Farmers’ Perspective: Is rural hollowing really bad?

Original title: Farmers’ Perspective: Is Rural Hollowing Really Bad?

Zhang Xuelin, "China Youth Daily" (Page 06, February 18, 2016)

Core tip

"News will come out in rural areas as soon as the Chinese New Year arrives." During this Spring Festival, the "Shanghai girl" ignited the fire of online public opinion. Maybe "Shanghai girls running away from food" is false, but the villages that "Shanghai girls" escape from actually exist. As a result, a debate about the urban-rural gap, rural decline and hope arose.

In some online posts, the negativity of rural China has been infinitely amplified by "clickbait partisans". Today, this newspaper published an observation article by a group of four doctoral students from the China Rural Governance Research Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, allowing us to see a more realistic, complex and diverse picture of the changes in rural China.

A distant aunt of mine, Xiaolan, contracted nearly 100 acres of land in recent years and became a large grain grower. On the third day of the Lunar New Year, I went to my grandma’s house to pay New Year greetings. Aunt Xiaolan and I chatted about the household chores and asked her about her grain cultivation.

Aunt Xiaolan is 35 years old this year and married to Chengzhai Village near my home. Her lover never went to school, and the couple has an 11-year-old son and a 10-year-old daughter. My mother-in-law is old and has some mental problems, so she cannot take care of her grandchildren or farm alone at home. Aunt Xiaolan's father is old and needs care, but her natal brother is under great pressure to support the family and is unable to take care of his old father.

There are old people at the top and young people at the bottom. They cannot enter the city and cannot leave the village.

The story of a large grain grower

Aunt Xiaolan’s family has 10 acres of land. The net income from one acre of land per year is about 1,000 to 1,500 yuan. It is impossible to rely on farming alone. support a family. As more and more villagers and their families go out to work, Aunt Xiaolan has had the opportunity to transfer land and expand the scale of planting in the past two years.

In the past two years, Aunt Xiaolan’s family has transferred more than 70 acres of land at a land rent of 450 yuan/acre. Adding the 10 acres of their own land, they have cultivated more than 80 acres of land in total. After deducting land rent and agricultural input costs, the net income from one mu of land in two seasons is 700 to 800 yuan, and more than 80 acres of land can earn 50,000 to 60,000 yuan in a year. Due to the large amount of land, Aunt Xiaolan's family has successively purchased agricultural machinery such as rotary cultivators, seeders, and harvesters. In addition to using it at home, it can also provide mechanical services to farmers in surrounding villages, earning an income of 10,000 yuan a year. . During the off-season, Aunt Xiaolan's lover still works as a small-time worker in the local construction market, earning an income of 10,000 yuan a year. Calculated in this way, Aunt Xiaolan's family has a total annual income of 70,000 to 80,000 yuan, which is not much different from the income of a family where the couple goes out to work.

Since one acre of land can earn seven to eight hundred yuan, why not continue to expand the scale of planting? Is it because the husband and wife cannot grow it, or is it not cost-effective to grow it? Aunt Xiaolan said: "There is no land left, and there is no land to plant."

According to Aunt Xiaolan's idea, if the couple can transfer 200 acres of land and become professional farmers, they can earn ten dollars a year. Tens of thousands of yuan is quite considerable. My hometown is located in the North China Plain, where wheat and corn are mainly grown. Plowing, sowing, harvesting and other aspects have long been fully mechanized. Therefore, agricultural farming is no longer a heavy physical job and does not require much labor time. It is not a problem for a couple to plant 200 acres of land. They only need to hire a few workers for the wheat and corn harvesting process, and no labor is needed for the rest.

The current rent for land transfer is 450 yuan/acre. At this price, it cannot be transferred to more land, which means that no more farmers will give up cultivating the land. The current price is a market equilibrium price formed between land outflow parties and land inflow parties. Hidden behind it is the trade-off between urban and rural labor opportunity costs.

When I went home during the Spring Festival a few years ago, there were no major grain growers in the village. It was not that farmers did not want to plant more land, but that the land rent was expected to be too high. Only when the land rent was more than 800 yuan would anyone be willing to transfer it. For small-scale farming families, economic capital, social capital and cultural capital are relatively small, and family livelihoods can only rely on optimizing the allocation of labor and land resources. The reason why so many farmers are unwilling to give up their land and prefer to cultivate their own land is because the meager agricultural income from the land is still very important to small farmer families, and most farmers are still highly dependent on land.

The hollowing out of rural areas and the reduction of rural profit-sharing groups

Those families who give up cultivating land and choose to temporarily transfer their land are often the "strong ones" among farmers. They have better profit opportunities in cities, so they give up farming.

