Construction Path of Farmer Education and Training System in the Context of Rural Revitalization

Xiao FAN, Wanyong PENG, Zhengjun HUANG

School of Economics and Management, Chongqing University of Arts and Science, Chongqing 402160, China

Abstract It is very important to establish a farmer education and training system for the revitalization of rural talents. This paper analyzed the necessity and new requirements for the construction of a farmer education and training system in the new era. It pointed out the specific path for construction of farmer education and training system from accurately grasping the development direction of farmer education and training, accelerating the construction of a new pattern of farmer education and training, comprehensively promoting the high-quality development of farmer education and training, and actively creating a good atmosphere for farmer education and training, so as to promote the revitalization of rural talents.

Key words Farmer education and training system, Rural talents, Rural revitalization

1 Introduction

The talent is essential to rural revitalization. The Central Committee and the State Council in China have always paid attention to the talents in rural areas. Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Communist Party of China, stressed that rural talents are the foundation of strengthening and promoting agriculture. We must put human capital development in the primary position, strengthen the support of rural revitalization talents, and create a strong rural revitalization talent team.

Since 2012, No.1 Central Document of China has required education and training, cultivation of high-quality farmers every year. Specifically, the reality of the "three rural" work determines that the main sources of farmers’ training are rural capable farmers, returning migrant workers, rural cadres, veterans and agricultural entrepreneurs (including entrepreneurs and college students). If we further combine the characteristics of regional agricultural industrial structure with the needs of deep integration of rural primary, secondary and tertiary industries, the training farmers mainly include agricultural production farmers, agricultural skill service farmers and agricultural management farmers; meanwhile, training implementation organization are agricultural broadcasting schools, agricultural vocational colleges, agricultural university, agricultural research institutes, agricultural training departments or institutions constitute. Training content generally includes agricultural practical technology training, agricultural vocational skills training, farmers’ innovation and entrepreneurship training, government commissioned training,

etc.

In addition, we always discuss the training methods and effects with training time, frequency and teachers. After the training, the undertaking organization requires the trainees to carry out vocational post skill appraisal, and the qualified ones often issue corresponding vocational qualification certificates. However, the farmers education and training still have many problems. For example, the insufficient recognition of vocational farmer education and training, the poor hardware and software construction conditions of rural vocational education and training system, the cross functions of multiple departments and the waste of training resources, the standardization of vocational farmers’ skill appraisal process and government support, and the imperfect mechanism, incomplete resources and incomplete functions of farmer training institutions.

In view of current problems of farmer education and training, and the urgent need to cultivate a large-scale, reasonable structure, good quality rural talent team to undertake the mission of rural revitalization, we put forward the construction path of farmer education and training.

2 Necessities and new requirements of education and training system construction

2.1 Necessities of farmer education and training system construction

(i) Constructing a farmer education and training system is a foundation and long-term career. The central government and the State Council pay close attention to farmer education and training, and take new farmers cultivation as a long-term and basic work to promote the overall revitalization of rural areas. President Xi Jinping stressed that to solve the problem of who will cultivate the land, we need cultivate rural talents. In addition, rural revitalization has opened a new chapter in agriculture developing. We need to answer how to retain people and how to use people wisely, which becomes a times new theme.

(ii) Establishing the farmer education and training system is the fundamental way to cultivate new farmers. Farmer training has public welfare, systematic and long-term characteristic. Public welfare needs public institutions to implement training. It needs to establish a unified quality standard to ensure the quality of training. In addition, public welfare also reflects that governments at all levels should increase investment in farmer training. Systematization refers to the reasonable, effective and coordinated comprehensive utilization of the relevant education and training resources for farmers in the whole society to work together around the common goal. The long-term training refers to the relatively stable organization system, and policy to realize the long-term training goal of new farmers.

(iii) Construction of farmer education and training system is important to cultivate high-quality farmers. It is necessary to integrate resources and form a joint force to build an effective farmer education and training system. The government lead this system with agricultural broadcasting schools as the main body, with the participation of agricultural universities, scientific research and teaching units, promotion departments and agricultural enterprises. Due to the needs of production and life, the characteristics of farmer education and training are not to leave the land or the hometown. Farmers need convenient learning and training methods, which makes the training diversified.

