Relevant rural economic system

Stabilize and improve the rural basic economic system

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Stabilizing and Perfecting the Rural Basic Management System —— Conscientiously Implementing the Decision of the Third Plenary Session of the 17th CPC Central Committee

The two-tier management system based on household contract management and combining unification and separation is the basic management system in rural areas of China and the main achievement of rural economic system reform and innovation. The practice of rural development in the past 30 years has fully proved that this system is conducive to promoting the development of rural productive forces. The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China decided to emphasize that it is the fundamental requirement to realize agricultural modernization and the goal of a well-off society in rural areas to stabilize and improve the basic rural management system.

First, we must unswervingly adhere to the basic management system in rural areas.

The general goal of China's economic system reform is to establish a socialist market economic system. The rural basic management system adapts to the requirements of the socialist market economic system and is an important part of the market economic system. This adaptability is reflected in two aspects: determining the dominant position of the family in the market and improving the competitiveness through the alliance between farmers. The household contract management of land is the basis of the rural basic management system, and farmers are given full management autonomy, including what to produce, how much to produce, how to sell products and the responsibility for profits and losses, which are decided by farmers at their own risk. This makes farmers as independent commodity producers and operators, and their enthusiasm is fully mobilized. At the same time, farmers carry out unified management in technical standards, commodity brands, processing, storage and transportation, and purchase and sale services. And form two levels of complementarity with family management, so as to effectively make up for the weakness and lack of competitiveness of family management, avoid being swallowed up by the Wang Yang sea of the market, and truly consolidate the dominant position of farmers in the market. Therefore, the two levels of the rural basic management system are the basic requirements of the socialist market economic system. If we say that after 30 years of reform practice, the concept of household contract management has been basically established among the broad masses of rural cadres and masses, then at the level of unified management, there is still a considerable distance from the requirements of the reform goal. Most farmers have not participated in various forms of unified management and have not enjoyed the socialized services brought by unified management. Therefore, in the market competition, especially in the international competition after China's accession to the WTO, China's agricultural production and management is still in a decentralized, weak and passive state.

The rural basic management system also conforms to the characteristics of agricultural production. Agricultural production process is the combination of labor process and natural process. Family management is more suitable for flexibly arranging labor input and mobilizing labor enthusiasm. With the popularization and application of large-scale, high-efficiency and full-process agricultural machinery and the improvement of the labor market, the scale of family business can be expanded rapidly, and the production and operation potential is huge. In production and operation, some problems that are difficult to be solved by one household alone, such as irrigation and drainage, pest control, improved variety promotion, processing and sales, are solved through professional cooperation and socialized services, that is, unified management. Therefore, as far as the characteristics and laws of agricultural production and management are concerned, two-tier management is also indispensable.

The rural basic management system is the cornerstone of the Party's rural policy, and its full implementation is of decisive significance to the development of agricultural production. Other systems of the Party in rural areas, such as land management system, financial support system, promoting the integration of urban and rural development system, modern rural financial system and rural democratic management system. To adapt to the rural basic management system is conducive to promoting the consolidation and improvement of the rural basic management system, forming a coordinated, healthy and efficient rural economic system, and playing an important role in promoting agricultural and rural development.

In order to mobilize the enthusiasm of farmers to increase land investment and establish the concept of long-term management and sustainable development, it is decided to emphasize: "To give farmers more adequate and secure land contractual management rights, the existing land contract relationship should remain stable and unchanged for a long time." This is a reassurance for farmers. How long is "long" here? My understanding should at least cover the whole primary stage of socialism. How long is the primary stage of socialism? The report of the 15th National Congress of the Communist Party of China pointed out: "The primary stage of socialism is a historical stage of gradually getting rid of underdevelopment and basically realizing socialist modernization; It is a historical stage in which an agricultural country with a large proportion of agricultural population and mainly relying on manual labor gradually transforms into an industrialized country with a large non-agricultural population and developed modern agriculture and modern service industry; It is a historical stage in which natural economy and semi-natural economy account for a large proportion and gradually turn into a higher degree of economic marketization ... It is a historical stage in which the gap with the advanced world level is gradually narrowed and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation is realized on the basis of socialism. This historical process will take at least one hundred years. As for consolidating and developing the socialist system, it will take much longer and require the unremitting efforts of several generations, dozens or even dozens of generations. " (Volume II, page 14- 15) From the scientific exposition on the primary stage of socialism in the report of the 15th National Congress, we can easily get the answer that when the economy and society develop to a certain level, when most farmers' children receive higher education and no longer rely on land as the only means of subsistence and production, when farmers no longer need to use the land contract system to protect their rights and interests, there will be new ones. The Third Plenary Session of the Seventeenth Central Committee made it clear that the land in contract relationship will remain unchanged for a long time, which is enough to reassure several generations of farmers that they will not lose the right to land contractual management.