After the reform and opening up, my country's rural land system reform implemented a system of collective land ownership and equal distribution of land use rights, so the income of small farmer families based on land is relatively balanced. However, with the development of market economy, the gap between rich and poor has begun to appear among farmers, and this wealth gap will even exceed the wealth gap between urban and rural areas. Peasants are divided into "strong" and "weak". The strong and weak are mainly divided according to their dependence on the land - the lower the dependence on the land, the stronger the peasants are.

“Strong farmers” have better development opportunities in cities because they have special resources or abilities, so they are less dependent on land.

Those farmers who have been eliminated from the city due to age or lack of ability cannot realize the reproduction of their labor force and family because they cannot make profits in the city, so they have to retreat to the countryside. They are very dependent on the land. The land can be said to belong to the "weak farmers" Lifeblood. The transfer of "strong farmers" out of the village also provides development opportunities for "weak farmers" in the countryside.

The higher the degree of industrialization and urbanization, the more profit opportunities cities can provide and the stronger their ability to absorb rural surplus labor, so there will be more "strong farmers" with low dependence on land. .

More and more "powerful people" are moving into the cities, and the population living in the countryside is shrinking. The natural result is the hollowing out and decline of the countryside.

Every Spring Festival is a time when wandering wanderers return to their hometowns to reunite with their families. It is also a time when urban-rural conflicts are most concentrated. When looking at the countryside from the perspective of urban life, the first thing that comes into view is the decline and depression caused by the hollowing out of the countryside, as well as the intuitively huge wealth gap between urban and rural areas. The will expressed behind the sad emotions It’s the evil of hollowing out the countryside.

But on the other hand, the number of profit-sharing groups in rural areas has also been reduced as the strong moved to cities, which provides profit opportunities for "weak farmers" who are highly dependent on land. Just like Aunt Xiaolan's family, if it weren't for the urban economy's absorption of the strong, her family would not have been able to achieve a family income similar to that of working by renting more than 80 acres of land.

my country’s agriculture accounts for less than 10% of GDP. Currently, there are still a large number of small farmer families who rely on land to complete labor and family reproduction. The cake is so big. The more people participate in profit sharing, the more everyone gets. There will be less. From the perspective of farmers, the hollowing out of the countryside means that more and more "strong farmers" who are less dependent on land are moving to the city, and fewer people are participating in sharing agricultural surplus and rural profit opportunities. This is the case for those who The welfare of the "weak farmers" who have been eliminated by urban market competition is essentially promoting the countryside through the city and creating a positive interaction between the city and the countryside.

At present, "strong farmers" and "weak farmers" are not solidified, but are changing and transforming into each other. The "strong farmers" who failed in the city retreated to the villages and became "weak farmers"; on the contrary, the "weak farmers" may transform into "strong farmers" due to the accumulation of family wealth or the more promising adults their children have grown up to be. farmers”. Aunt Xiaolan's son is in the fourth grade of elementary school, and his academic performance is among the best, often taking the first place in the class. Her daughter is in the third grade of elementary school, and her academic performance is also improving. These two children are the family's hope and hope, so they strive to send their children to primary school in the city to receive a better education.

In the eyes of farmers, the hollowing out of the countryside is not a bad thing

Aunt Xiaolan is worried about having no more land to plant. If external stakeholders enter the village to compete for land resources, her The fate can be imagined. Because as she said: "If your uncle is literate and capable, we can make money by working in the city for a year, and I won't farm at home."

Farming is their last resort, but right now Because there are no foreign profit-sharing subjects in my hometown, she can obtain a middle-income level by renting land from "strong farmers" and has the hope of family reproduction and social mobility. Otherwise, she would be eliminated by urban competition and could only cultivate her own 10 acres of land in the village, and her family might sink to the bottom of society.

Is the hollowing out of rural areas really bad?

This requires clarifying a premise, which is who sees the countryside. Intellectuals like me who went to the city returned to their hometown during the Spring Festival and saw the hollowing out and depression of the countryside. They couldn't find the warm memories of their childhood, and they couldn't help but sigh. But in the eyes of farmers, the hollowing out of the countryside is not a bad thing, because here lies the hope of development and mobility. Of course, after the hollowing out of the countryside, the housing and infrastructure construction of farmers left behind in the villages is another issue worthy of attention.

Under the existing institutional framework, the interaction between urban and rural areas has generated a set of spontaneous development orders, and the state-promoted property rights transactions based on the confirmation of land rights and the transfer of capital to the countryside A series of new agricultural operations such as college students returning to their hometowns to start businesses, agricultural industrialization, and rural tourism often create new profit-sharing entities in the countryside in practice, and have the unintended consequence of expelling the weak.

College students return to their hometowns to start businesses or send capital to the countryside, competing for land resources with those "weak farmers" who are highly dependent on land, and becoming exogenous stakeholders participating in sharing agricultural surplus. When land rents are raised, the "strong farmers" who are less dependent on land will benefit instead, and the profit space of the "weak farmers" will be further compressed, which may eventually form a polarized social structure in which "the strong get stronger and the weak get weaker" .