Modernizing agriculture(2)

Scale management

In November 2014, the State Council released the Opinions on Guiding the Orderly Transfers of Management Rights of Rural Land and Promoting Moderate Scale Management, proposing to separate the ownership, contracting and management of rural land.

"Now, a rural household owns no more than half a hectare on average, and such a pattern of small-scale management has severely dragged down efficiency," said Han, suggesting that a diversity of moderate scale management should be applied to boost the orderly transfers of management rights of rural land, especially toward people skilled at farming, and that efforts should be made to foster new agricultural entities such as large-scale grain growers, family farms and cooperatives.

Bian Quanshui, an agricultural analyst with China International Capital Corp. Ltd., also agrees that moderate scale management is an inevitable stage leading to agricultural modernization.

"Compared with developed countries, China now lags far behind in terms of agricultural productivity and mechanization, partly because land management is carried out in a loose and dispersed way," said Bian, who holds developing moderate scale management will give full play to the economies of scale, elevate labor productivity and liberalize more labor for the manufacturing and service industries.

Beyond that, a consensus was reached at the conference to introduce modern industrial organization models such as industry chain and value chain into the agricultural sector, in order to facilitate the integration of the agricultural, manufacturing and service industries. In other words, it means expanding the agricultural industry from simple grain production to include the processing and circulation of agricultural products and the leisure industry, prolonging the industry chain in an effort to boost added value and farmers' income.

Rural people valued

In the past, the construction of new countryside paid far more attention to infrastructure and living conditions than local culture and ecological civilization. As the flooding out of rural labor force leaves behind more and more "hollow villages" and unattended women, seniors and children, the conception of the "people's new countryside" was put forward, representing that the Chinese Government has set higher requirements for the construction of new rural area.

Cheng Guoqiang, a research fellow with the Development Research Center of the State Council, argued that "people's new countryside" should be put into reality in three ways. First, a service system should be established to take care of seniors, women and children who have been left behind. The system should also improve public services such as education and medical treatment. Second, local folk culture needs to be preserved, preventing rural areas from becoming deserted villages or villages of left-behind groups. Third, the protection and improvement of ecological environment need to be intensified in rural areas.

In the past, agricultural modernization focused more on simple mechanization, said Liu Xiaochuan, a professor from the School of Public Economics and Administration of Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. "The modernization of rural people now receives equal attention," said Liu. Though rural income and regional economy have experienced rapid growth in some areas, people don't see their living conditions improved, because the development of basic public infrastructure still lags behind.

Liu said it's not a simple process of urbanization or just increasing farmers' income; rather, it's letting urban areas support rural areas to quicken the steps of agricultural modernization. "More importantly, rural public services including medical treatment, education, physical activities and healthcare can make improvements in the process," he said.

Agricultural modernization also deals with the training of farmers' technological quality and the efficient utilization of agricultural capital, said Zhang Zhenghe, a professor from the School of Economics and Management at the China Agricultural University.

Since people engaged in the agricultural industry are universally at a lower level of technological quality, advanced agricultural development modes must first be set up through technological demonstration areas, said Zhang.

"When agriculture becomes a high-value industry, the quality of operators has to be improved to conduct capital operation and carry out technological innovation. In this way, they will become new agricultural operating entities," said Zhang.