The income of an increasing number of farmers in Shanghai is closely related to share capitals, rentals, security benefits and wages.

Share capitals: farmers’ income increasing steadily
The Shanghai Farmers’ Specialized Cooperation Associations, which gained momentum last year, enabled a group of farmers to become shareholders through land contracting. These farmers have enjoyed steady and long-term returns on the land ever since. It is learned that this year Shanghai will promote the system of retaining a certain proportion of land for farmers’ collective use from the land to be requisitioned. The land retained will be used for the development of the secondary and tertiary industries, which will help increase farmers’ income.

Rentals: Farmers’ estate income becoming increasingly explicit
The increase of laborers from outside of Shanghai makes the surplus rooms of the farmers’ in the suburbs of Shanghai or around the towns in the outskirts of Shanghai in great demand. Last year a spot check in Pudong New Area showed that farmers’ rental in this district had reached RMB1,200 yuan per capita, accounting for 15 percent of farmers’ total income. Today, Shanghai is making an effort to probe into a mechanism featuring the gradual explicitness of farmers’ estate income, such as the current pilot work on the exchange of farmers’ homestead.

Security benefits: gradually narrowing the gap between city and countryside
The security benefits for Shanghai farmers consist of the township insurance, the rural insurance, the low-income security, and the rural cooperative medical service. “The township insurance” launched at the end of 2003 had taken in 580,000 farmers by the end of last year. In addition, the per capita compensation for the farmers enjoying the rural cooperative medical service had reached RMB218 yuan by the end of last year, a 10.1 percent increase than the year before. This year Shanghai will achieve the goal of mobilizing over 95 percent of the farmers to participate in the cooperative medical program.

Wages: a term no longer strange to farmers
From 2001 on, wages have become an important source of farmers’ income and have been increasing every year. Presently, they have made up over 80 percent of farmers’ disposable income. Together with the latest 150,000 non-agricultural jobs in the suburbs of Shanghai last year, Shanghai now has 1.86 million farmers engaging in non-agricultural work. From this year on, Shanghai will transfer its rural laborers into the non-agricultural sector at a speed of creating 100,000 new job opportunities annually, so that more farmers can become wage earners.