How do Japanese farmers get rich?

Editor's note: China is a large agricultural country, and rural development is related to social stability and national prosperity. Although the problems encountered in the process of rural development in various countries are similar, they are at different stages of development, and the ideas and methods for solving the problems are not exactly the same. In the process of promoting people-oriented new urbanization, how to organically coordinate the planning and policies of new socialist rural construction and new urbanization construction? How to integrate the resources scattered in various departments? How to balance the contradiction between the needs of public construction land and the protection of personal rights and interests? How to reflect the role of traditional culture and morality in the new rural construction? The experience of other countries can be used as a reference.

Since 1972, the average income level of Japanese farmers has been slightly higher than that of urban residents. However, this was not the case in Japan before that. The income of farmers around 1960 was equivalent to 60% of that of the citizens. Looking back to 1930, it was about 35%. How does Japan achieve income equality between urban and rural residents? Based on field visits and in-depth research, the author believes that the following points are worth learning from.

Relying on Scientific Theory to Guide Agricultural Development

after the Meiji Restoration, the capitalist industrial and commercial civilization quickly took root in Japan. Under such a historical background, it is impossible for the state to attach importance to agriculture and imitate ancient times. It is necessary to form new ideas for the development of modern agriculture. In this regard, Japan has experienced a difficult process of exploration. On the whole, before the First World War, Japan's agricultural and rural development was relatively smooth, and agricultural production and farmers' lives were greatly improved compared with those before the Meiji Restoration. However, in 1918, there was a "rice riot" incident. Then, under the influence of multiple political and economic factors at home and abroad, Japan's agriculture had a crisis since 1926. Under the combined impact of the global economic crisis of 1929-1931, many farmers were poor enough to sell their children. The cruel reality puts forward an urgent innovation requirement for the theory of agricultural economic development. In the past, Japan's agricultural economic theory was mainly based on the experience summary of agronomism, and some scholars studying in the West (mainly Germany, France and Britain) copied the agricultural economic theories of advanced countries to Japan, but none of them could provide an effective answer for Japanese agriculture to get out of the predicament. In 1936, Tokyo University professor Yoshiichi Higashi published the book "The Development Process of Japanese Agriculture", which marked the development of Japanese agricultural economy from experience to science. Based on Schumpeter's theory of innovative economic development, the book puts forward and analyzes the "entrepreneur" problem that promotes the development of Japanese agriculture. Yoshiichi Tohata believes that the entrepreneurs who promote the development of Japan's agricultural economy are neither traditional small farmers nor traditional landlords, but agricultural product purchasers and processors. These businessmen guide the reallocation of agricultural resources and improve the level of agricultural production; however, the most important thing to promote the development of Japan's agriculture is the government. The basic means for the government to promote agricultural development is to inject monetary capital into the agricultural production and management system. The channels through which the government injects monetary capital into agriculture are fiscal and financial. The government does not use this capital directly, as ordinary entrepreneurs do, but gives it to its "rangers", that is, farmers' cooperative economic organizations. Seiichi Higahata's theoretical innovation was highly praised by Schumpeter and became the basic theoretical basis for guiding the development of Japan's agricultural economy. The first basic agricultural law adopted by Japan in 1961 was formed under the guidance of this theory.

The Agricultural Association provides a full range of social services.

