"Last year, the benefits were good, and 8,400 farmers directly benefited. This year, we will work harder to make our cooperative more prosperous." In the Southern Potato Professional Cooperative in Weining Yi, Hui and Miao Autonomous County, Bijie City, Guizhou Province, Vice Chairman Ma Fu and villagers We have been busy preparing for the potato planting recently.
According to information recently released by the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, as of the end of November 2021, there were 2.219 million farmer cooperatives legally registered across the country, driving nearly half of the farmers.
What is the current status of the development of these farmers' cooperatives?
How to further enhance its service-driven capabilities?
What new measures are there in improving the level of normative development?
Service-driven ability is stronger
Talking about the development of cooperatives, Ma Fu told reporters that Weining has the reputation of "the hometown of potatoes in southern China", but in the past, the efficiency of the decentralized operation model of small farmers was relatively low.
"In 2008, we established a cooperative to organize everyone to 'group together' to enter the market. In the past 10 years, the income of members has increased by more than 15 times."
Gu Guo, head of the Agricultural Economics Station of Bijie Agriculture and Rural Bureau, introduced that in recent years, Bijie has actively guided the establishment of various types of farmer cooperatives according to local conditions, focusing on dominant industries such as potatoes, vegetables, fruit forests, tea, Chinese medicinal materials, and ecological animal husbandry. It presents a multi-level, multi-type and multi-field development situation.
At present, there are 14,048 farmers' cooperatives in the city, with real assets of 17.762 billion yuan and 354,500 members, of which 214,900 are out of poverty.
Family management, which is dominated by small farmers, is the main form of agricultural management in China.
Statistics show that at present, the number of small farmers accounts for 98% of the agricultural business households, the employees of small farmers account for 90% of the agricultural employees, and the area of farmland operated by small farmers accounts for more than 70% of the total farmland area.
"Family management has great potential, but it also faces the problems of small-scale operation and weak market organization. Farmers' cooperatives are mutual-aid economic organizations voluntarily united and democratically managed by farmers on the basis of household contract management. Its value It is to solve the problems that one household cannot be run, cannot be run well, or is not cost-effective, to provide members with professional agricultural production services, and to improve the efficiency of agricultural operations." Associate researcher of the Management Cadre College of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, China Rural Cooperative Economic Management Society Deputy Secretary-General Shao Ke told reporters that after years of development, the scale of Chinese farmers' cooperatives has continued to expand, from 26,400 in 2007 to more than 2.2 million currently.
According to data from the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, in recent years, farmers' cooperatives have continued to enhance their ability to drive services and improve their management level.
At present, 313,000 farmers' cooperatives provide specialized social services to small farmers, 93,000 farmers' cooperatives have established companies to develop processing, distribution and sales, 108,000 farmers' cooperatives have obtained registered trademarks to build brands, and 55,000 farmers' cooperatives have developed agricultural products through agricultural products. Quality Certification.
The total value of business services provided by farmers' cooperatives to farmers' members exceeds 880 billion yuan, and each member enjoys 14,000 yuan of cooperative purchase and sales services per capita.
Cooperatives have become an important force leading small farmers to participate in domestic and international market competition.
Shift to focus on quality improvement
The development has been fruitful, but it also faces challenges.
Xu Xuchu, a professor at the China Rural Development Research Institute of Zhejiang University, told reporters that the current development of farmers' cooperatives has problems such as weak market competitiveness, insufficient connection with the interests of members, and the need to improve the guidance service system.
To further promote the development of farmers' cooperatives, we should take the improvement of development quality as the primary principle, and fully realize the transformation from focusing on quantitative growth to focusing on quality improvement.
How to do it?
Strengthening typical leadership is a key move.
A few days ago, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs introduced 52 typical cases of farmers' cooperatives across the country.
This is the third consecutive year that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has released typical cases of farmers' cooperatives, with a total of 123 cases in three batches.
As one of the latest selected cases, the Yiguyuan Agricultural Planting Professional Cooperative in Zoucheng City, Shandong Province currently has 117 members and an edible fungus production base of 85 acres.
Chang Meng, the vice chairman of the cooperative, introduced to the reporter: "Serving farmers is the main job of the cooperative. We have built 60 greenhouses equipped with intelligent temperature and humidity control systems to provide farmers with edible mushrooms. Relying on production and sales monitoring data, we have screened out high prices. , The edible fungus varieties with good sales and suitable for greenhouse cultivation, adopt the method of credit first and pay later, and provide the growers with fungus sticks.
Plant well, sell well.
Chang Meng said that on the basis of consolidating the three leading products of enoki mushroom, king oyster mushroom and crab-flavored mushroom, the cooperative is actively looking for new revenue growth points and expanding the planting scale of high-end strains such as black-skinned chicken mushroom and morel mushroom.
