Research On The Income Increase Of Farmers In Guizhou

To increase farmers' income is currently a major issue in the development of agriculture and rural economy. As a key to the issue of "agriculture, countryside, and fanner", it not only has an impact on the stability of the rural community, but is vital to the sound operation of the national economy. It is pointed out at the 16^th Party Congress that "China has come into a new stage of development to build a moderately well-off society in an all-round manner and speed up the drive of socialist modernization." Aiming at the historical missions brought about by this new stage of development, General Secretary Hu Jintao called at the Central Meeting of Rural Work to "put the solution of the issue of agriculture, countryside, and farmer at the most fundamental place among other important works of the Party." Radically or basically, the issue of agriculture, countryside, and farmer is an issue of farmers' income. It is therefore of great importance to take practical and feasible measures to increase farmers' income in a stable and fast way.Taking Guizhou Province as an example, this article analyzes the issue of farmers' income in Guizhou, which is characterized by: 1) a relatively low level of income on the whole; 2) a slow rate of increase; 3) an unreasonable structure of income increase; and 4) an increasingly widening gap in farmers' income. The major points underlying the low level of income and slow rate of increase for farmers living in Guizhou Province are: 1) poor natural and geographical conditions; 2) vulnerability of the agriculture; 3) oversupply of agricultural product over a long period; 4) low quality of the rural labor force; 5) heavy burden on farmers; 6) dual economic structure with urban area separated from rural area; and 7) insufficient capital input and unchanged traditional modes of agricultural production and management.According to statistics and surveys, the net income of fanners consists of three components, i.e. basic income, transferred income, and property income. Basic income includes the family's business income and wage income, of which the business income refers to the income earned by the farmer from the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries, and the wage income means that earned by the family members employed by an entity or an individual through selling their labor. Transferred income refers to various transferred payments made by the state, an entity or a social organization to the family and the income transferred among various families, which includes pension, unemployment benefit, compensation, etc. transferred from the government to the individual, the layoff compensation, insurance claim, housing fund, etc. transferred from an entity to individual, as well as the in-family giving and support. Property income refers to the income earned by the owner of financial assets or tangible non-productive assets through providing other outfits or entities with capital or tangible non-productive assets to use. The key to the increase of fanners' income is to increase the basic income.Farmers' basic income can be increased in the following ways: 1) income from the primary industry can be increased through the optimization of the agricultural structure of production; 2) income from the secondary and tertiary industries can be increased through the development of rural industrialization and urbanization; and 3) wage income can be increased through the transfer of surplus labor force and the development of a labor service-based economy.In the long run, the increase of farmers' income cannot be realized without the development of rural education. So we need to: continue the efforts to put in more capital for the education in the rural area, speed up the training of rural teachers, and facilitate the construction of school...