In addition to the theoretical level, the real solution to the problem of increasing farmers' income and wealth ultimately depends on institutional mechanisms. As an East Asian country, the basic national condition of agriculture in Japan is that there are many people and little land, and the scale of farmers' operation is small. Under the market economy system dominated by industrial and commercial capital, how small farmers participate in market competition is a historic issue that developing countries must answer. Combining the experience of Western Europe, especially Germany, and summing up the experience and lessons of the development of rural industrial combination after the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese government formed a top-to-bottom farmer cooperative economic organization system in the mid-1930s (still called industrial combination at that time, after the war It was renamed the Agricultural Cooperative Combination, referred to as the Agricultural Association), which became the government's starting point for the development of modern agriculture. Japan has three levels of government, and each level of government has a counterpart to the agricultural association organization. The agricultural association that directly provides production and living services to farmers is located at the city (town, village) level, also known as the comprehensive agricultural association. In the comprehensive agricultural association, the technical guidance department provides farmers with agricultural technical services, the purchase and marketing department provides farmers with pre-production purchase, post-production sales and living materials purchase services, the credit department provides farmers with capital deposit and loan and various settlement services, and the insurance department provides farmers with various insurance services for production and life. In addition, in terms of land planning and utilization, medical care, and amateur cultural life, the Agricultural Association can provide services to farmers. It is precisely by such cooperative economic organizations that farmers do not fight alone in the market competition, but form a group. The various undertakings of the Agricultural Association are mutually supportive. The agricultural technical guidance department knows how much means of production farmers need and how much agricultural products they produce, laying a solid foundation for the purchasing and marketing department to carry out services; if farmers need financing to develop production, the credit department can obtain sufficient information on the safety of capital investment through the technical guidance department and the purchasing and marketing department. Therefore, with the support of the agricultural association system, Japanese farmers will not encounter such problems as difficulty in buying, selling, and loans, let alone the phenomenon of counterfeit and inferior agricultural materials pitting farmers and merchants purchasing agricultural products to lower prices. Taking the production and sales of vegetables as an example, the Agricultural Association organizes farmers to produce in accordance with standardized agricultural methods. After the products are harvested, the quantity and quality of each household's products are inspected and packaged, and then transported to the wholesale market for sale. The gross income of farmers can generally reach 2/3 of the final consumer price, which is about twice as high as that of Chinese vegetable dealers who buy directly in the fields. In particular, it should be pointed out that the technical guidance provided by the Japan Agricultural Association to farmers is free of charge, and the purchase and sale fees charged by the purchase and sale departments are limited to the scope of necessary expenses, that is to say, the service departments that directly bring benefits to farmers are not profitable, and the funds to support the normal operation of such departments mainly come from the profits of the credit department and the insurance department. The financial cause of the Agricultural Association not only solves all the problems in the operation of farmers' funds, but also provides financial guarantee for the smooth development of the whole agricultural association. Therefore, the Agricultural Association is actually an agricultural monopoly organization with financial business as its core. Donghata Jingichi advocates that the government inject monetary capital into agriculture, and the financial sector of the Agricultural Association is the main channel. Of course, the monopoly of the Agricultural Association is not for the interests of a few capital owners, but to protect the interests of all farmers, and through democratic management within the Agricultural Association, to ensure that all farmers share the services provided by the Agricultural Association fairly and fairly.

government support for agricultural protection

taking the promotion of improved seed technology as an opportunity, Japan has listed agricultural development projects in the central government's fiscal budget since 1900. Since then, financial support for agriculture has continued to increase. The Japanese government's financial support for agriculture follows a basic principle, that is, urban and rural areas share public goods and public services equally. For example, many rural schools have a small number of students, but there is no difference between campus construction, teaching facilities (such as indoor gymnasiums), teachers' salaries and other aspects and first-tier cities. If measured according to the per-student funding index, rural areas are higher than urban areas. Transportation, communications, energy and other infrastructure construction is also a unified urban and rural planning and construction. The government also implements a protective price purchase policy for major agricultural products, especially rice production, to ensure that the labor, capital and other factors invested by farmers receive benefits that are not lower than the social average. The government has also funded the establishment of a special policy finance (regarded as the second finance to support agriculture) institution to provide long-term low-interest loans for farmers to carry out the construction of modern agricultural operating infrastructure. The implementation of government policies and measures to support agriculture is generally coordinated by the Agricultural Association to ensure that farmers receive benefits.

A misconception needs to be clarified that such an approach could overburden the government's finances. If you look at fiscal spending alone, this view cannot be said to be unreasonable. However, this is not the case with a comprehensive examination of macroeconomic performance in conjunction with the agricultural association system. On the one hand, farmers have formed a strong rural market demand under the conditions of the government's support for agriculture policies and the thoughtful service of the Agricultural Association, which provides a huge domestic demand power for the development of the national economy. On the other hand, farmers do not have a strong demand for loans after their income stabilizes. The credit department of the Agricultural Association can fully meet the capital needs of farmers with only about 30% of the deposit balance, the remaining 70% or so of the huge surplus funds are used to purchase government bonds and corporate bonds, which also support the development of the entire national economy.