Remaking Agriculture

China’s agriculture is in an acute transition stage. The government, especially at the local level, is playing a key role in this process. However, existing research on this transition places insufficient importance on the government’s role in this process. With that in mind, this paper takes as its research subject the agrarian transition experience of "River Town" in southern Anhui province. Using case study method in the qualitative research method, this paper discusses the mechanisms and logic used by the local government to promote agrarian transition. The goal of the paper is to fill gaps within existing theory and strengthen understanding of China’s current agrarian transition.Beginning in2007, a sudden agrarian transition occurred in River Town, manifested primarily in the following three aspects:the transformation of agricultural operating entities, the deepening of agricultural capitalization, and changes to agricultural production relations. With respect to agricultural operating entities, large-scale operators rapidly appeared and replaced small-scale operators in large quantities. This transformation of agricultural operating entities has driven the deepening of agricultural capitalization and changes to agricultural production relations. Therefore, the transformation of agricultural operating entities represents the core factor among these three factors.The agrarian transition that occurred in River Town is definitely not the result of spontaneous socio-economic factors. Rather, it results from comprehensive local government intervention. Through collective land transfer, the local government undertook "water and land remaking","market remaking" and "service remaking" in respective beginning, middle and end phases. One the one hand, the "three remaking" facilitated the rise of large-scale enterprises by providing relatively good infrastructure, concentrated land and relatively good agricultural services; on the other hand, these reforms excluded small-scale farmers. These factors all directly drove the local agrarian transition. Through the "three remaking", the local government remade agriculture.The local government’s active work to transform its agriculture can be understood from the twin aspects of its agricultural governance objectives and governance driving force. In recent years, the county government and the town government has gradually established the transformation of small farmers and the cultivation of massive agricultural production operators as the goal of governance. The dual core driving force comes one hand from the "the massive agriculture championship" existed in the internal administrative system; on the other hand from governance facilitation of the county government and the town government.Based on the above analysis, this paper draws three basic conclusions. First, the spontaneous model of agrarian transition under the influence of the paradigm of sociocentrism and the nationalism paradigm ignoring local government autonomy, can not explain the agrarian transition which was driven by local government. Based on River Town’s experience, this paper treats the local government as an endogenous variable in agrarian transition within the explanatory paradigm. In practical operation, due to the absence of government led to the existence of all the difficulties in agrarian transition, local government intervention agrarian transition is necessary.Second, although the local government played an important role in driving the agrarian transition process, by considering the maximization of its own interests the local government blindly attracted the elite classes. It excluded the interests of the community’s ordinary farmers and their will related to the agrarian transition. This makes the mainstream will of community not be manifest in the agrarian transition, and brings the community and its key members of some adverse consequences. The author summarizes this process as "administrative absorption of community". In order to improve the realization of agrarian transition, there is an urgent need to establish a community standard agrarian transition.Third, the direction of agrarian transition is definitely not like the one-directional and linear transitions described in classical theory. Rather it is multi-directional and diverse. The specific direction agrarian transition was influenced by the policy environment and social structure. That is, the direction of the agrarian transition was at the same time embedded. The the embeddedness of agrarian transition determined its multi-directioned and diverse nature. This means that China should explore a suitable agrarian transition path based on its national conditions.