Du Zhixiong and Wang Xinzhi: Theoretical Thinking on the Reform of China's Agricultural Basic Management System

2014-04-27 Society

april 15, 2014 10:33 Source: Theoretical Discussion, No.4, 2013

[Summary] Adhere to and improve the basic rural management system, cultivate new agricultural business entities, and build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization, and socialization, which is important for the development of modern agriculture, improving comprehensive agricultural production capacity, and ensuring National food security and effective supply of important agricultural products are of great significance. As one of the diversified new agricultural business entities, family farms conform to the new changes in China's agricultural production at this stage. It not only adheres to the traditional advantages of agricultural family production and management, but also helps to solve the problem of maintaining the stability and sustainability of China's future agricultural business entities., Leading the development direction of China's modern agriculture and advanced productivity. Under the background of industrialization and urbanization, family farm is the most suitable and most worthy of promotion to improve the basic agricultural management system of China.

【Keywords】 family farm; large agricultural professional households; farmer cooperatives; industrial and commercial enterprises; diversified new agricultural management entities

1. Introduction

in the late 1970 s and early 1980 s, China's agriculture established a two-tier management system based on household contract management and a combination of unified and decentralized management. This is created and formed by hundreds of millions of farmers to adapt to the socialist market economic system and conform to the characteristics of agricultural production. The basic agricultural management system has greatly stimulated farmers' enthusiasm and initiative in production, and created world-renowned achievements in the development of China's agriculture and rural economy. But needless to say, with the vigorous development of industrialization and urbanization and the large-scale transfer of agricultural labor, the economic and social structure of rural areas has undergone and continues to undergo tremendous historical changes. Under the structural characteristics of the so-called "institutionalized semi-work and semi-farming small-scale peasant economy", the shortcomings and problems of the agricultural double-tier management system that once played a huge institutional efficiency are also increasingly revealed, the trend of part-time and low-quality agricultural business entities is becoming more and more serious. There is a serious shortage of strong labor force in the front line of agricultural production. A large number of old, weak, sick, disabled and women have become the main force of agricultural production. Therefore, continuing to innovate and improve the basic agricultural management system to solve the future who will farm and grow grain to ensure national food security has become a major practical problem that urgently needs to be solved.

In this context, China's rural basic management system has begun to undergo profound changes, and agricultural business entities have begun to differentiate. In addition to the general small-scale agricultural business entities, diversified new types of agricultural professional households, family farms, land cooperatives, and industrial and commercial enterprises are represented. The development momentum of agricultural business entities is strong, and it has become an important subject for China to build modern agriculture, ensure national food security and the effective supply of major agricultural products.

It is an indisputable fact that the diversification of agricultural business entities is an inevitable trend at present and in the future. But which (some) new agricultural business entities are more in line with the special national conditions of China's large population and small land and the future development direction of modern agriculture and become the dominant form, and how to achieve functional complementarity, division of labor and cooperation among diversified new agricultural business entities to build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization and socialization? These two core questions still need to be answered theoretically.

This paper attempts to answer these two basic questions in the words of one family through an in-depth analysis of the characteristics of the diversified new agricultural management subjects that have emerged in practice.

Analysis on the Characteristics of 2. Diversified New Agricultural Management Entities

major (I) Agricultural Professionals

generally speaking, large agricultural professionals refer to farmers who have a certain scale of operation and engage in specialized production around a certain agricultural product on the basis of division of labor in the process of agricultural production and management. At present, the definition of major agricultural professionals is mainly based on the scale of their cultivation or breeding. Due to the differences in land resource endowments, the quantitative standards for large agricultural professionals vary across the country. Taking large grain growers as an example, in 2012, the national definition standard is that the operating area is more than 30 mu; the definition standard of Heilongjiang Province is that the actual grain planting area is not less than 1000 mu; the definition standard of Shandong Province is that the grain planting area is 300 mu and above (including wheat, corn, rice and other food crops, of which the planting area of wheat or rice is 150 mu and above).

