Land Transfer Market And Land Fragmentation

The Household Responsibility System(HRS),despite its well-recognized positive impact on Chinese agricultural production,is also called into question.The land property system,as one of its component,makes no exception.The late 1980's has seen the sluggish growth of crop output,a phenomenon attributable to the land fragmentation, which results from implementation of land property system.Such revelation has caused people's call for a reform on land property rights for establishment and development of Land Transfer Market where land will be swapped and in turn operation of scale will be generated.In this way,land lots will be combined and land fragmentation will naturally be eliminated.The fact is more than complicated.Despite thousand-year durance of private ownership of land and free exchange of land in China,severe land fragmentation still remains,which bears testimony that it is not simply a product of land property system and its solution lies not in establishment of free land market.As opposed to the primogeniture in the Western Europe,Chinese partible inheritance system by which farm holdings go to all heirs equally is more favorable for generation and development of land fragmentation.Besides,ratio of population to land might constitute a more important and direct reason.In an era or a region in which land supplies exceeds demand,any forms of inheritance will not result in land fragmentation.In another case that land supplies can't meet demand,land property distribution and market can't smother land fragmentation and curb its further growth simultaneously.Therefore,theoretically,there seemly exists two feasible ways,strict restrict on land inheritance and regular reallocation of lands undertaken by compulsory administrative means,to solve land fragmentation.But historical experience from Tang and Song Dynasty indicates that even administrative means can not curb land fragmentation.Therefore,it is necessary to explore impact of ratio of population to land on land properties and demand-supply relationship that can deepen and broaden our insight into these problems,especially land fragmentation issue. Reduction of household numbers and extension of farm size are two feasible ways to decrease land fragmentation.Enlargement of farm size depends on cut of household numbers and enlargement of plot size requires household to swap lands for consolidation. To realize above two aims,land property must be transferred and farmer engage in off-farm occupation.This study aim at exploring whether land fragmentation can be alleviated or even eliminated by improving land property system and land swapping in market on the condition that household number and average land lots for per household are kept constant.Provided that privatized-ownership land exists,there will be three kinds of land markets of land swapping,land leasing and land trade.Accordingly,there are three approaches to lessen land fragmentation:free land trading,land leasing and voluntary swapping of lands.Based on high man/land ratios,large amount of rural surplus labor and imperfect rural social security network in China,this research discusses the possibility of land property rights reform serving as an effective solution to land fragmentation and further explores the general conditions applicable to land fragmentation solution,with a view to providing scientific and solid empirical data for government to formulate agricultural production and rural land policies.The main content of the dissertation is shown as follows:Main Content 1:Investigation on feasibility of land exchange serving as a solution to land fragmentation.By employing the distribution chart of lands scattered in 8 villages of Xinhua County in Jiangsu and Bin County in Helongjiang respectively,a program was made to simulate land exchange among farmers.Then an empirical data was analyzed to find out main obstacles to land swapping market development and study feasibility to settle land fragmentation.It is shown that land is still irreplaceable and undividable and secures employment,suggesting cost of rural land swapping exceeds benefits of land scale operation.Therefore,it is difficult to achieve land consolidation by market regulation.To reduce cost of land swapping,four points must be stressed.(1) increase number of farmer-owned land lots to raise probability of land adjacency and land matching;(2) enlarge plot size to enhance divisibility;(3) reduce number of households to streamline land transaction process;(4) expand land scale to make land replaceable.Obviously,to meet above four requirements,household numbers must be cut drastically.Moreover,land exchange and consolidation must be facilitated by labor force transfer as well as permanent migration and permanent waiving title to land.Although reform and improvement of land property system and land market can decrease expenses in finding, signing and enacting contracts,and even exempt tax,the difficulties caused by land mismatch will not become less.Main content 2:Investigation on feasibility to solve land fragmentation through land leasing market.Land leasing falls into two types of long-term and short-term.Data collected was statistically analyzed to reveal probability of land leasing occurrence and feasibility of land leasing serving as a settlement for land fragmentation.It is indicated that for most farmers who do off-farm work,land is more than a factor of production but security of employment.Therefore,land leasing is short-term and irregular.Land leasing is a source of rent income,at the same time,it enable them to reclaim the land as they lose jobs in the city.Consequently,it is impossible to develop a large-scale and permanent(or long-term) land leasing market at present.Such assumption that rural land leasing will contribute to reduction of land fragmentation is invalid.The short-term land leasing, which usually takes place between relatives and friends,puts no priority on rent gains.In addition,it is irregular and short-term.The feasibility to reduce land fragmentation by short-term land leasing,to a larger extent,depends on ways of land fragmentation in its initial stage.It was estimated that even in prosperous rural land market where nearly 50% is rented,probability of lassoer's land adjacency to lessee's is only 4.92%,which suggests that land fragmentation can not be solved only by short-term land rental market.As long as rural land functions livelihood,long-term land rental market will not develop to its full potentiality.It is ill-advised to boost long-term land leasing development through reform and improvement of land property system and land market mechanism.Despite contribution of such reforms to short-term land rental market,it is predicted that the effect on land fragmentation is negligible.Main Content 3:Investigation on feasibility to solve land fragmentation through land trade market.In light of farmers' dependence on land,there are two types of permanent rural-urban migrant and the one under permanent rural-urban migration.By analyzing farmers' intention to trade land and looking into land price matching issues,we found that it is impossible to solve land fragmentation through land trade market.Also,analysis results indicated that land is not only a production factor but also guarantee for employment.Because land belongs to private asset,there exists a vast gap between bidding prices for land selling and buying,which lead to failure in land transaction.In short,it is difficult to develop land trade market to its full potentiality,let alone settle land fragmentation by this method.