In December 2023, the Rural Work Conference was held in Beijing, and the General Secretary made important instructions on the "three rural" work and emphasized that to promote Chinese-style modernization, we must unremittingly consolidate the foundation of agriculture and promote the comprehensive revitalization of the countryside. On January 23, 2024, the Information Office held a press conference on the agricultural and rural economic movement in 2023, showing that China has made remarkable achievements in six major aspects, including food production, consolidating the achievements of poverty alleviation, science and technology and equipment, and modern agricultural construction in the past year.
Realizing the modernization of agriculture and rural areas and rural revitalization, especially industrial revitalization, is an important strategic path to realize Chinese-style modernization. Thanks to the rapid development of the country's economy over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China's agriculture has basically realized the leap from traditional agriculture to modern agriculture, and agricultural productivity has been greatly improved. **In the report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, the general secretary made important arrangements for comprehensively promoting rural revitalization, emphasizing "adhering to the priority development of agriculture and rural areas" and "accelerating the construction of an agricultural power". To build a modern socialist country in an all-round way, the most arduous and arduous task is still in the rural areas, and the "three rural" work must not be relaxed for a while.
According to data from relevant departments, in 2022, the comprehensive mechanization rate of crop cultivation and harvesting exceeded 72%. Modern agricultural technology, including crop cultivation technology, livestock and poultry breeding technology, crop water-saving irrigation technology, pest control technology, growth regulation technology, etc., has contributed 62 percent to the comprehensive agricultural productivity4%。Liu Yonggong, a professor at China Agricultural University, said: "Judging from the above criteria, China has initially achieved agricultural modernization. The popularization and application of modern agricultural technology and the development of modern agricultural industrial system have ensured China's food security and improved the comprehensive productivity of agriculture, which is a great achievement! ”
The dilemma faced by "small farmers" in modern agriculture
"More people and less land" is China's basic national condition, and in the long run, small-scale peasant family management will continue to be the main mode of operation in China's agriculture. According to the data of the third agricultural census, the number of small-scale farmers in the country accounts for more than 98 agricultural business entities, and the number of small-scale farmers accounts for 90% of the total agricultural employees, and the area of cultivated land operated by small-scale farmers accounts for 70% of the total cultivated area. In Professor Liu Yonggong's view, from the perspective of global agricultural development trends, the traditional individual small-scale farmer family management is not the future development direction of modern agriculture, but from the actual process, there must be a long-term development stage between small-scale farmer family management and large-scale operation. Smallholder farmers face many dilemmas and challenges in modern agriculture. How to establish and effectively operate a set of socialized service systems suitable for the needs of smallholder farmers and bring them out of their predicament is an unavoidable problem in agricultural and rural development at this stage.
How to solve the contradiction of "small production of thousands of households and the ever-changing market", in 2019, the "Opinions on Promoting the Organic Connection between Small Farmers and the Development of Modern Agriculture" was promulgated, proposing that "small farmers in large countries are our basic national conditions, and we should accelerate the construction of a three-dimensional composite modern agricultural management system based on farmers' family management, cooperation and alliance as the link, and socialized services as the support, so as to realize the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture." And from the aspects of improving the degree of organization of small farmers, promoting agricultural socialized services, and giving full play to the demonstration and leading role of new business entities, specific plans have been made.
Capital + empowerment + socialized service model
In addition to centralized management through land transfer and cooperatives, another effective way to promote the effective connection between small farmers and modern agriculture is to improve agricultural socialization services. In fact, the socialized service system for smallholder farmers still needs to be improved. However, the needs of smallholder farmers in terms of financial services, insurance protection, and technical support are often not fully met, which restricts their better participation in the development process of modern agriculture. On the demand side, from the perspective of factor markets, smallholder farmers first face financial problems in the process of production and operation. As the main demanders of rural finance, smallholder farmers usually have the characteristics of scattered residence, low income, small scale and strong seasonality of single loans, high natural and market risks of production projects, and lack of necessary collateral.