Large agricultural professional households have also played a very important role in ensuring national food security, improving comprehensive grain production capacity, improving the effective allocation of land resources and changing the mode of agricultural development, which is a great progress compared with small-scale farmers. However, large agricultural professionals are still facing some problems that cannot be ignored in terms of health, standardization, and stable development. First, the land transfer method is not standardized. Standardized land transfer is a prerequisite for the emergence of large agricultural professional households (including other business entities). Standardized land transfer provides land resources for the growth of large agricultural professional households, and provides basic conditions for the birth of more and larger agricultural professional households. Some large agricultural professionals only have oral agreements in the process of land transfer, without written contracts, or written contracts are not standardized, resulting in continuous disputes over land transfer in the process of agricultural production. Due to the lack of detailed rules for the implementation of the current farmland lease subcontracting policy, most of the farmland transfer-out households are unwilling to sign long-term transfer contracts. As a result, some large agricultural professional households generally have a short transfer period of land transfer, and the land transfer is unstable, which affects the long-term investment of large agricultural households in farmland infrastructure. Positivity. Second, the land is scattered. Although some large agricultural professional households have significantly reduced the degree of land fragmentation through land transfer, and realized the continuous management of land and economies of scale, there are also some large agricultural professional households contracted cultivated land with household contracting and scattered fields. It is not convenient for unified layout and management, which restricts the development of large-scale production. Third, most large agricultural households lack professional training. Although most of the large agricultural households have been engaged in agricultural production for many years and have rich practical experience, they generally have not received systematic agricultural professional training and learning, and it is difficult to master new agricultural technologies. The level of scientific grain planting needs to be improved, and it is difficult to effectively undertake the important task of modern agricultural development. Fourth, large agricultural professionals also have a certain degree of "non-grain" tendency of arable land. Affected by factors such as low comparative efficiency of grain planting and high land transfer costs, some large agricultural households have converted the land originally used for growing grain into the development of aquaculture, high-efficiency cash crop planting, ecological agriculture, leisure agriculture, etc. The "non-grain" tendency of cultivated land is obvious.

(II) farmers land cooperatives

in recent years, farmers' professional cooperatives have sprung up like bamboo shoots after a spring rain. By the first quarter of 2012, there were 552000 farmers' professional cooperatives registered according to law, and more than 4300 million farmers, accounting for about 17.2 percent of the farmers, and the transferred land area reached 30.55 million mu, accounting for 13.4 percent of the total cultivated land circulation area in the country.

In practice, as the carrier of land transfer, cooperatives gather the scattered land of farmers through trusteeship, shareholding, leasing and other means, and the cooperatives directly engage in agricultural production and operation in accordance with the company system. As a kind of system innovation on the basis of rural household contract management, farmers' professional cooperatives are a modern agricultural management organization formed by farmers voluntarily to optimize the economic interests of their members. It is an institutional arrangement for farmers to resist capital and effectively reduce the transaction costs of entering the market, and it is also an important carrier to provide socialized services for agricultural production subjects. However, due to the congenital difficulties of agricultural production supervision and measurement, coupled with the non-profit characteristics of farmers' cooperatives and the difficulties of collective action, cooperation fails as soon as it enters the field of agriculture, especially food production. This is a worldwide phenomenon. Therefore, as one of the main forms of agricultural management, farmers' land cooperatives will still develop, but from the perspective of agricultural production and management subjects, it is unlikely to become a universal and efficient main form. In real life, most land cooperatives are actually engaged in corporate management, which is not essentially different from industrial and commercial enterprises entering the planting industry.