Second, family management should focus on improving the level of intensification.

Materialist dialectics tells us that everything develops and changes. With the advancement of industrialization, urbanization, marketization and informatization in China and the development of modern agriculture, the rural basic management system also needs to keep pace with the times and be constantly improved. The "Decision" puts forward "promoting the innovation of agricultural management system and mechanism and accelerating the transformation of agricultural management mode", which is in line with this objective requirement. Family management should speed up the transformation from natural economy to semi-natural economy and then to socialized mass production to meet the requirements of economic marketization and globalization. In the history of China's economic development, the self-sufficient natural economy has long occupied a dominant position. Since the founding of New China, we have been implementing a planned economy for a long time, and commodity production and exchange have never been fully developed. It has only been 30 years since the household land contract system was implemented to encourage commodity production. Judging from the current household management level of farmers in China, China's rural areas are still in a state of natural economy and semi-natural economy to a great extent. A considerable part of agricultural products such as grain produced by farmers are used for their own consumption, and the commodity rate is still very low. The commercialization and socialization of production have only developed in a few developed agricultural areas. When the purpose of production is not to exchange, but to meet their own needs, agriculture can not become a modern industry, agricultural labor productivity can only stay at a very low level, farmers can not get the same income level as members of society engaged in secondary and tertiary industries.

China's agriculture is characterized by a large population and little land. According to statistical investigation, the average contracted land of farmers in China is 7.5 mu, divided into 5.7 pieces. The small scale of cultivated land and scattered plots are the fundamental constraints to the socialization of agricultural production. A large number of examples prove that according to the current mechanization conditions, a laborer can cultivate more than 100 mu in dry farming in plain areas or rice planting areas in southern China. Heilongjiang only grows rural areas in one season a year, and a labor force can plant more than 2,000 mu. Only by reaching this planting scale, China's agriculture, mainly grain production, can realize the transformation from natural semi-natural economy to socialized mass production. To promote this change, the transfer of land management rights has become a prerequisite. The transfer of land management right is based on the transfer of agricultural labor to non-agricultural industries. Fortunately, since the 10th Five-Year Plan in 2000, the process of industrialization and urbanization in China has been obviously accelerated due to the strategy of industrialization and urbanization put forward by the central government. The urbanization rate increased by 65,438 0.3 percentage points every year, and the proportion of the labor force engaged in agriculture in the whole society decreased by 65,438 0.2 percentage points every year. According to this development speed, by 2020, the rural population will fall below 40%, the agricultural labor force will fall below 30%, and the scale of family land management and the degree of agricultural marketization are expected to increase significantly.

To improve the intensive level of household management, in addition to expanding the scale of land management, another direction is to develop facility agriculture, adjust the agricultural planting structure and improve the land output rate. Planting vegetables and flowers in an acre of plastic greenhouse can make a labor force fully employed, and the income per acre can be doubled.

Whether it is to expand the scale of family land management or improve the land output rate, it is necessary to adopt advanced science and technology and means of production and increase the input of production factors such as technology and capital. In areas with developed land scale management, farmers' demand for agricultural machinery has greatly increased, and the process of agricultural mechanization has been greatly accelerated, which has greatly promoted the popularization of improved varieties and standardized cultivation techniques. In areas where protected agriculture is concentrated, the investment in science and technology and materials has increased substantially, the level of production standardization has improved rapidly, and the export competitiveness of agricultural products has been continuously enhanced. In such areas and farmers, family management got rid of the natural economy that lasted for thousands of years and began to integrate into the tide of market economy. Family management has become a family farm and embarked on the track of agricultural modernization.

Three, unified management should focus on improving the degree of organization.