Agricultural radio and television schools have both system advantages and flexible and efficient training methods. With the upgrading of the industry and the increase of farmers’ demand, for example, a number of new farmers have quietly emerged, many farmers still feel that their knowledge and ability need to further improve. Therefore, agriculture related vocational colleges play an important role in improving farmers’ quality, especially their education and ability. At the same time, farmer training can also educate people in industry and train people in practice, so we should fully mobilize agricultural institutions, agricultural enterprises and scientific research institutes to participate in such a mechanism.

2.2 New requirements of farmer education and training in the new era

The Fifth Plenary Session of the 19Central Committee of the Communist Party of China paid close attention to the work of agriculture, rural areas and farmers, and has made a careful deployment from the 14Five-Year Plan to the year 2035. It emphasized that we should firstly develop agriculture, comprehensively promote the revitalization of rural areas, and accelerate the modernization of agriculture. This Central Committee put forward specific requirements for farmer education and training, emphasizing the need to improve the scientific and cultural quality of farmers, improve the lifelong vocational skills training system, vigorously cultivate technical and skilled talents, accelerate the improvement of workers’ skills, and promote the revitalization of rural talents.

The central government has always focus on farmer education and training. In the process of implementing the rural revitalization strategy, farmer education and training has always been an important part of agricultural and rural work. To implement the spirit of Central Committee and the central government’s decision-making, actively adapt to the new requirements of developing rural areas, promote the rural talents revitalization, we should promote high-quality development of farmer education and training.

(i) Farmer education and training should adapt to the new requirements of agricultural science and technology progress. The profound transformation of agricultural science and technology is leading agricultural development mode. In recent years, China’s crops, livestock and poultry varieties are constantly updated, and the agricultural facilities, equipment and technology is constantly improved. For example, UAV is also widely used in all production fields of planting and plant protection remote sensing monitoring. Information technology is applied in all fields of agriculture. Artificial intelligence, big data, agricultural intelligence and other technologies play an increasingly significant role in improving the quality of the industry. Mobile phones have become new agricultural tools. With the continuous improvement of agricultural science and technology, agricultural production mode greatly changed and farmer education and training must keep up with the pace and adapt to it.

(ii) Farmer education and training should better adapt to the new requirements of modern agricultural production and organizational reform. In recent years, with the rapid development of agricultural moderate scale operation, new agricultural operation subjects and social service organizations have been emerging rapidly. These subjects are diverse in types and industries. Farmer education and training should actively meet the new requirements of different production organization modes, cultivate high-quality leaders of new agricultural operation service subjects, and promote the organic connection between small farmers and modern agriculture.

(iii) Farmer education and training should adapt to the new requirements of new industries development. With the combination of modern production and traditional agriculture, the agricultural functions are increasingly diversified. The mainly function of agriculture is production, but it has its own special role in ecology and environment. Moreover, a large number of new industries and new formats have been formed. It has three obvious characteristics. First of all, industrial field is wider. Modern planting and breeding industry, leisure agriculture, rural tourism and rural e-commerce. It is necessary to accelerate the integration of primary, secondary and tertiary industries. Secondly, the demand for platforms is more prosperous. A large number of entrepreneurial projects need platform incubation. The modern agricultural industrial park demonstration park and science and technology park can become training incubation and practice bases. Finally, the comprehensive quality of talents is higher. Mastering modern information technology becomes a necessary skill. Talents who understand both the field and the market terminal become the main demand. These changes require farmers to broaden education and training coverage, and focus on the cultivation of interdisciplinary talents.

(iv) Farmer education and training should better adapt to the new requirements of urban-rural integration. The development of urban-rural needs more specialized talents to play a leading, supporting and service role. On the one hand, there is a new trend that the able return to the countryside, enterprises prosper the countryside, and citizens go to the countryside to start a business flourishes. At present, there are 8.5 million returnees and more than 31 million rural entrepreneurship and innovation workers, which has become an important force to revitalize the countryside. On the other hand, there are a large number of new jobs in the development of rural social undertakings, data infrastructure construction, villagers’ autonomy, improvement of living environment, farmers’ sports and many other fields, which will cultivate more professional and high-quality talents for the integrated development of urban and rural areas.

In conclusion, the new situation, new tasks and new requirements are not only opportunities, but also challenges. From the perspective of challenges or the shortcomings, at present, a stable education and training system for farmers has not been fully formed. The supply side reform of farmer education and training also needs to deepen. To solve these problems and challenges, we should base on the current situation, focus on the long term, plan systematically, highlight the key points and push forward as a whole.