(III) industrial and commercial enterprises

it is not news that industrial and commercial enterprises enter the rural and agricultural fields. The agricultural industrialization management of "leading enterprise N farmers" is a typical manifestation that has already started the tide of capital going to the countryside. It is worth noting that in recent years, some urban industrial and commercial enterprises have used local government investment policies to create new ideas for the management of the entire industrial chain of agricultural products, and with their own strong economic strength, by wantonly occupying farmers' arable land, it has triggered a wave of industrial and commercial enterprises. Entering the new wave of agriculture (planting industry), a new business entity, has emerged in agriculture (planting industry). According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, as of the end of December 2012, of the 0.27 billion mu of cultivated land transferred by household contract management nationwide, the area of cultivated land flowing into industrial and commercial enterprises was 28 million mu, an increase of 115 percent over 2009. Although the absolute amount of arable land flowing into industrial and commercial enterprises is limited, its proportion in the total area of circulation has reached 10.3 per cent, and is on the rise rapidly. It is true that there is no doubt that industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside will bring benefits to rural agricultural farmers. Industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside can bring scarce resources such as material capital, human capital and social capital that are urgently needed for agricultural development. Advanced management methods can be introduced to drive farmers to increase their income and become rich by means of technology demonstration, market guidance and stimulating rural employment, It plays an important role in revitalizing the scattered and inefficient agriculture and developing modern agriculture.

However, it can not be ignored that industrial and commercial capital (especially urban industrial and commercial capital) going to the countryside is a "double-edged sword", and its entry into the agricultural production process may also bring a series of serious negative effects. First, if industrial and commercial capital directly participates in agricultural production and operation on a large scale and for a long time, it will inevitably have a crowding-out effect on the farmers working on the original land and affect the employment of the rural population (although industrial and commercial enterprises entering the planting industry also absorb part of the agricultural labor force in the form of employment or anti-contracting rent, but the crowding-out effect on the agricultural labor force, especially the elderly agricultural labor force, exists. With the change of the nature of China's labor market, in fact, the elderly but effective agricultural labor force is very beneficial to ensure the stability of the labor market and maintain the rapid growth of China's economy). Although industrial and commercial capital can absorb some farmers to participate in agricultural production and operation as agricultural workers, it is impossible to employ all farmers who have transferred their land, especially those who are too old, frail and sick, and have low non-agricultural employability. In addition, the current rent of land transfer is generally not high, which is bound to affect the living conditions of those farmers who have poor ability to maintain sustainable livelihood. Second, some industrial and commercial capital changed the land use without authorization, so that the transferred land showed the phenomenon of "non-agricultural" and "non-grain. According to statistics from the Ministry of Agriculture, only 6% of the industrial and commercial capital in some areas went to the countryside to engage in grain production. In the long run, it will endanger the national food security policy to a great extent. Third, there is short-term behavior of industrial and commercial capital going to the countryside to rent land. Some industrial and commercial enterprises themselves do not have the experience of operating agricultural land. Once operational risks occur, they will leave. The risks will inevitably be passed on to farmers. Especially if some enterprises have difficulties in operating under the condition of changing the use of agricultural land, the problem will be even greater. Farmers will face the dilemma that the cultivated land will be destroyed and cannot be reclaimed after the withdrawal of industrial and commercial capital. Fourth, even if industrial and commercial enterprises are really engaged in agricultural production, due to the obvious cost of agricultural land, virtual high, enterprise capital profit-seeking and excessive marketization of agricultural products, it will certainly push up the prices of agricultural products abnormally. Therefore, in the current stage of agricultural development, it is necessary to strictly monitor it and eliminate the advantages and disadvantages (in 2013, the No. 1 document of the Central Committee proposed to "encourage and guide urban industrial and commercial capital to develop planting and breeding industries suitable for enterprise management in rural areas". It is also proposed to "explore the establishment of a strict access and supervision system for industrial and commercial enterprises to lease farmland (forest land, grassland) contracted by farmers". Including the entry of industrial and commercial capital from cities into agriculture may be an inevitable trend of China's agricultural development in the future. It can be a supplement to agricultural business entities, but it should not and cannot become the dominant agricultural business entities.

