Family farm is the future development direction of China's agriculture and one of the new agricultural management entities encouraged by the government. But in reality, most family farms are difficult to operate and suffer serious losses. What's the problem?

First, labor management is difficult.

Family farms are generally dominated by family labor. According to the requirements of the Ministry of Agriculture, family farms are not allowed to have long-term workers, but they can have short-term workers. In terms of the scale of family farms, the regulations of local governments only have a lower limit, but there is no upper limit (for example, Shaanxi Province stipulates that grain production is more than 100 mu and pigs are more than 300).

Because there is no upper limit, some family farms are very large. I have seen the largest family farm with 22,000 mu, and the largest pig farm 1 10,000 pigs. Strictly speaking, they are not family farms, because these farms have employed a large number of laborers for a long time, at least they do not meet the conditions of "taking family labor as the mainstay".

The family farm will have employees. For farmers, a thorny issue is the evaluation of employees' labor achievements. For example, pests in orchards need to be treated with pesticides. According to the technical requirements, each leaf and its front and back sides should be sprayed with pesticides, which can completely kill pests and prevent them from recurring. When farmers apply pesticides to their orchards, they will strictly follow this technical requirement, and only need to apply pesticides once in a growth cycle. However, after these farmers are hired to the farm, many people are only interested in the employment fee and don't pay much attention to whether the pests are completely killed. During the investigation in Shaanxi Grape Farm, the farmer said that his farm should be sprayed with pesticides 13- 16 times a year. I was surprised after listening to it: how many pesticides do I need to buy so many times? ! How much labor is needed? ! In this regard, many farmers are also very confused and helpless. It is very difficult and costly for each employee to spray each leaf or both sides of each leaf after spraying the medicine. So, why do foreign big farms run better?

First, relying on mechanization, fewer employees, mainly relying on family labor;

Second, even if the number of employees is small, professionalism and integrity enable them to work conscientiously.

Second, the cost is too high.

Compared with small farmers, the increased cost of family farms is mainly manifested in two aspects:

1, land cost

Small farmers use their contracted land without calculating the cost; The family farm has contracted some other people's land and has to pay rent. The rent of an acre of land ranges from several hundred yuan to thousands of yuan every year. If you grow grain, the profit per mu will be several hundred yuan. After paying the rent, there is almost no profit or even a loss. Therefore, for family farms that grow grain, land rent is the main reason for high cost.

2. Labor costs

Small farmers mainly rely on the family labor force, and basically have no employees, so they ignore the labor cost, which I call the "labor cost-free principle". For family farms, especially large-scale family farms (I don't advocate large-scale family farms), there are more employees. For labor-intensive agriculture such as vegetables, labor costs often account for 40%-60% of the total cost of agricultural products. Because of the high cost, family farms sometimes cannot compete with small farmers. Many family farmers admit that high labor costs make their business difficult. Mechanized operation is more common in large farms abroad, which effectively reduces the cost.

Third, the lack of marketing ability of agricultural products

For small farmers, the methods of selling agricultural products are relatively simple: first, "waiting for the rabbit" and waiting for customers to buy them at home; The other is "selling small baskets", selling agricultural products through the streets. Because land and labor are not cost, small farmers can often make some profits by selling agricultural products in these two ways; If family farms use these two methods to sell agricultural products, nine times out of ten, the profits will reach Shui Piao.

Only by positioning agricultural products at the middle and high-end level, scientifically marketing and realizing high quality and good price of agricultural products can family farms be profitable. But the real dilemma of most family farms is that they lack the basic knowledge and skills of agricultural products marketing, and they don't have enough economic strength to hire marketing experts and form marketing teams.

For example, Liu of Pingtou Town, chencang district, Baoji City, Shaanxi Province, the local honey produced by her local bee farm is of good quality, but due to the lack of marketing ability, the local honey sales are not large and the price is not high. Du, a post-80s boy from Ruyang County, Henan Province, mainly breeds Eucommia sheep on his farm. This kind of mutton is not greasy, tender and fragrant, and can reduce blood fat, blood pressure and improve sleep quality if eaten frequently. The question is still how to sell it. His farm has rented 300 mu of land and some employees. The cost is higher than that of small farmers, and only high quality and good price can make a profit.

Fourth, financing difficulties.

A few family farms have sufficient liquidity, but most family farms have faced the problem of insufficient funds in the past. Financing from formal financial institutions requires asset mortgage. The main assets of family farms are land and real estate, but many formal financial institutions do not accept farmers' land and rural real estate as collateral, and even if a few financial institutions do, they rarely give loans. Financing from informal financial institutions, interest is too high. The profit of agriculture itself is not high, and family farms will go to a dead end with usury.