Land Transfers Support Modern Agriculture in Xiaogang Village

Land Transfers Support Modern Agriculture in Xiaogang Village

By staff reporter ZHU HONG

XIAOGANG Village in Fengyang County, Anhui Province, is a typical rural settlement where most farmers live by growing grain crops. In 1978, 18 of them bravely began to explore a household-based land contract system, turning a new page in the history of China's countryside. Since then, China has stabilized and improved its household contract responsibility system, linking remuneration to output and encouraging diversified operations. Nowadays, the backland village once again stands on the forefront of China's land reforms by embracing the trend of exploring land transfers as a method of developing modern agriculture.

A statue of the 18 Xiaogang farmers who initiated the land contract system in 1978.

Household-based Contract System: Main Mode of Agricultural Operation

Before 1978, like other villages in China, Xiaogang was a part of the "People's Commune." Centralized land operation was practiced, and the income gained from the land was distributed on the basis of labor contributed. The People's Commune blindly pursued large scale operations and a commitment to public ownership, putting serious restraints on the initiative of farmers. Under the egalitarian distribution mechanism, farmers saw no incentive to work hard. Their grain output was insufficient to feed them, and basic agricultural production could not be sustained.

Xiaogang Village, with a population of more than 100 people in 20 households, was infamous for its poverty. After autumn harvest, most villagers took up seasonal "work" as beggars. Many families lived in shabby thatched houses, and some were so poor that an entire family shared only one cotton-padded quilt. To shake off poverty, on the night of November 24, 1978, 18 farmers in Xiaogang Village broke away from the management orthodoxy of the People's Commune, and made the bold decision to practice a land contract system, under which local households distributed among them farmland and other means of agricultural production that were formerly held collectively. The idea was to manage them individually and keep whatever of the yield left after handing in the demanded allotment to government. At that time, this was seen as a "capitalist roader," which would be at best criticized, or at worst get you a prison term. To show their determination to reform, the 18 farmers put their fingerprints on the contract, a traditional way of sealing a promise. At the end of the meeting, they contracted livestock, farm tools and arable land to every household. This incident was a turning point and a prelude to a host of rural reforms in China.

By the autumn of 1979, Xiaogang's total grain output had increased to 66, 000 kilograms from a mere 18,000 kilograms in 1978, and their per capita income increased from RMB 20 to RMB 400. For the first time since 1956, Xiaogang sold grain to the state and paid back part of its state loans. Recalling old times, Yan Jinchang, one of the signatory farmers, said, "In 1980 my family harvested 15,000 kilos of grain, becoming one of the first households to earn RMB 10,000 in our village. In 1983, I spent RMB 3,000 on a tractor and built a four-room brick house."

Xiaogang's model was soon copied by neighboring villages. Not long after that, the Communique of the Third Plenary Session of the 11th CPC Central Committee popularized Xiaogang's experience nationwide. From that time on, the household-based contract system became the fundamental model for agricultural operations in China.