【正文】 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 imports of vegetable oil. From the above, it is predicted that the green revolution centred on improved varieties of seeds will have spread throughout the world by the year 2020. From then on, work on breeding seeds and controlling the bioenvironment will bring about another new agricultural revolution. It is clear that biochemical technology has a great effect on the modernisation of agriculture. We should not, however, ignore mechanisation in agricultural modernisation just because of biochemical technology. On the contrary, in certain sparsely populated areas, agricultural mechanisation should be carried out first. Although in general China is densely populated, even in the densely populated areas, machines should gradually be substituted for manual labour. To conclude, in accordance with the conditions of China, the modernisation of agriculture should rely mainly on the modernisation of biochemical technology, and secondarily on mechanisation. In addition, intensive and meticulous farming, and spreading scientific methods, are needed so as to change progressively from labourintensive to technologyintensive production. In this way, we can achieve the transformation of farm labour, make full use of agricultural surplus labour and continuously raise agricultural labour productivity. The Inevitability of the Transformation of the Agricultural Population The transformation of the agricultural population is defined as the shift of the agricultural population from agricultural to nonagricultural sectors. In all economic branches, the larger the agricultural population, the lower the agricultural labour productivity. Lenin pointed out, when analysing the development of the capitalist system in Russia, that the population in underdeveloped countries is almost all agricultural, which, of course, does not mean that those people only work on farming, since they can process their agricultural products by themselves. He also pointed out that the development of a modity economy itself implies that more and more people leave agriculture. In other words, it means that the industrial population increases while the agricultural one decreases. The decrease of an agricultural population is a historical tendency. At present, in such countries as the United States, Canada, Britain and France, the 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 long history. China39。 the other is advances in the field of biochemical technology, such as the improvement of conditions and techniques of production. Modernisation should be acplished step by step. First, we should substitute agricultural machinery for heavy manual labour to free farmers from traditional modes practised for hundreds of years. This would mean transplanting rice shoots without bending over, and carrying loads without using shoulders. Second, we should use machinery to increase efficiency, especially in the busy seasons. Third, we should rely on machinery to promote the specialisation and socialisation of agricultural production. Therefore, we should not set agricultural mechanisation against rural employment, thus slowing down the pace of agricultural mechanisation. Rather, if we can settle the problem properly, mechanisation should not make thin