| Fattening farmers' pockets
2003-08-11
China Daily
A high-profile call to raise farmers' income at the national conference on
agriculture over the weekend underscored not only the gravity of the issue but
also the urgent need to address it.
At the conference, Chinese
Vice-Premier Hui Liangyu urged local governments to do more to help farmers
survive the fall-out from the SARS outbreak as well as other natural
disasters.
The clear-cut message from authorities was that practical
measures, not lip service, were urgently required to steer the country's rural
economy out of its current predicament.
The income of about 9 million
rural people has shrunk, revealing the rural economy's vulnerability to the SARS
epidemic.
A nationwide survey by the State Statistics Bureau showed
farmers' per capita cash income registered a meagre 3.2-per-cent year-on-year
growth in the first half of this year, down by 3.4 percentage points on an
inflation-adjusted basis. In the meantime, the per capita disposable income of
city dwellers increased by 9 per cent to 4,301 yuan (US$520).
Worse, in
the second quarter when the SARS epidemic peaked, rural people actually earned
on average only 421 yuan (US$50.90) in cash, 11 yuan (US$1.30) less than for the
same period the previous year. The contraction of farmers' cash income could
foil the government's effort to narrow the already huge gap between urban and
rural areas.
Non-agricultural income has become a major source of
farmers' income growth in recent years. But the SARS outbreak cost many rural
migrant workers their city jobs in the second quarter.
Mindful of this
problem, the government reiterated the importance of creating non-farming job
opportunities for rural migrants as early as late June, when the country brought
the SARS epidemic under control.
But since July, farmers have been
fighting floods in Central and East China and then an ongoing drought,
aggravated by the highest temperatures in half a century. These natural
calamities have reduced the prospects for a bumper harvest, the source of income
growth for many farmers.
As the national economy has successfully
maintained its momentum by achieving an 8.2-per-cent growth in the first half of
this year, it is imperative to keep rural development on track.
Having
recognized the need to fatten farmers' pocket, the central government allocated
25.7 billion yuan (US$3.1 billion), funded by treasury bonds, to the rural
economy at the beginning of this year. And it has now invested another 3.25
billion yuan (US$393 million) in improving rural living standards and
production.
At the national conference, the agriculture minister also
specified eight measures to speed up agricultural restructuring, create jobs for
rural migrant workers in urban areas, boost agricultural science and technology,
and strengthen rural infrastructure construction.
All these measures are
useful but must be aggressively implemented to create substantial benefits
farmers can enjoy.
So, while doing more to curb farmers' losses from SARS
and natural disasters, the government should also push even harder to carry out
pro-farmer policies.
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