3 Construction path of farmer education and training system

During the fourteenth Five Year Plan period, in accordance with the general requirements of the rural revitalization Strategy and speeding up rural area modernization, we should promote the high-quality development of modern farmer education and training, and speed up the cultivation of new farmers who adapt to the industrial needs and coordinate with the development of rural society. Specifically, we should focus on the following aspects.

3.1 Accurately grasping the development direction of farmer education and training

(i) It is necessary to fully implement the party’s educational policy. As an important part of the whole national education system, the education and training of farmers must adhere to the principle of educating people for the party, educating talents for the country. We should cultivate excellent talents for rural revitalization from taking strengthening agriculture as its own responsibility, and making efforts in strengthening ideals and beliefs, consolidating patriotism, strengthening moral cultivation, increasing knowledge and insight, cultivating struggle spirit and enhancing comprehensive quality and management ability.

(ii) It is necessary to make clear the construction goal of the farmer education and training system. Farmer education and training should fully serve the farmers development needs and provide accurately education and training services for farmers. In addition, the education and training of farmers should serve the implementation of rural revitalization strategy and the demand for rural talents, including industrial talents, cultural talents, ecological talents, organizational talents. Then the object of education and training has also changed. This has pointed out the direction for the construction and improvement of farmer education and training system and found the right goal.

(iii) It is necessary to make efforts to train rural revitalization leaders. The education and training of new farmers can be incorporated into the national education and lifelong education. we can improve farmers quality through appropriate skill training and vocational education. Farmer training has a wide range, many contents and great regional differences, so in the construction of future farmer education and training system, we should aim at different regions and different types of industries. We not only need to take into account the needs of the current farmers, but also to consider the needs of the new generation of farmers in the future, to build a rising channel from cultivation and training to secondary vocational education and even vocational education undergraduate and application-oriented undergraduate, to build a lifelong education system for farmers’ training. Two types of talents should be highlighted. The first of those are industry leaders. leaders of emerging industries, leaders of farmers’ professional cooperatives and returning farmers to start businesses will help to cultivate the leading geese in rural areas and continuously promote the cultivation of new farmers at a higher level. The other category is the cultivation of new farmers’ successors for agriculture. We should give full play to the advantages of agricultural higher vocational colleges and secondary vocational colleges, and cultivate their feelings of loving agriculture and professional knowledge. After returning to the countryside, they can become permanent and rooted new farmers.

(iv) We should persist in providing satisfactory education and training for farmers. Farmer education and training should not only follow the basic law of adult learning, but also fully consider the particularity or special requirements of farmers. We should use the forms that farmers are easy to receive and enjoy and apply education and training to agricultural enterprises, farmers’ cooperatives and agricultural production lines. In the evaluation, farmers’ demand, acceptance and satisfaction should be taken as the main standards to measure the training effect.

3.2 Accelerating a new construction pattern of farmer education and training

(i) It is necessary to conform to the central work of agriculture and rural areas. The farmers cultivation should closely focus on grain production, green development, farmers’ income increase and other key work, and make overall planning with major agricultural projects, such as grain production function area, important agricultural product production protection area and characteristic agricultural product advantage area. Efforts should be made to make education follow the demonstration area construction and training class follow the agricultural industrial park construction.

(ii) It is necessary to accelerate the construction of a new education and training system, with government leading, agricultural broadcasting school system as the main body, agricultural colleges, agricultural research institutions, agricultural machinery extension departments, agricultural enterprises, and even cooperatives participating in. We should pool the strength of all parties to form a reasonable, extensive, scientific and effective cooperation system, which is agriculture related and efficient. Leading agricultural enterprises and new agricultural operators and other social forces should give full play to their respective strengths, promote the transformation of scientific and technological achievements, provide support services such as internship practice, business incubation, tracking and guidance. The new farmer education and training system should accelerate the formation sharing, co-construction, complementary advantages, and efficient cooperation between organizations and regions. We should improve the efficiency of educational resources, promote the reform of education supply side, build an education chain around the industrial chain. In addition, we can link up the overpass of education and training at all levels through building a credit bank, and promoting the mutual recognition and exchange of learning achievements at different stages, so that the majority of farmers can learn, are willing to learn, and continue to learn. It is requited to focus on: firstly, systematically design. Different departments and institutions have different advantages and characteristics, to exert the cooperative advantages of these departments; Secondly, we should integrate resources and make full use of all kinds of essential resources of farmers’ training; thirdly, reform and innovation, improve the training mechanism, innovative training methods.

