China is going to great lengths to foster a "new type" of professional farmer to inhabit the empty farmhouses across its vast rural areas and entice more migrant workers to return home to till fields and feed the world's largest population.
If it succeeds, China will solve a major problem that cropped up after its urbanization process resulted in a population split 50:50 between rural and urban areas. Decades ago, nine in 10 people lived in rural areas, where their lives were not as good as that of their urban peers.
As large numbers of farmers, especially young farmers, have flocked to cities and towns, they've left the countryside largely inhabited by the elderly, women and children.
This mass exodus from the countryside has left China asking, "Who will till the farmlands and feed 1.3 billion Chinese people?"
This question, as well as a host of possible solutions, has been talked about at length during the ongoing first annual session of the 12th National People's Congress (NPC), the country's legislature.
On March 5, Premier Wen Jiabao offered a possible solution in his government work report: adopt effective measures to stabilize the forces for agricultural production and actively foster a new type of farmer in rural areas.
EMPTY FARMHOUSES
Chinese farmers often choose to leave their hometowns and migrate to cities and towns to fulfill their dreams of becoming "townspeople," an appellation that promises a better life for their families and more education opportunities for their children.
Li Liancheng, a national legislator from Xixinzhuang Village, Puyang City, central China's Henan Province, said, "The dreams of us farmers are simple -- to dress warm and eat our fill, to have a good school nearby for children, a home near a credible hospital and jobs in nearby towns."
Though the realities of urban life are not usually the things dreams are made of, many young farmers stick it out, unwillingly to abandon their hopes for a better life.
Over the past three decades, nearly 260 million migrant workers have settled in cities and towns, 23 percent of the total urban population.
Xu Xilong, governor of Gansu provincial branch of the Agricultural Bank of China and a national legislator, estimates that China sees about 13 million rural residents move to towns and cities annually.
Zhou Tianyong, a professor of the Party School of the Communist Party of China Central Committee, forecast that over the next three decades, 400 million to 500 million rural residents will relocate to towns and cities.
As a consequence of this large-scale migration, rural areas are now short of laborers to work on farmlands, particularly young and experienced farmers, said Cai Fang, professor on population studies with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences as well as a national legislator.
At the ongoing annual session of the National People's Congress (NPC), the Jiu San Society, a non-Communist Party political organization, published an investigation report showing that although rural areas increase lands reserved for farmers to build homes by 1 percent each year, a quarter of rural homes are empty year-round. Rural permanent residents are declining at an annual rate of 1.6 percent.
In a recent survey of four villages, Liu Hongmin, chairman of a rural cooperative in Xixia City, east China's Shandong Province, found that 57 percent of village residents surveyed were over age 50, and men in their prime, normally under 45, made up only 20 percent of the farmers there. Less than 15 percent of rural residents earned a living fully dependent on farming, and male farmers accounted for less than 7.5 percent of village laborers in the four villages.
These days, agricultural machinery is widely used in farming, but this is problematic for elderly farmers.
"Farmers in their 60s or even 70s start to have feeble feet and poor technical skills. It is dangerous for them to use such machines," said Liu.
