Dim Sums: Agricultural Markets in China

Chinese authorities are preparing to designate land on the outskirts of cities as "permanent farmland" that will be off-limits to nonfarm development. Local officials have been dragging their heels on implementing the program, and this month a steering committee was set up to force them to literally "get with the program." Irrigation pipes installed on "permanent farmland" in Jiaxing, Zhejiang Province . The "permanent farmland" designation program was launched jointly by the Ministries of Agriculture and Land Resources in January 2015. Each province will be required to designate areas surrounding 106 key cities as permanent farmland.  According to  Farmers Daily , a steering committee was formed in November to push along work on the program. Progress on delineating permanent farmland is uneven and has moved slowly in many regions where local officials have not given it a high priority. "The results are not ideal" so far, accordi...

The National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reports that 245 million rural people are employed in nonfarm activities , up 10 million from last year. Their average monthly earnings from nonfarm employment were up 21% from last year, suggesting rapid growth in wages (average hours of work decreased). The numbers reflect an exodus out of agriculture and rising opportunity cost of labor in farming. Each year NBS surveys 200,000 rural laborers from over 7500 villages in 899 counties to ascertain the number and characteristics of rural people engaged in nonfarm employment. The survey total includes rural people engaged in a nonagricultural job or business for at least 6 months of the current year. It includes migrants working outside their home township and people employed near home (in their home township). Source: Dimsums chart created using data from National Bureau of Statistics.  Nonfarm jobs are primarily in urban areas, prompting a huge migration of itinerant worker...

One of China's big challenges now being debated is how to urbanize. The State Council held a press briefing on March 29 where officials from the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and departments in charge of labor and social security, land, housing, and agriculture discussed urbanization issues. China has 655 cities, including 122 large ones that have populations of 1 million or more, and 118 with population of 500,000 to 1 million. The rest of the cities have populations under 500,000 and there are over 19,000 small towns. Officials would like to channel the newly-urbanized population into these small cities and towns, but comments by the director of the NDRC's planning office pointed out that the smaller places are not as adept at absorbing population, and they tend to use up a lot of land. The NDRC planning office director said there are still four big issues to be dealt with in urbanization. The "quality" of the urban population is not high. Out o...