Characteristics of 3. Family Farm and Its Relationship with Other Business Entities

characteristics of (I) family farms

family farm is an imported term from Europe and America. In China, it refers to a new type of agricultural business entity that takes family members as the main labor force, engages in large-scale, intensive, and commercialized agricultural production and operation, and takes agricultural income as the main source of family income. Although family farms have not started for a long time in China, and there is still a lack of clear definitions and accurate definition standards, generally speaking, family farms have the following characteristics:

1. Family farmers have a natural dependence on the land. Family farmers basically come from local natural persons, and they have very strong feelings with the land. The land-loving complex is deeply rooted. The land is not only their basic means of production and the foundation of their lives, but also contains a sense of blood and kinship recognized by the family ancestors. It embodies their value beliefs, spiritual sustenance and a long-standing humanistic spirit; at the same time, they have a strong geographical relationship with the location of the farm, familiar with the local natural and social environment and maintain a high sense of identity and recognition of the community of life, and have a high sense of moral responsibility to protect the local natural and cultural environment and achieve sustainable development. Therefore, the behavior of family farmers is not only constrained by economic laws, but also by moral constraints based on geo-kinship and life community. These are an important feature that distinguishes family farms from other agricultural operators, especially industrial and commercial capital enterprises.

(II) family farm is an upgraded version of the agricultural professional

Also as the main body of agricultural scale production and operation, there are both connections and differences between family farms and large agricultural professionals. According to the three main standards of family farms proposed by the Ministry of Agriculture (with family members as the main labor force, engaged in large-scale, intensive, and commercial agricultural production and operation, and agricultural income as the main source of family income), family farms will inevitably come from agriculture. Large professional households, but compared with the various problems faced by large agricultural professional households, family farms have high thresholds and strict access systems, and their definition standards are also strictly higher than those of large agricultural professional households. First, family farms must have family members as the main labor force, with no perennial employees or a number of perennial employees not exceeding the number of family farmers. Second, the land circulation of family farms must be standardized. The land transfer of family farms should not only have a formal written contract, but also the land transfer period should not be less than 10 years. Third, the family farm land to achieve contiguous management. Family farms should be combined with local resource endowments, and the area of a single piece of land should not be less than a certain number of acres. Fourth, family farmers must be professional farmers. Family farmers must not only take agriculture as a fixed or even lifelong occupation, but also have the cultural literacy, management experience and management ability to adapt to the development of modern agriculture. Fifth, family farms are not allowed to change the original land use without authorization, so that the transferred land presents "non-agricultural" and "non-grain" phenomena, endangering national food security.

(III) Farmers' Cooperatives Are the Main Service Body of Family Farm

the course of 30 years of agricultural development has proved that the two-tier management system based on household contract management and the combination of unification and division has injected vitality and vitality into the development of rural agricultural economy with the centralized function of "unification" and the flexible advantage of "division". However, the basic rural management system and agricultural production and management mode are not immutable, but are constantly innovated and improved. Under the new background of agricultural marketization, internationalization and modernization, on the basis of adhering to agricultural family management, it is more necessary to pursue the best combination of unification and division, and realize the innovation at the level of "unification. The most important point in innovation is to develop the agricultural socialized service system and resolve and coordinate the sharp conflict between small-scale farmers' production methods and socialized large-scale production. At the same time, the construction of a social service system covering the whole process, comprehensive supporting, convenient and efficient is also an inevitable requirement for the development of modern agriculture. The production scale of family farms is large, the production based on the division of labor is strong, and the links between the various links of agricultural production are also very close, and they also face greater market risks and natural risks. it is more urgent to provide a full range of social services for its agricultural pre-production, in-production and post-production links. Therefore, cooperation is the basis and condition of family farms, and the alliance between family farms also provides the basis for the formation of the scale of cooperatives. This alliance and cooperation based on the internal needs of farmers is more conducive to the development and growth of farmers' cooperatives.