After nearly 30 years of development, the institution has become a comprehensive agricultural service organization focusing on rural small and micro customers, based on microcredit, and expanded into multiple business units such as rural e-commerce, insurance, agricultural production, household photovoltaic and public welfare empowerment.
Sun Jinlong, the village secretary of Gushan Village, Weichang County, Hebei Province, is a typical representative of the "post-90s" returning to his hometown to start a business. During the most difficult period of his business, it was the loan of CFPA that helped him tide over the difficulties. Later, Sun Jinlong was recommended to be a participant in the "Chuangzhidao" entrepreneurship empowerment training course for small and micro business owners, which was jointly launched by Shell China and China Rural Credit Co., Ltd. This is the first time he has systematically learned how to manage and run a business, and it is also the first time that he has clearly understood the problems of his own business. Through training, in just 3 years, Sun Jinlong's vermicelli factory has developed from a small enterprise with "five people in one pot" to a modern enterprise with annual sales of 4 million yuan and has begun to take shape.
Caption: Sun Jinlong at the vermicelli factory.
Professor Liu Yonggong, as the technical consultant of the "Chuangzhidao" project, gave the following evaluation to the "microfinance + all-round comprehensive service" model of CFPA Rural Credit Co., Ltd.: "Starting from the microcredit service of poor rural households, CFPA has continuously explored and innovated, expanded the service to comprehensive and non-financial derivative service products, established an efficient and professional grassroots service system and service team, and explored a set of feasible service models, which is a successful case worthy of reference. One of the most important values of CFPA is to provide microcredit for rural small and micro enterprises on the one hand, and at the same time to provide all-round empowerment and accompanying services for the development and growth of rural small and micro enterprises. "This can not only promote the growth and development of new business entities, but also help to play a leading role in the demonstration of new business entities for small farmers.
Today, CFPA has formed an enabling service system for different types of business entities such as small farmers, women entrepreneurs, small entrepreneurs and collective economic organizations. The Chuangzhidao project is one of the important components of this empowerment system. Since 2019, CFPA has cooperated with Shell China to organize the "Chuangzhidao" Advanced Seminar on Small and Micro Enterprise Management every year, which has provided comprehensive and systematic operation and management training for more than 100 rural small and micro business owners from all over the country, and solved the problems faced in the development and operation of enterprises. "This is a great feature that distinguishes Zhonghe Rural Credit from other rural service entities. "Most farmers are at the front end of the agricultural industry chain, family farms and rural collective economy are relatively weak, product processing, circulation and other links are not perfect, and it is difficult to increase the added value of agricultural products, compared with industry and service industries, there is still a lot of room for improvement. "If we want to go further in modernization, we must deepen the value extension of the industrial chain, including enabling services. Liu Yonggong said.
Caption: In 2022, the Zhonghe Rural Development Promotion Center established by Zhonghe Rural Credit Co., Ltd. launched a new rural collective economic organization empowerment project in Sichuan, Guangdong and other regions, combining the research on the current situation and needs of rural households' production and life, and providing rural collective economic organizations with capacity building training and pilot support for production service business in various aspects such as internal governance, talent training, and business development.
Digital whole industry chain service model
In fact, in the entire industrial chain, there are a variety of factors that affect each other, and the integration of all factors is more conducive to maximizing the effect of a single element. Among the loan customers of CFP, there are many customers who have overdue loans due to accidents and diseases, and there are also customers who have fallen into operational difficulties due to market changes in the case of a bumper harvest. All these indicate that the socialized services needed by smallholder farmers should also include comprehensive industrial support including risk protection, technology and safe and reliable agricultural production inputs. In recent years, CFPA has begun to cooperate with insurance companies to provide free small accident insurance for loan customers to help farmers resist risks and reduce loan risks. With the continuous development of farmers' needs, convenient and fast microinsurance services such as medical insurance have been added.