If the market economy is compared to the rough sea, then the small-scale family business is like a boat on the sea, which is hard to bear the impact of the wind and waves. Only when farmers unite can we resist market risks and increase market share. This view has been widely recognized all over the world. In almost all developed countries, the cooperation between farmers has been fully developed. Compared with China's rural areas, although the land household contract system has aroused the enthusiasm of farmers, the unified management level has become a prominent weak link in the rural management system because the socialized service system has not been established for a long time. It is difficult to sell agricultural products, and the price fluctuation has not been solved for a long time. The development of processing and export is slow, and it is rare for cooperatives to process and export agricultural products. Therefore, developing and perfecting the unified management of farmers has become an urgent requirement and key link to improve the basic management system in rural areas.

The development of unified management in accordance with the basic rural management system is based on household contract management with clear property rights. The relationship between service subject and service object is either market exchange or contractual relationship within cooperatives or associations, which is essentially different from the traditional collective economy characterized by "big pot" and egalitarianism. Developing a new unified management and socialized service system will not return to the old road of "returning to a lot".

The "Decision" requires: "Unified management should change to the direction of developing farmers' union and cooperation, and form a diversified, multi-level and multi-form management service system. "This clarifies the development direction and organizational form of unified management. Diversification refers to the combination of multiple subjects in property rights, including the combination of public economy, private economy and individual farmers. Multi-level refers to the production and circulation services, including technical training, consulting and other services, as well as financial and insurance services. Polymorphism refers to the relationship between service subject and service object, which can be tight or loose; It can provide professional services for some farmers and also provide services for farmers in a certain area.

Focusing on improving the degree of organization of agricultural production, the "Decision" emphasizes the need to vigorously develop four types of service subjects.

First, develop the collective economy and enhance the service function of collective organizations. This is a community collective economic organization organized by townships, villages or villagers' groups. Its advantages lie in the relative concentration of cultivated land and residential areas, the geographical unity of administrative organizations and economic organizations, which is convenient for the unified allocation of resources and the unified development of breeding industry and secondary and tertiary industries. Since the reform, this kind of economic organization has been able to persist in a few rural areas and generally has a strong collective leadership and a good leader. In places where community collective economic organizations are relatively developed, grass-roots administrative organizations use the profits of collective enterprises to set up public welfare facilities and provide various public services for villagers, which has become a model of rural prosperity.

The second is to cultivate new farmers' cooperative organizations. This includes professional cooperatives and various professional associations, that is, farmers engaged in the production and operation of similar products, which are voluntarily organized according to the needs of development and belong to new collective economic organizations. Cooperatives and associations are generally organized by large professional households who have mastered technology and marketing channels, and provide services such as processing, storage, transportation, sales and technical training of agricultural products, purchase of means of production, mechanized operation, irrigation and fertilization for farmers. Some cooperatives also have their own unified brands. In a cooperative with the nature of joint-stock cooperation, farmers can share dividends from the profits of the cooperative. Practice has proved that the degree of organization of farmers directly determines their income level. Cooperatives enable farmers to improve the pricing power of agricultural products and make profits from the processing and sales of agricultural products, including exports. According to statistical investigation, the income difference between farmers who join and do not join cooperatives is more than 30%.

Third, agricultural socialized service organizations. This includes traditional socialized service organizations such as supply and marketing cooperatives and new specialized and socialized service organizations composed of various enterprises and individual operators. Some supply and marketing cooperatives have established community comprehensive service centers and chain stores in local villages to distribute goods in a unified way, which has enhanced the competitiveness of serving and organizing farmers and leading the development of rural cooperative undertakings. In order to meet the various needs of farmers, various social service organizations in rural areas have also developed. Enterprises, institutions and private individual economic organizations, as service subjects, provide farmers with specialized services such as mechanized operation, formula fertilization, disaster prevention and mitigation, and technical training, and become an important force in rural services.

Fourth, leading enterprises in agricultural products processing. The "Decision" proposes to "encourage leading enterprises to establish a close interest linkage mechanism with farmers", which points out the correct direction for the development of leading enterprises. Leading enterprises emerged in agricultural industrialization management, mainly engaged in the processing and sales of agricultural products, and played an important role in solving the sales problem of agricultural products after household contract management. However, with the diversification of service subjects and the improvement of competition mechanism, leading enterprises and farmers often have contradictions in order fulfillment and purchase price. Experience shows that making farmers and leading enterprises become the same interest subject through land management rights, hiring farmers to work in leading enterprises, strengthening the legal constraints of order production and other forms is conducive to eliminating contradictions and disputes between them and achieving the goal of mutual benefit and common development.

