China to focus on family farms in drive to commercialise
China to use large-scale family farms to battle inefficiency and dwindling workforce in agriculture sector
China aims to set up more large-scale family farms as it tries to commercialise a vast agriculture sector battling inefficiency and a dwindling workforce, the government said on Thursday.
China’s last big rural reform in the early 1980s gave households the right to lease collectively-owned land, but the minimal returns earned from small plots forced millions to flee to the cities in search of work.
Family farms, which keep family members at their core, have become effective forces in leading the development of modern agriculture
“With the migration of a large number of rural labourers to cities, the question of who will farm has become the outstanding issue,” Zhang Hongyu, a rural policy director at the agriculture ministry, told reporters.
Now Beijing is trying to encourage rural families to stay in the countryside by boosting incomes in line with urban ones, and large family farms have been identified as the most effective route, Zhang said.
“Family farms, which keep family members at their core, have become effective forces in leading the development of modern agriculture.”
By the end of 2012, there were around 877,000 larger family-owned farms covering 11.7 million hectares of land, with each farm measuring about 13 hectares on average, Zhang said.