Study On Competitive Mechanisms And Transition Patterns Of Agricultural Land Use In Suburbs Of Metropolis

With the rapid process of urbanization and industrialization, the agriculture development in China is in a period of great transition. Facing with the rural human-earth relationship and the rapid change of relative prices of factors of production, it is quite a practical problem to be solved to promote the transformation of agricultural land use types. Based on theories of comparative advantage, resource endowment, competitive advantage and the new structural economic theory, this study built a theoretical analytical framework of competitive mechanism and model of agricultural land use transition, exploring the feature and rule as well as the inner mechanism of agricultural transition. Main conclusions of the study are as follows:(1) Agricultural land use is the activities that the stakeholders, to meet their own needs, combining the agricultural land resources with other production factors to gain material products and services. Competition emerges when stakeholders transforming the agricultural land use type driven by benefit expectation. Agricultural land use transition is the result of agricultural land use competition.In the procedure of agricultural land use transition, the evolution of agricultural land use type was achieved by competition, making the predominant agricultural land use type changed.(2) To indentify the core element of agricultural land use and the determinants of competitive advantage, and to analyze the transformation pattern, a’subjective- objective’ model of agricultural land use was built, composed of interest subject (business entity, administrative body, public welfare subject and consumption subject) and factor allocation object (land resource, labor, capital, technology and infrastructure). This study explores the competitive mechanism and pattern of agricultural land use transition in terms of factor allocation object and of interest subject. From the perspective of factor allocation object, the competitive advantage of agricultural land use is derived from the comparative advantage according to the factor endowment structure. According to the comparative advantage, agricultural land use transition pattern is:fulfill comparative advantage—upgrading factor endowment structure. From the perspective of interest subject, the competitive advantage of agricultural land use is derived from their cooperation effect. According to the advantage of cooperation, agricultural land use transition procedure can be divided into four phases:initial phase, self-organized evolution phase, government leading phase and collaborative innovation phase.(3) Combined with empirical analysis, we applied and verified the analyze framework of agricultural land use competition mechanism and transition model.In Case 1, we analyzed the change characteristics and driving mechanism of agricultural land use transition in suburb of Shanghai from the perspective of farmers’ livelihood. Result shows that, from 1993 to 2013, the predominant agricultural land use type in suburb of Shanghai changed from decentralized operation to moderate scale management.In the procedure of transition, the self-organized innovation behavior of farmers and the guidance mechanism of government should operate synergistically. In Case 2, the current situation and characteristics of agricultural land use transition in Changsha was analyzed from the perspective of farmers’ planting decision in paddy field. We got the result that’ rice field from double cropping to single cropping’ is the consequence of the competitive advantage loss of traditional agricultural land use type. Currently, Changsha is in the self-organized innovation phase of agricultural land use transition. The local government lack of the valid guide, making the transition difficult to develop further. In Case 3, single factor productivity method was applied to analyze comparatively the characteristics of suburban agricultural land use transition in Shanghai and Changsha. The advanced factors such as technology and infrastructure are the obvious features of the transition in Shanghai. The characteristics of suburban agricultural land use transition in Changsha is not clear, whereas in Shanghai, land to labor ratio improved significantly in the past few years, conforming to the factor endowment structure change in Shanghai.(4) The policy suggestions to promote the agricultural land use transition procesure of suburbs of metropolis is put forward. On this basis, an analysis framework of agricultural land use policy effect was built, taking Dianshan lake area in Shanghai as an example to evaluate the socioeconomic and ecological effects comprehensively under different policy scenarios from 2013 to 2020.