China fosters a new kind of professional farmer (4)

PILOTS GO AHEAD

Experimental programs have been put in place in some regions to foster the development of the "new type" of professional farmer.

Since March 2012, farmers in Tianchang City, Anhui Province, who grow crops across more than 300 mu (20 hectares) of farmland for over five years are encouraged to register as single-investor, individually-owned companies. The local government helps them overcome operational problems, such as outdated technologies and poor management, so they can compete in the market as professional businesses.

So far, the city has registered 80 such farming companies across 60,000 mu of farmland, nearly 70 percent of the scaled agricultural development in Tianchang.

Over the past two months, Mao Shirong, a 50-year-old farmer-turned farm business owner, has been busy preparing rice seeds and farming facilities for the upcoming spring planting season.

"The central government has encouraged us to be decisive and bold in running household farms. I will work on it heart and soul," said Mao.

He referred to the central government's first policy document for 2013, dubbed the No. 1 central policy, which explicitly encourages governments at all levels to support big specialized farms, farming households and farming cooperatives, which are seen as the "new type" of rural production bodies.

"We have adopted the corporate operations mode and become equal market players," said Mao. "Having visions of making profits from farming will help us in the long term."

Mao and the farmers behind 50 other companies like his have united into the Dadi Cooperative, which helps members purchase agricultural facilities and services at lower prices, via a group buying mechanism.

"We have settled with the municipal seed company to buy paddy rice seeds at 10 yuan per kilogram cheaper than the market price," said Jiang Jinfu, deputy chief of the Dadi Cooperative.

The cooperative is planning a training course for its members, and it expects to help them obtain more bank loans.

"In the early stages, we invested heavily in renting farmland from separate farmers. We often run short on circulating capital when it comes time to buy production materials and farming tools. We help each other by lending tens of thousands of yuan among us for a short period. But it is far from enough," said Mao.

Jiang, who has worked in the agricultural sector for over 30 years, has great expectations for future prosperity under the mechanism.

"Registering the farmers as owners of household farming companies is only a change in the form of farming operations. We hope the government extends training and policy support to help the new kind of professional farmers change substantially," said Jiang.

Other regions have also experimented with similar schemes. Northwest China's Shaanxi Province has vowed to give priority to fostering more big household-based farms, agricultural machinery service providers and farmers "in their prime." It aims to cultivate 220,000 professional farmers by 2015.

During a panel discussion of the NPC session, Yu Xinrong, deputy minister of agriculture, said, "These experiments are in line with the orientation of future rural development. Our ministry is establishing policies to support the experiments."

Of China's estimated 279 million rural laborers currently working on farmland, only about 10 million receive systematic farming training each year.

In August, the Ministry of Agriculture decided to experiment with fostering the "new type" of professional farmer in 100 counties across the country.

Zhang Xiaoshan, the legislator and professor, stressed that creating a favorable environment is key for encouraging migrant laborers to return home to work as professional farmers.

"We must extend subsidies to them for growing grains, and offer them technical support and professional training. We must improve social management and the rural financial system to ensure they earn more from farming than working in towns as migrant workers. In this way, they will be at ease about settling down in rural areas," he said.

(Xinhua writers Han Jie, Lou Chen and Yang Yuhua contributed to this report)