Professional farmers needed for the fields

'Who will farm in the fields?" The central government raised this important question in the statement issued after Central Rural Work Conference on Tuesday, clearly highlighting the essential role of people in rural work.

Because we can hardly deal well with rural work without plenty of qualified farmers, solving the problem of the lack of quality farmers is the prerequisite for solving the problems of agriculture.

But the fact is, for a long time, being a "farmer" has been an undesirable identity in China, due to farmers' low incomes and poor living conditions. The income from working in the fields for a year may be less than can be made in three months working in a city. Because of this, at the end of 2012, China had more than 260 million farmer-turned-workers who had left their home villages to work in cities. The agricultural labor force, especially the young and educated, has been drastically drained from rural areas due to the low returns to be made from household farming.