Fourth, cooperatives should become modern agricultural management organizations that lead farmers to participate in domestic and international market competition.

The Law on Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives, which came into effect last year, has made scientific legal norms on the organizational principles, property rights relations and business forms of cooperatives. The "Decision" further clarifies that "in accordance with the requirements of serving farmers, freedom of advance and retreat, equal rights and democratic management, support farmers' professional cooperatives to accelerate their development and make them become modern agricultural management organizations that lead farmers to participate in domestic and international market competition". This is a new summary of the cooperative management system and operation mechanism, and a new requirement for the cooperative development policy and objectives. Comrades of the whole party, especially those engaged in rural work, should unify their ideological understanding with the spirit of the Decision, improve their understanding of the importance and urgency of developing professional cooperatives, and deeply understand that accelerating the development of cooperatives is an urgent need to solve the "three rural issues", promote agricultural modernization, realize a well-off society in rural areas and enhance China's agricultural competitiveness under the new situation of joining the WTO. Because, only by developing farmers' professional cooperatives can farmers adopt advanced technology and equipment to promote regional, improved and standardized planting techniques on the basis of contracted management, so that farmers can not only benefit from the cultivation and breeding of agricultural products, but also share the value-added benefits in the processing and circulation of agricultural products, so that farmers' income can increase rapidly; Only by developing specialized cooperation can farmers change from scattered sand into organized whole, resist business risks, expand the export of superior agricultural products and enhance the international competitiveness of China's agriculture under the situation of large-scale entry of multinational companies. Some countries have less human and cultivated land resources than China's 1%, but the import and export scale of agricultural products exceeds that of China. The key for agriculture to become a high-profit industry lies in organizational advantages. The development of cooperatives in China is lagging behind, which seriously restricts the process of agricultural modernization and internationalization.

Cooperative is the cooperation between farmers on the basis of household contract management. Establishing cooperatives according to the Farmers' Professional Cooperatives Law can not only avoid returning to the old road of "poor transition" of traditional collective economy, but also draw a clear line with the company system. Marx and Engels once spoke highly of cooperatives arising from capitalist relations of production. Marx pointed out: "capitalist joint-stock enterprises, like cooperative factories, should be regarded as a transitional form from capitalist mode of production to joint mode of production, but in the former, opposition is passively sublated, while in the latter, opposition is actively sublated." As a new form of collective economic organization, farmers' professional cooperatives should be vigorously developed. At present, it is necessary to make up for the lack of unified management through cooperatives, with the focus on unified brands, unified technical standards, unified processing and unified sales, so as to accomplish what one household cannot do through cooperatives. To improve the quality of agricultural products in China, we must start with the development of cooperatives. Only when each cooperative and its members can care for and maintain their own brands from their own interests can we fundamentally put an end to the constant food safety accidents. In cooperatives with relatively sound operating mechanism, credit cooperation among members should also be developed, which is the fundamental policy to put an end to usury. If farmers can get low-interest preferential loans from cooperatives or other channels, usury will have no soil for survival.

Cooperatives should actively participate in international operations, have autonomy in export operations, and can directly sell their agricultural products and their finished products abroad. Some cooperatives can hire some professional managers to help them run.

Since cooperatives are farmers' own organizations, the policy of supporting cooperatives has the most direct effect on increasing farmers' income. It can be said that supporting cooperatives means supporting farmers. Therefore, the "Decision" requires the implementation of supporting policies for farmers' professional cooperatives. The Law on Farmers' Specialized Cooperatives also stipulates that the marketing activities of cooperatives should be encouraged by policies. Governments at all levels and relevant departments should speed up the formulation of preferential policies to support the development of cooperatives, especially in tax relief. If we can take cooperatives as the key point of policy support and make them develop widely and rapidly in rural areas of China, it will play an important historical role in narrowing the income gap between urban and rural areas and realizing the new requirements of the goal of a well-off society in an all-round way.