China News Service, February 4 (China News reporter Xie Yiguan) On the 3rd, the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council on Learning and Applying the Experience of the "Thousand Villages Demonstration, Ten Thousand Villages Renovation" Project to Effectively and Effectively Promote Comprehensive Rural Revitalization" was released.
As the 12th Central Committee Document No. 1 to guide the work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the full text covers many aspects, including ensuring national food security, ensuring that no large-scale return to poverty occurs, improving the development level of rural industries, and improving the level of rural construction and governance. We made arrangements and sent out "gift packages" to benefit farmers.
Data map: A scene of cultivated land in Hulunbuir. Photo by Tian Linxin
Ensure national food security
——Focus on solving the problem of “who will farm the land”
Food security is a major livelihood plan for 1.4 billion people. The No. 1 Central Document in 2024 focuses a lot on ensuring national food security.
In terms of measures, it not only "implements" many aspects such as ensuring the production of grain and important agricultural products, strictly implementing the farmland protection system, strengthening agricultural infrastructure construction, strengthening agricultural science and technology support, and continuing to deepen food conservation actions, but also proposes "solid Specific requirements include promoting a new round of action to increase grain production capacity by 100 billion kilograms," "severely cracking down on illegal occupation of agricultural land and illegal soil extraction from farmland," "strengthening supervision of the entire process of high-standard farmland construction," and "accelerating the revitalization of the seed industry."
In the view of Li Guoxiang, a researcher at the Institute of Rural Development of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, “These proposals mainly focus on the food supply side and basically allow us to take the initiative and voice in food. At the same time, on the basis of ensuring supply, We must also do a good job in conservation on the consumer side to better promote the balance between supply and demand."
In terms of building a modern agricultural management system, the document emphasizes that we should focus on solving the problem of "who will farm the land", based on small farmers, new agricultural management entities as the focus, and socialized services as the support, to accelerate the creation of high-quality production that adapts to the development of modern agriculture. Management team.
"'Who will farm the land' is a big problem. This problem has always existed and is still being solved. This time it is specifically mentioned in the Central Document No. 1 to ensure national food security." Institute of Agricultural Resources and Agricultural Zoning, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences Researcher Jiang Wenlai told Sino-Singapore Finance reporters that because young people have to go out to work, land is now mainly cultivated by women, the elderly, etc. With the advancement of agricultural modernization, in the future, it is still necessary to promote the overall construction of cultivated land with modern science and technology as the core, and at the same time, Highly qualified personnel are needed to manage.
Data map. Photo by Tao Weiming
Ensure that large-scale return to poverty does not occur
——Strengthening monitoring and early warning for patients with high medical expense burden in rural areas
This year's Central Government's No. 1 Document focuses on "ensuring that large-scale return to poverty does not occur", focusing on implementing a monitoring and assistance mechanism to prevent return to poverty, continuing to strengthen industry and employment assistance, and increasing assistance and support for key areas.
Li Guoxiang told reporters from China News Service that ensuring national food security and preventing large-scale poverty return are the two bottom-line tasks. This time, we have made very specific arrangements to ensure that large-scale poverty does not occur. The key is to implement them well.
For example, in vast rural areas, the risk of “returning to poverty due to illness” has always existed. This document specifically mentions the need to strengthen monitoring and early warning for patients with high medical expense burdens in rural areas, and to promptly implement medical security and assistance policies in accordance with regulations.
Jiang Wenlai believes that this is actually the focus of consolidating and expanding the results of poverty alleviation. Only by solving the problem of farmers falling back into poverty due to illness can we better ensure that large-scale returns to poverty do not occur.
It is worth noting that the document proposes a series of assistance measures to ensure that large-scale return to poverty does not occur. Such as “strengthening the asset management of assistance projects”, “improving the effectiveness of consumption assistance to increase farmers’ income”, “promoting the campaign to prevent return to poverty and finding employment”, “state-owned financial institutions increasing financial support to key counties supporting national rural revitalization”, “continuing to carry out medical , "Group-style" assistance for educational cadres and talents, and the selection of scientific and technological missions", "Promote the establishment of a normalized assistance mechanism for underdeveloped areas," and so on.
Strengthen measures to increase farmers’ income
——Strengthening source prevention and risk warning of wage arrears for migrant workers
There are two eternal themes in the work of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers", one is to ensure supply and the other is to increase income. Increasing farmers' income is a central task of "agriculture, rural areas and farmers" and was mentioned in the previous Central Economic Work Conference and Central Rural Work Conference.
In terms of strengthening measures to increase farmers' income, this document not only mentioned the implementation of actions to promote farmers' income increase, strengthened industrial development and cooperation with farmers, and promoted multi-channel employment of rural labor force, but also made special arrangements for the employment of migrant workers.
Data map. Photo by China News Service reporter Yang Huafeng
The reporter noticed that the No. 1 Central Document of 2023 mentioned "improving the monitoring and early warning mechanism for wage payment of migrant workers." In contrast, the No. 1 Central Document in 2024 has been expanded, proposing to "strengthen the source prevention and risk warning of wage arrears for migrant workers, and improve the long-term mechanism for eradicating wage arrears." In addition, this year’s document also mentions “providing employment support for older migrant workers.”
"Non-agricultural income accounts for a large proportion of farmers' income. Timely payment of wages to migrant workers is a very important measure to ensure farmers' income." Jiang Wenlai said, but the problem of arrears in wages to migrant workers has existed for a long time and needs to be targeted Solve it effectively so that their wages can be truly obtained.
"At the same time, the age of migrant workers is increasing day by day, and they have to withstand various tests in terms of skills and physical strength. Strengthening skills training and providing employment support are also important measures to promote farmers' income increase." Jiang Wenlai said.
Improve the level of rural construction and governance
——Implementing a new round of citizenization actions for agricultural transfer population
In terms of improving the level of rural construction, "county-level urban-rural integrated development" has been mentioned again. However, this year's document proposes to implement a new round of urbanization of agricultural transfer populations and encourage qualified counties (cities, districts) to integrate all urban permanent residents. Included in the housing security policy.
"To effectively promote rural revitalization, we need to organically combine it with the implementation of new urbanization." Li Guoxiang said that if we want to promote new urbanization, we need to allow farmers who move into cities to truly integrate into the city and become new citizens. This is very important for a place. development is particularly important. At the same time, liberalizing affordable housing can allow farmers to live in cities with peace of mind and play an important role in promoting supply and demand.
In terms of improving the level of rural governance, the crackdown on "exorbitant betrothal gifts" has been written into the Central Committee's No. 1 Document many times, and this time is no exception. The document proposes to “continue to promote the comprehensive management of prominent issues such as high betrothal gifts, large-scale affairs, and random burials.” At the same time, “encourage all localities to use rural comprehensive service venues to provide inclusive social services for farmers, such as weddings and funerals, and reduce the burden on rural areas.”
Data map. Photo by Zhao Guihua
In the past year, “Village BA”, “Village Super” and “Village Evening” have become very popular and have been “popular” on social platforms. This document also specifically mentioned that farmers should play the leading role and promote the healthy development of mass cultural and sports activities such as "village BA", village super, and village evenings.
In Li Guoxiang's view, in addition to material improvement, the comprehensive revitalization of rural areas also requires "soul-casting", that is, enriching rural cultural life. These cultural lives can be turned into spiritual power to better promote the construction of spiritual civilization. "Building rural culture well, changing farmers' concepts, and improving their cultural quality can also play a certain role in curbing high-priced bride gifts." (End)