it take us to increase the income of the peasants? From 1985 to the present, if we exclude the income of working, the income of farmers has been declining over the past 20 years or so. No growth, that means our policy is wrong.

What are the main points of the policy of increasing farmers' income? Is to organize. However, over the years, we have not taken the organization of farmers as a key point, so we have not learned from Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Huaxi or Dazhai. Some countries have entered the third stage and are pursuing the income of international market share, and our company is still working with farmers to strengthen their domestic market share. We fight internally, you quote one yuan a jin, I quote 90 cents, you quote 90 cents, I quote 80 cents, so you can't make any money at all.

Reporter: so how should China's agriculture develop in the third and fourth stages you mentioned?

Li Changping: in the future, when agriculture develops to the third stage and pursues market share gains, we should learn from the United States and Europe, and support our leading enterprises to go overseas to seize other people's market share. The more we export and occupy other people's market share, not only the higher the domestic price income, but also the greater the pricing power in the international market, and the more money we earn from foreign countries, the more economic benefits of farmers can be increased.

In the fourth stage, the industrialization and service of agriculture in some places must follow the development scale of industry and service industry to develop post-modern agriculture.

Therefore, it is time to formulate policies in stages. For example, the Northeast, Jiaodong Peninsula, Hainan Island and some parts of Taiwan have entered the third stage of agricultural development and need the guidance of the agricultural policy of the third stage. In the suburbs of some big cities and places with developed industries, agricultural development has entered the fourth stage, and agricultural policies have been formulated in the fourth stage. Most parts of the country are in the second stage of agricultural development, and agricultural policy is still in the first stage, which is the biggest problem of agricultural development at present.

Chinese Agriculture with heavy responsibilities and a long way to go

Increasing farmers' income and stabilizing agricultural production is one of the fundamental issues for the long-term and stable development of China's society and economy. Since the first document of 2002 put forward that the "three rural issues" is the top priority, the state has paid more and more attention to farmers, rural areas, and agriculture in recent years, such as increasing agricultural subsidies, abolishing agricultural taxes, bringing farmers into the medical insurance and pension system, and so on. have made farmers feel real benefits.

But the problem remains. According to a survey conducted by Li Changping and other scholars, if the extra income such as working is removed, the agricultural income of Chinese farmers will be reduced. It has always been a difficult problem for farmers to increase their income from agricultural production. Leading enterprises go to the countryside, let enterprises organize farmers, create brands and open up the market, which has always been supported by governments at all levels from top to bottom. However, no one dares to guarantee that farmers can get the benefits they deserve if they pursue profit maximization.

Since the 1950s, China's agricultural policy has always been to give priority to output, large-scale, mechanization has become the development goal of agricultural industrialization, and fertilizer is the way to increase agricultural production. Fifty years later, under the condition of small-scale peasant economy, China has still not formed a large-scale and mechanized agriculture, but only realized the food security, ecological environment pollution and food security brought about by petroleum agriculture.

In 2008, the third Plenary session of the 17th CPC Central Committee put forward that the goal of China's agricultural development in 2020 is to form a resource-saving and environment-friendly agricultural production system, significantly improve rural human settlements and ecological environment, and continuously enhance the ability of sustainable development. At the same time, the comprehensive agricultural production capacity has been significantly improved, and the country's food security and the supply of major agricultural products have been effectively guaranteed.

At present, there are still many problems in China's agriculture. On the basis of ensuring China's food security, how to gradually achieve ecological agriculture friendly with the ecological environment, there is still a long way to go.