context: The traditional development approach of family farms that rely heavily on subsidies is fiscally unsustainable, especially considering tightening local budget constraints. Beijing seeks to shift to a system that supports capacity building to improve farms' independence.
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (MARA) and ten other central agencies published 'Guiding opinions on implementing family farm cultivation programs' to support family farm development. The Opinions specify
- development goals
- by 2020, set up a basic policy system to support family farms; steadily increase number of family farms with standardised operation and diversified industries
- by 2022, further improve policy system on family farms; develop strong production capacity
- improving registration and profile management
- reasonably determine the scale of operation based on local resources and conditions
- optimise registration services and set up an information sharing mechanism between market regulation and agricultural departments for family farm data
- improving profile system for family farms with regulated data collection, demonstration farm selection and operation analysis
- enhancing effects of pilot demonstrations
- choose demonstration family farms based on application and selection principles
- set up family farm demonstration counties
- encourage diverse talent to set up family farms, especially local talent, educated people and youth
- actively guide family farms to develop cooperative operations and explore cooperation approaches
- establishing and improving policy support system
- protect land use rights of family farms and encourage land transfers with standardised documentation and processes
- enhance infrastructure construction and guarantee land supply for farm facilities
- improve social services and training system to meet knowledge, technology and labour needs
- provide subsidies for water use and tax reductions for farm operations
- strengthen financial and insurance services to increase accessibility and coverage
- support ‘internet + family farms’ mode and develop e-commerce
- explore social security policies suitable for family farms
- accelerate family farm legislation