Family farms have a certain appropriate scale of operation, but the internal scale of this manufacturer is not large enough to internalize the various social services it needs. Therefore, in this sense, family farms are more in urgent need of the market to provide various social services. As an important main body of the new agricultural socialized service system, farmer cooperatives can provide family farms with financial services, information services, agricultural technical services, agricultural production materials and agricultural products supply and marketing services, primary processing and deep processing services of agricultural and sideline products, etc. Social services enhance the ability of family farms to prevent technical risks, natural risks and market risks. Therefore, "farmer cooperative family farm" is a new model of agricultural industrialization management that is efficient and worthy of promotion. This model, on the basis of adhering to family management, realizes large-scale land planting, standardized production, and industrialized management. The innovation of the "combination of unification and division" of the two-tier management system is in line with the direction of modern agricultural development and will surely become one of the basic management forms of agriculture in the future.

(IV) industrial and commercial enterprises are an important supplement to family farms.

Industrial and commercial capital should not be directly involved in agriculture, especially grain production and operation on a large scale for a long time, but this does not mean that industrial and commercial enterprises cannot make a difference in agricultural production. Industrial and commercial capital can rely on its strong material capital, human capital and social capital. Enter the industries that are more suitable for enterprise management, such as facility agriculture, large-scale breeding and the development of "four wastes" resources, engaged in the upstream areas of the industrial chain such as the sales and deep processing of agricultural products, and provided social services such as pre-production, mid-production, and post-production for family farm agricultural production, so as to give full play to the supplementary, driving and service effects of industrial and commercial enterprises on family farms. However, it is necessary to ensure that the agriculture of family farms, especially the status of large-scale operations of grain production, establish a strict access and supervision system for industrial and commercial capital leasing farmers to contract land, and prohibit industrial and commercial enterprises from relying on their strong capital strength to compete with weak family farms for cultivated land. Production and management rights.

4. Conclusion

the report of the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China clearly stated that it is necessary to develop various forms of large-scale operations and build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization, and socialization. This is the evolution of China's agricultural management entities for a long period of time in the future. Basic principles and directions. To reform and improve the basic rural management system and cultivate new agricultural business entities, we must comprehensively consider the special national conditions of China with more people and less land and the current stage of China's agricultural development.

In the future, the main body of agricultural management in China must be a pattern of coexistence of multiple subjects. As an upgraded version of large agricultural professionals, the emergence of family farms conforms to the current new trend of agricultural development in my country. On the basis of adhering to and giving full play to the advantages of agricultural family production and management, it has effectively solved the problem of stability and sustainability of my country's future agricultural business entities., And through moderate scale operations, intensification and commercialization promote agricultural efficiency and farmers' income. Therefore, family farms reflect the historical regularity of transforming traditional agriculture, lead the development direction of modern agriculture, and represent the advanced productivity of Chinese agriculture. It should become the most important form of China's agricultural management system in the future.

At the same time, other new agricultural business entities as a supplement, its advantages should also be given full play. Promote the innovation of basic agricultural management systems at the two levels of "unification" and "division" to build a new agricultural management system that combines intensification, specialization, organization, and socialization; promote the standardized and stable development of large agricultural professional households to make it Transform into family farms; build a new socialized service system to give full play to the social service function of farmer cooperatives; encourage and restrict the entry of industrial and commercial capital into agriculture, give full play to the complementary, driving and service effects of industrial and commercial enterprises on family farms.

Comments:

① According to data released by the State Administration for Industry and Commerce on January 10, 2013, by the end of 2012, there were 689000 specialized farmer cooperatives, an increase of 32.07 percent over the end of the previous year, with a total investment of 1.1 trillion billion yuan, an increase of 52.07 percent.