In view of China's complex agricultural resources and small farmers' pain points such as "low bargaining power, high purchase cost", "high financial pressure, weak technology application and fine management ability", CFPA promotes the use and promotion of advanced technology and green and high-quality agricultural inputs through business units such as technical custody services, agricultural material chain services, and production and marketing docking services, and goes deep into all aspects of agricultural planting and breeding production before, during and after production, so as to achieve the goal of "making agriculture efficient and green, and allowing farmers to increase their income conveniently".
Taking the centralized procurement and direct sales of agricultural materials as an example, Zhonghe Rural Credit has established strategic cooperative relations with high-quality agricultural materials and agricultural production service providers to create a high-quality and green product platform, and at the same time link existing financial and other resources, in order to alleviate the problems of traditional agricultural materials layer by layer price increase, high price and suboptimal material quality, and at the same time help farmers reduce costs and increase efficiency. At present, its agricultural product types have covered seedlings, fertilizers, feed, pesticides, agricultural machinery and other mainstream categories. Since 2020, the transaction volume of agricultural production materials such as agricultural machinery and agricultural tools and fertilizers has exceeded 2 billion yuan.
Wu Jianfeng, a farmer in Wei County, Hebei Province, is almost 60 years old this year, and he has always felt that farming is a chore. But for the first time since he started using the land trusteeship, he felt that farming was a very happy thing. Since last year, he has handed over all his farmland to the manager of the custodian service station. "The land is mine, the harvest is also mine, the stationmaster is in my field every day to help me look at the ground, pipe flute, I can also have a high yield, this year's corn yield can run to about 2,000 catties. Through the customized whole process of corn planting management technical program, the village stationmaster often goes to the field to help him check the growth of crops, and the time nodes and precautions for weeding and spraying are also patiently and meticulously informed.
Caption: The manager of the custodian service station is communicating with farmers about the growth of corn.
With the acceleration of the urban process, agricultural trusteeship came into being. In 2022, CFPA started its agricultural trusteeship business, and has now developed 60,000 members in 20 counties of CFPA Hebei and Shandong, serving more than 200,000 mu of land, truly achieving the integration of "farming, planting, prevention and harvesting", allowing many farmers to become "hands-off shopkeepers". By focusing on the innovation of agricultural socialization services for smallholder farmers, this service has played a positive role in improving the degree of agricultural specialization and organization, lowering the threshold for large-scale agricultural operation, helping food security, and creating local employment opportunities for farmers.
Efficient service requires strong technology behind it. CFPA has been internalizing data and information tools into production factors, transforming production and operation methods, and promoting the quality and efficiency improvement and green transformation of agricultural production. At the same time, with the support of technology, agricultural technology experts have also realized "cloud operation" and provided operation guidance through "online consultation". In addition, the company has built its own first-chain ERP system and intelligent carpooling logistics system to solve the distribution problem of bulk products in the last 100 meters; With the help of artificial intelligence, high-definition maps, Internet of Things (IoT) and knowledge graphs, we help farmers achieve refined and modular agricultural management and technical consulting services with expert + artificial intelligence models. Behind this is another hidden "advantage" of CFPA - the ability of leading information technology research and development and technology application.
After nearly 30 years of exploration and development, relying on the deep insight into the needs of rural small and micro customers and the trust foundation established by years of deep cultivation in the rural market, CFPA has built an online + offline service system, based on scientific and technological capabilities, through the scale, standardization, specialization, and digitalization of the direct sales model, and by building a diversified service platform for finance, production, life, ecology, etc., to cultivate a large-scale platform advantage of information connectivity, resource integration, bargaining premium, and excellent buying and selling. It provides tailor-made comprehensive solutions for rural small and micro customer groups, and improves the problem that it is uneconomical for a family to carry out agricultural production operations independently. As of September 2023, CFP's business has benefited 100,000 administrative villages in nearly 500 districts and counties in 20 provinces across the country, covering nearly 1500 million rural population, and this model objectively makes the institution itself an important connection point between smallholder farmers and moderate-scale operations, while maximizing service effectiveness and reducing marginal costs, thereby enhancing their market competitiveness. (Author: Ren Nengwang).