【正文】 he agricultural population accounts for not more than five per cent of the total population of the country. The United States now has seven million farmers, making up per cent of the total population. More than 100 years ago, one farmer in the United States could only support five people. By 1976, one farmer was able to support 56 people. In Canada, people directly engaged in farming and animal husbandry are less than 500,000, only accounting for per cent of the total population. So, on average, each agricultural labourer farms 3,000 mu and produces 100,000 kg yield of wheat, which is 100 times as much as the yield of wheat per labourer in China. The progress of modernisation of agriculture in these countries was acpanied by the transfer of the agricultural population. From the late eighteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth, most of the population in the United States lived in the country working as farmers. In 1780, per cent of the total population was rural, which lasted until 1860, when the rural population still accounted for per cent of the total. This is similar to China39。s agriculture has been in a backward state for so many hundreds of years that natural economy has occupied a dominant position. In order to withstand natural calamities, people always relied on more workers, instead of on the improvement of the tools of production. Heavy manual work was the chief mode of production in the old society, so the development of agricultural production was linked to massive employment of manpower. In this mode of production, people naturally did not know the exact economic ratio between the result of work and the consumption of labour. They did not grudge putting in large amounts of labour. In this way, more and more labourers were wanted, and in turn, more and more population was required. This is the tradition of Chinese agriculture. As early as the Western Zhou dynasty, more than 3,000 years ago, there existed largescale collective labour. The old tradition of farming, as recorded in Shijing (The Book of Songs), ten thousand people make a group, and a thousand groups can do farming, was passed on up to the present. It still influences modern agricultural production. This, then, is the historical cause. (2) The quantity and quality of workers directly affect family ines and standard of living. In the current socialist stage, workers have not pletely eliminated this vestige of the old society. They still take labour as a means of making a living, and cannot work wholly for society without being paid. A farmer, for one thing, is one of the members of the collective economy。 beets are carried to mills by carriages after their leaves are removed. As a result, much is damaged by frost, the wastage is great, and the rate of sugar production is low. If we have more enterprises run jointly by agriculture, industry and business, not only can surplus agricultural labour be drawn on, but also we can greatly raise productivity and develop modity production. Third, we should develop labourintensive industries in the country, such as textiles, weaving, clothing, metal products, mon machinery, building and transportation services. These medium or small enterprises can absorb surplus agricultural labour, especially female. We can also bring the advantage of more labour into full play to export both inexpensive and highquality products to gain foreign exchange. According to their own specific conditions, villages and towns in the country can engage in planting, breeding, processing, mining, and so on. Developing the production of fuel, power and raw materials is particularly important. Thus we can work small iron mines, small coal mines, small electric power stations, small cement works, and make full use of wind power and marsh gas. Finally, the transformation of the agricultural population should include interval diversification. We should make full use of agricultural workers to develop a diversified economy including farming, forestry, stockraising, fisheries and sidelines. Moreover, we can engage in intensive and meticulous farming to raise the output per unit area, develop the agricultural chemical industry, spread improved plant varieties, open up wasteland, grow more economic plants, build irrigation works, increase trade service items, and so on. In order to facilitate the transfer of the agricultural population, we must create conditions to enhance its quality. Education and training are needed to prevent structural unemployment, . on the one hand, there is a surplus unskilled farming population, while on the other, there is a shortage of skilled technicians. The Cause of Surplus Agricultural Labour Surplus agricultural labour generally takes two forms. One is longterm or absolute surplus. In other words, the supply of labour surpasses the capacity of land and other means of production. The other is seasonal or relative surplus. The character of agricultural production is that the period of production is long and seasons are very important. There is a big difference in the demand for labour between busy and slack farming seasons. Generally speaking, there are two or three months per year of peak demand for labour. The other months are slack seasons. Consequently, a very flexible labour force is required. In slack seasons, there are remarkably large numbers of surplus workers. The following points are the major causes of surplus agricultural labour. （ 1） The root cause is the smallscale farming mode of production and the low level of productive technology formed through China39。s agriculture is to carry out modernisation, which implies that the division of work be more specialised, the technology more advanced, and new branches of work more developed. All of these are prerequisites for increased employment and the trans