East China’s Jiangsu province has boosted farmers’ income and injected new momentum into rural economy through the development of land shares cooperatives and agricultural industries by ensuring guaranteed dividends and joint stock partnership.
The administrative service center of Zhouchong Village in Sihong County saw the hustle and bustle of the villagers who were receiving the dividends from the cooperative after working hard throughout the year.
Zhang Yuanxi, one of the villagers, became a shareholder by contracting the operating rights of his crop fields to the cooperative, which has enabled him to be paid the dividends but to earn a decent wage by working for the cooperative.
Zhouchong Village is located in a hilly area, making it impossible to grow lucrative crops other than drought-resistant crops such as wheat and corn. Due to the low earnings from agricultural production that averages no more than 500 yuan per mu, cultivation of the crops fields were discontinued over the years.
In March 2016, the village administration set up a land joint-stock cooperative. Now, 90% of the households have become share holders with 4200 mu of fields included in the joint-stock business.
19 family farm owners are tasked to the daily operation of the crop fields while the partnership with the local flagship agricultural enterprises has arranged for the farmers to grow sweet potatoes which are sold to the firms at guaranteed prices.
70% of the proceeds are distributed among the share-holding farmers as dividends.
The mode of the flagship enterprises plus the cooperative plus the family farms plus the villagers has enabled the villagers get a fat wallet and boosted the village’s collective income which was increased to 417000 yuan last year, a gain of 240000 yuan from a year ago.
Jiangsu has also carried out explorations on the reform of rural land system in many ways such as the right to register rural land, transfer of management rights, land trusteeship, joint-stock cooperation and mortgage guarantee of rural land contractual management right to expand the power of land contract management rights and promote the development of agricultural scale. The province now registers 9980 joint-stock cooperatives with the scale of operation standing at 4.3 million mu.
(Source:Jiangsu International Channel)