At present, the cooperative has a registered trademark of "Lu Yiyuan", with an annual sales of more than 56 million yuan.
Yu Zhanhai, director of the Farmers' Cooperative Development Center (Family Farm Development Center) of the Management Cadre College of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, introduced to reporters that the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs also pays attention to in-depth development of the establishment of demonstration cooperatives at all levels, and cultivates a large number of people with sound systems, standardized management and strong driving force. Farmer's Cooperative.
At present, there are 168,000 demonstration cooperatives at the county level and above, including more than 9,000 demonstration cooperatives of national farmers' cooperatives.
The "National Farmer Cooperative Demonstration Cooperative Development Index (2020) Research Report" jointly released by the Management Cadre College of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and the China Rural Cooperative Economic Management Society shows that the development level of the national demonstration cooperatives will be further improved in 2020, and the average total contribution of members is 6.004 million yuan. , the average operating income is 15.14 million yuan; 69.94% of the directors have a high school education or above, and the average number of employed technical and sales staff is about 14, driving the average number of non-member farm households to 778; the average number of registered trademarks is 1.18 The average number of agricultural product quality certifications is 2.23.
The National Demonstration Cooperative has become the model group with the most economic strength, development vigor and driving ability among farmers' cooperatives across the country.
Improve the level of standardized operation
How to ensure that farmers' cooperatives are not biased or out of shape?
Xu Xuchu said that since the implementation of the Law on Farmers' Professional Cooperatives in 2007, China's farmers' cooperatives have embarked on the fast track of legal development.
But at the same time, it should be noted that some farmers' cooperatives still have the problem of insufficient standard operation, and they need to be further standardized in terms of charter system, financial management, and registration management.
The existence of a small number of "shell cooperatives" also adversely affects the overall social image and high-quality development of farmers' cooperatives.
Shao Ke believes that farmers' cooperatives should attach great importance to standardized management, further improve the laws and regulations of farmers' cooperatives, and continue to strengthen law popularization and education and training for relevant practitioners, so that more farmers and cooperative counselors can fully understand the knowledge concept, laws and regulations of cooperatives. policy documents, and continuously improve the standardized operation level of farmers' cooperatives.
Focusing on the problem, all localities and departments actively take action.
A few days ago, the General Office of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs issued a notice, proposing the establishment of a long-term mechanism for the governance of "shell cooperatives", and it was clarified that for farmers' cooperatives that have not published their annual reports for two consecutive years, on-site verification should be organized, and classification and disposal should be done according to production and operation conditions; Improve a smooth and convenient market exit mechanism. For farmers' cooperatives that are willing to cancel and withdraw from the market voluntarily, if they meet the conditions for simplified cancellation, they will be guided to go through the cancellation registration according to the prescribed simplified procedures and withdraw from the market in a timely manner.
"In recent years, the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has also launched a county-wide pilot project to improve the quality of farmers' cooperatives, focusing on developing and expanding individual farmers' cooperatives, cultivating and developing farmers' cooperatives, and improving the level of county-level guidance and support services. 406 pilot units have been identified in batches. At present, the pilot work is progressing smoothly and has achieved good results." Yu Zhanhai said that the indicators such as the total number of members and the total capital contribution of farmers in the 406 pilot units across the country were significantly higher than the national average, and the abnormal operation rate was 1.5 percentage points lower. The development level of county farmers' cooperatives has been improved as a whole.
Gu Guo introduced to reporters that under the unified guidance of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs and other departments, Bijie has accelerated the action to improve the norms of farmers' cooperatives, strengthened the registration and verification of farmers' cooperatives, and will not be registered if they do not meet the conditions for running a cooperative.
At the same time, give full play to the role of the platform of the "new agricultural business entity information system", and strengthen the supervision of the production and operation of farmers' cooperatives in the jurisdiction, market sales, driving farmers, and increasing income and profitability.
"It should be recognized that China's farmers' cooperatives are still in the early stage of development in general, and they should have both confidence and patience in their development." Yu Zhanhai said that from a policy perspective, further support for preferential policies can be considered, such as Further support farmers' cooperatives in improving their infrastructure, develop special credit products with financial and insurance departments, provide insurance varieties suitable for the development of cooperatives, and increase training for farmers' cooperative leaders and counselors.
Xu Xuchu believes that scientific research units, experts and scholars have the responsibility to continue to carry out theoretical research on farmers' cooperatives and build a theoretical system of farmers' cooperatives that conforms to China's national conditions.
In the digital age, it is possible to try to combine multiple departments, make full use of big data information, and conduct objective research, monitoring and evaluation of cooperatives.
"I believe that with the concerted efforts of all parties, focusing on standardized development and quality improvement, strengthening demonstration and guidance, optimizing support policies, and strengthening guidance services, the economic strength, development vitality and driving ability of farmers' cooperative communities will certainly continue to increase."
Qiu Haifeng