“家庭农场”是中国农业的发展出路吗?

Is“Family Farms”the Way to Develop Chinese Agriculture?

中共中央于2013年年初提出要发展"家庭农场",之后全国讨论沸沸扬扬,其中的主流意见特别强调推进家庭农场的规模化,提倡土地的大量流转,以为借此可以同时提高劳动和土地生产率。其所用的口号"家庭农场"是来自美国的修辞,背后是对美国农业的想象。本文论证,这是个不符合世界农业经济史所展示的农业现代化经济逻辑的设想,它错误地试图硬套"地多人少"的美国模式于"人多地少"的中国,错误地使用来自机器时代的经济学于农业,亟需改正。它也是对当今早已由企业型大农场主宰的美国农业经济实际的误解。美国农业现代化模式的主导逻辑是节省劳动力,而中国过去三十年来已经走出来的"劳动和资本双密集化""小而精"模式的关键则在节省土地。美国的"大而粗"模式不符合当前中国农业的实际,更不符合具有厚重传统的关于真正的小农经济家庭农场的理论洞见。中国近三十年来已经相当广泛兴起的适度规模的、"小而精"的真正家庭农场才是中国农业正确的发展道路。

The CPC Central Committee proposed to develop'family farms'in the beginning of 2013,and a heat discussion ensued. Mainstream opinions placed emphasis on larger size of the family farms and large-scale transference of the lands so as to heighten the productivity of both labor and land. The catchphrase,'family farms', is inspired by and loaded with the imagination of America's agriculture. This paper argues that the proposal fails to go by the economic logic of agricultural modernization demonstrated by the agricultural economic history of the world. It mistakenly imposes the American model based on'a few people with a lot of land'on the Chinese reality of'a lot of people with a few land'and applies the economics of the mechanic era to agriculture. It also represents a misunderstanding of present-day American agricultural economy which has actually been dominated by large,enterprise-like farms for a long time. The dominant logic behind the scale of American agriculture modernization is to save labor force. The key point in the Chinese small-and-refined model characterized by 'double intensiveness of labor and capital'which China has carried on with in the past thirty years is to save land resources. The large-and-coarse American model does not fit in with Chinese agricultural reality and still less with the theoretical insight that has been gained from the long tradition of small-scale family-farming economy. The widespread growth of small-and-refined family farms over the past thirty years is the correct way to develop Chinese agriculture.