(iii) It is necessary to accelerate the construction of policy system, create a good environment for farmer education and training system developing. We should continue to build a policy system in which farmers are willing to learn and can learn continuously, and improve the security policy of training teachers.

We should promote the creation of part-time farmers’ secondary vocational education and higher vocational education aid policies, issue support policies, and establish a whole process service mechanism integrating education and training achievements transformation, technology promotion, business services, and entrepreneurship support. At the same time, to speed up the legislative process of farmer education and training, we should ensure that farmer education has laws to abide by, and provide legal basis for further promoting farmer education and training, protecting and stabilizing employees, and improving the overall quality of farmers.

(iv) It is necessary to accelerate the exploration of the farmer cultivation system, establish and improve the new farmers’ system of education and training, development support, guidance and incentive, speed up the process of farmers’ modernization, increase the investment in farmer education and training, expand the proportion of secondary and higher agricultural vocational education, expand the enrollment of agricultural colleges, improve the learning subsidy mechanism, improve the organization and management. In addition, we should establish accurate support policies for new farmers, and promote new farmers to lead the establishment of agricultural enterprises.

(v) The government need to increase guidance and incentives, promote new farmers to collaborate, and play a leading role in demonstration. In addition, to develop one main and multiple integration system, the government can definite its division of labor, clarify its specific responsibility. It depends on the institution to really form a joint force. Through the system construction, it can form a good operation mechanism, and form a cultivation system with the main body of Agricultural Broadcasting School and the interconnection from top to bottom to really play a role in the cultivation of rural practical talents.

3.3 Comprehensively promoting the high-quality development of farmer education and training

(i) It is necessary to improve the pertinence of education and training. According to different groups, implement the relevant education and training project plan. We should implement the new farmer education plan, connect farmer education and training with major projects, innovate the training mode, and build the trinity of education and training effect evaluation policy support. Moreover, we will implement the education promotion plan for millions of new farmers, promote farmers’ training and education as a whole, carry out the construction of 100 key universities, promote professional reform, and vigorously promote the customized training of new farmers. We will implement the quality improvement plan for rural leaders, rely on all kinds of talent training bases and strengthen comprehensive services such as policy and technology projects.

(ii) It is necessary to effectively enhance the education and training ability. We should establish a teacher training system, organize teacher rotation training, carry out teaching competition, optimize teacher resource, and establish a sharing mechanism, especially strengthen the construction of double-professionally titled teachers. It is necessary to encourage teachers and students to go to the field and village, solve some problems that farmers actually encounter, and achieve the purpose of mutual improvement through solving problems and joint research. In addition, we should build a complete curriculum system, form teaching modules that match ideological and theoretical, develop excellent teaching materials, and build regional teaching materials with general teaching materials. The teaching materials should also be classified, layered and partitioned to form an organic whole, promote famous teachers, famous libraries, and teaching materials integrated. Building and make good use of training bases and standardizing the construction of farmers’ field schools is necessary as well. To promote the online and offline education and training integration, we should promote the on-site teaching function, improve the service level, exert to information technology role, and meet the diversified learning needs of farmers.

(iii) It is necessary to supervise the whole process and improve the standards of education and training. To improve the quality of education, we should formulate and improve the teaching standards, promote the standardization of knowledge and ability, strictly implement the teaching environment. We hope to link training objectives with contents and courses, strictly supervise the education and training process, regularly supervise and spot check the implementation, strengthen the standardized management of the whole process of education. Student satisfaction should be the core index to evaluate farmer cultivation effects. The government need to build a high-quality development and construction system, and establish a national normalized statistical mechanism for new farmer education and training.

(iv) It is necessary to actively create a good atmosphere for farmer education and training. To make farmers feel more gain, we can build a stage for new farmers to exchange ideas and exchange technology through skills competition, training development forum, and farmers’ innovation and creativity competition. We should promote the cooperative and complementary development of new farmers, and continue to track farmers’ industry after training. At the same time, we need to establish a good atmosphere of supporting and respecting new farmers in the whole society, to make farmers become an attractive industry, make agriculture a promising industry, and make rural areas a beautiful home to live and work. Farmer education is related to the high-quality development of agriculture and the comprehensive modernization of rural areas. We must adhere to the systematic concept, strengthen forward-looking thinking, overall planning, strategic layout and overall promotion, to achieve the unity of farmer education quality, team structure, talent scale and resource efficiency.