The process of agricultural mechanization in China in the 1950s was not only a process of "technology going to the countryside" mainly based on agricultural machinery, but also a process of transforming farmers' traditional thinking, shaping new farmers that were compatible with agricultural mechanization, and completing the ideological socialization of "thinking going to the countryside".
In the practice of agricultural mechanization, the state embeds the shaping of new farmers into agricultural production and farmers' lives, in order to integrate farmers' ideological concepts, strengthen their collective consciousness, stimulate their subjectivity, and cultivate their scientific and technological concepts, thus shaping socialist new farmers with "high socialist consciousness, technology, culture, and comprehensive talents".
Background of Agricultural Mechanization in China (1950s-1960s)
Low starting point and weak industrial foundation: In the early days of the founding of New China, agricultural mechanization almost started from scratch. At that time, China was not yet able to manufacture agricultural machinery on its own and relied on agricultural machinery and equipment provided by the Soviet Union as a technological starting point.
Driven by national strategy: Agricultural mechanization has been included in the overall socialist modernization construction. Mao Zedong explicitly proposed in 1959 that the fundamental way out for agriculture lies in mechanization, elevating it to the will of the state.
Institutional guarantee: cooperativization and collectivization: Through the agricultural cooperativization movement (since the mid-1950s) and the people's commune system (after 1958), a social organizational foundation was established for centralized resources and unified allocation of labor and agricultural machinery.
Technical Path: "Integration of Soil and Ocean": While introducing Soviet agricultural machinery technology, encourage mass agricultural tool innovation, and form a promotion model of "soil as the mainstay and integration of soil and ocean".
Emphasizing both human resources and ideological transformation: emphasizing the shaping of a new type of farmers with culture, technology, and socialist consciousness, and combining mechanization with ideological construction.
Preliminary results: By 1960, Northeast China and other regions had achieved tractor assisted farming, mechanized sowing and threshing. For example, the number of tractors in Xingnong Commune, Baiquan County, Heilongjiang Province increased from 118 to 300.
This historical process has important historical reference significance for strengthening the positive guidance of modern agricultural technology on farmers' thinking during the 14th Five Year Plan period, as well as for cultivating new professional farmers.