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2. Family farms adhere to the advantages of agricultural family production and management. From the practice of agricultural development in various countries in the world, agricultural family management, as a basic form of agricultural management, has better adaptability than other management methods. Whether in the United States and Canada where there are "less people and more land", in France and Germany where "people and land are balanced", or in Japan and South Korea where there are "more people and less land", agricultural family management is the most common form of agricultural management. The reason why agricultural family management has such a wide range of adaptability is fundamentally based on the special nature of agricultural production and the special advantages of family management. Agriculture is a special industry intertwined with economic reproduction and natural reproduction. The dispersion and frequency of its production activities make it very difficult to monitor and measure it. It is prone to problems such as information asymmetry, principal-agent and opportunistic behavior, which leads to low agricultural production efficiency. This special nature of agricultural production puts forward higher requirements for its business organization. As a special interest community, the family has a series of super economic social capital ties, including blood relationship, emotion, marriage ethics and so on. It is easier to form common goals and behavior consistency. In the process of agricultural production, there is no need for accurate labor measurement and supervision, so that workers have great initiative, enthusiasm and flexibility. Therefore, as a special form of efficient organization, family farm can solve the problems of cooperation, supervision and incentive in agricultural production with minimal negative effects. It is the innate best organizational form of agriculture, especially grain production and management, and it is also the main form of agricultural operation in all countries in the world.

3. Family farms have solved the problem of the stability and sustainability of China's future agricultural business entities. The current transfer of surplus labor in China's rural areas has led to a large one-way and unbalanced loss of high-quality labor resources in rural areas. There is a serious shortage of strong labor in rural and agricultural production. Most of the people who are really engaged in agricultural production all year round are "38, 61, and 99 troops." A large number of old, weak, sick, disabled and women have become the main force in agricultural production, and the weak position of rural areas has been further consolidated and strengthened. In the next ten years or decades, who will grow grain and who will engage in agricultural production has become an urgent problem in front of us. For family farms, the specialization, scale and modernization of agricultural production are its basic requirements, which puts forward higher professional quality requirements for farmers. As a new type of agricultural business entity, farmers are not only experienced and technically comprehensive planting experts in agricultural production, but also have certain market judgment ability and risk awareness, and must understand modern agricultural science and technology. Therefore, the family farmer must be a new professional farmer with culture, technical knowledge and comprehensive skills in production management and marketing. By cultivating more professional farmers to become the main body of family farms, agricultural production will automatically realize intergenerational inheritance and the replacement of new and old in the process of its development, thus effectively solving the problem of the stability and sustainability of China's future agricultural management entities.

4. Family farms have moderate economies of scale. At present, China's one-family ultra-small agricultural scale operation has internal efficiency, but it lacks external efficiency and overall efficiency. First of all, the ultra-small-scale agricultural operation of one household is not conducive to the specialization, standardization, mechanization, technology, informatization, and branding of agricultural production, so it is difficult to realize agricultural modernization; secondly, the ultra-small-scale agricultural operation of one household, The efficiency of resource allocation is not high, it is difficult to achieve economies of scale, and it is impossible to reduce agricultural operating costs and increase agricultural output, so it is difficult to increase farmers' income level; again, it is not conducive to the game between farmers and other agricultural related stakeholders such as agricultural leading enterprises. When farmers enter the market, they have high transaction costs, high risks, and little power to protect their own interests.

To realize the scale operation of agricultural production is the inevitable requirement of exploring the development road of modern agriculture with Chinese characteristics, and it is also an important way of agricultural modernization. However, the scale of family farms is not as large as possible. It is necessary to take into account the speed of local rural labor transfer, the level of existing agricultural technology and equipment, and the scope that a family can take into account in the supporting social service system. Otherwise, if the scale of family farms exceeds its own Operating capacity, resource utilization, land output rate and economic benefits may all decline. Therefore, it is necessary to realize the optimal allocation of land, labor, capital and management through the moderate scale operation of family farms, so as to improve the labor productivity, land output rate and commodity rate of agricultural products, and then enhance the comprehensive production capacity, anti-risk ability and market competitiveness of agriculture, and promote the rapid development of modern agriculture.