Rural income and the future

One of the hottest topics in China today is food prices, especially prices of agricultural products and how to increase farmers' income. The government's monetary policies are well suited to curb rising vegetable and fruit prices, though natural calamities and external shocks sometimes reduce agricultural yields, which in turn increase prices. But fortunately their effects are short-lived and prices fall after a couple of months.

The problem of how to increase farmers' income is somewhat more complex and its solution not so easy.

At the risk of over-simplification, it appears that the solution to the current problem is urbanization, that is, encouraging farmers and, more generally, rural residents to move to cities where they can get jobs, save as much as possible and remit a large portion of their income to their families in rural areas.