Rural Economic Elites And The Construction Of Actor Network

Modern agriculture is Chinese agricultural development direction under the current social environment,and it is also the fundament to solve the issues relating to agriculture,rural areas and farmers.It has been proposed the rural revitalization strategy and to reach the organic connection between smallholders and modern agricultural development in the report of the 19th CPC National Congress.Fieldwork shows that an actor network has been formed around the rural economic elites in the markets which relies on those rural economic elites.The network includes both important human actors such as smallholders,rural economic elites,border trade customers,the government,and non-human actors such as markets,facilities,agricultural technology,WeChat,etc.With the support of goverment,rural elites started border trade and needed to purchase a large number of vegetables,so settled village-level vegetable markets were built and smallholders can sell their vegetables in these markets.The increasing cooperation among rural economic elites and out-of-town customers demand more vegetables,also better quality.So the market calls for updating agricultural machinery and optimizing seeds,pesticides and fertilizers.In this process,WeChat has always played an important role in the information exchange among various actors.Therefore,the seemingly independent actors are connected together through rural economic elites,interact and promote with each other,and build up an actor network.And modern agriculture is progressing steadily.However,it leads to contradiction that mismatch happens between the progress brought by modern agriculture and traditional cognition and smallholders’ acceptance.Therefore,it is necessary to find balance in development among different actors in order to reach the true harmony of the network of actors.It’s right to join in this actor network with the rural economic elites core,and it is their interaction that led the development of modern agriculture there.