Study On Land Scale And Performance Of Rice Farmers In China

Since the reform and opening up, China has established a basic rural management system based on the household contract responsibility, which formed the household management pattern. In the early 1980s, it has played an important role in promoting the development of agricultural production, guaranteeing the national grain supply and raising the income of farmers. However, with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization in China, the drawbacks of traditional household management model emerge gradually, e.g., small size and fragmentation management, and become an obstacle to the modernization of agriculture. For this reason, regarding moderate scale, participants cultivating, land transfer, land consolidation, land ownership adjustment and agricultural services as the main contents, the Chinese government has carried out the exploration of land scale management for more than 30 years since the "No 1 Central Document" in 1984 and the constitutional amendment in 1988.There are two main policy objectives of land scale management, one is increasing the grain yield to ensuring food security and the other is promoting agricultural efficiency to raise farmers' income. However, academic research is controversial about the yield increasing effect and income raising effect of land scale management. In addition, as China's economy has entered a new normal, the land scale management has also arisen a lot of new situations, highlighted the need for in-depth study in the transition period. Rice is a staple food with the total area, the total yield and the yield per unit rankig second in the cereal crops in China, and the land fragmentation and decentralization management characteristics are obvious in rice production. Therefore, it is important to study the land scale and evaluate the scale performance of rice farmers in the transition period in China, which is of great significance to promoting land scale management, ensuring the national food security and raising the farmers'income.In this study, we first summarized the present situation and development trend of land scale management in agricultural developed countries, such as USA, France and Japan and made a general judgment on the general trend of land scale management. Then, in the context of farmer differentiation, development of agricultural services and agricultural supply-side structural reforms, two theoretical propositions were proposed by the theory of rational small-scale farmers, the theory of optimal farmers and the theory of economies of scale:1) the differences of land scale and their causes of rice farmers,2) the performance evaluation of land-scale management based on the objectives of food security and farmer'income. After that, using a nationwide surveyed data with large sample of households, we analyzed the land scale management status of Chinese rice farmers and their land scale management differences and causes, evaluated the performance of land scale management from two aspects, namely income and efficient through combining normative analysis and empirical analysis, qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis methods.The main conclusions are as follows:(1) Land scale management is the general trend in the process of agricultural modernization through the experience of United States, France and Japan. Land transfer and agricultural service are the two paths to realize the scale management. The land transfer forms vary in different countries. The United States, France and Japan have taken the forms of land trade, land lease, and land consolidation and conversion, respectively. However, the development direction of agricultural services is the same. Land scale management will reduce the number of producers, under this circumstance, the United States, France and Japan all have adopted legislation to clarify land tenure relations to protect the land rights of producers and maintain the interests for whom out of land management. The cultivation of the subject is an important part of land scale management. Different policies were implemented to support the development of subjects during the process, e.g., farms in the United States, large farms, large enterprises and large cooperatives in France, and corporate management organizations in Japan.(2) Small-scale, fragmentation and decentralization is the general situation of land scale management of rice farmers in China. The land scale and decision-making behavior of different farmers are quite different. The average cultivated land area of rice farmers is 40.49 mu in China, in which 28.62 mu is the transferred paddy field, and the multiple cropping index of rice is 111.84%. The land scale is quite different between land transfer farmers and non-transfer farmers. For farmers transferred land, the average paddy fields per household and paddy fields per plot is 130.65 mu and 8.34 mu, respectively, but for farmers not transferred land is 8.84 mu and and 1.41 mu, respectively. Farmer differentiation, like occupational differentiation and income differentiation have weakened the farmers' scale management decision-making behavior, but subject differentiation strengthened this behavior, their marginal effects were -0.01,-0.25 and 0.37, respectively. Agriculture services, such as technical service, processing and sales service, machinery service, financial service and agricultural materials supply service, had a positive impact on farmers' land scale management behavior, the marginal effect were 0.12,0.11,0.09,0.08 and 0.06, respectively.(3) Land scale is an important factor affecting the income level and income gap of rice farmers, with the income growth effect and structural adjustment effect. The per capita net income of rice-growing households was 14,300 yuan, and 1 mu increase in land scale will lead to 1.31% and 2.22% increase in the per capita net income and agricultural income, respectively, while 3.35% decrease in non-agricultural income. Income inequality analysis showed that the income gap of rice farmers is large and the land scale is the main reason for income inequality with the Gini coefficient, generalized entropy index and Atkinson index. The Shapley value decomposition results showed that the contribution of land scale to income inequality of per capita net income, agricultural income and non-agricultural income were 26.14%,30.86% and 15.62%, respectively. The larger the scale, the lower the risk return, but the risk management is beneficial to the maximization of the risk return. The mediation effect analysis showed that the land scale will positively affect the farmers' rice planting income by changing the farmers' risk management behavior.(4) The relationship and its significance between land scale and production efficiency are quite different due to the selection of different indicators. When quadratic relationship is considered, the relationship between land scale and land productivity, land scale and cost efficiency are both significantly U-shaped, while significantly inverted U-shaped between land scale and labor productivity, but not significant to cost- profit ratio and technical efficiency. For rice farmers in China, the optimal operating scale of farmland should be in the range of 500-700 mu accroding to comprehensive comparison of efficiencies. Land fragmentation is a common factor that negatively affects these 5 production efficiency. The analysis of returns to scale showed that the coefficient of returns to scale is 1.03, indicating a phenomenon of increasing returns to scale but not obvious, and the coefficient of returns to scale gradually decreased to smaller than 1 with the expansion of land scale, made the rice production from increasing returns to scale to diminishing returns to scale. And the analysis of economies of scale showed that the coefficient of economies of scale is 1.14, indicating a phenomenon of scale economy, but with the expansion of land scale, the coefficient of economies of scale gradually decreased to smaller than 1, made the rice production from economies of scale to diseconomies of scale.Based on the findings and conclusions above, several suggestions on how to promote the land scale management are proposed: the land scale of management has its theoretical and practical significance, and it is necessary to promote the land scale management in the process of agricultural modernization in China. Land transfer, land consolidation, and agricultural services are effective ways to realize the scale management. In the process of land scale management,1) the basic fact of farmers' differentiation need to be considered, to support the development of land scale management subjects, and to improve the pertinence and applicability of the scale management policies.2) The the basic rural management system need to be adhere to and improve, to clarify land tenure relations, and to maintain the interests for whom rent land or give up land management rights or land contract rights.3) The two policy objectives of land scale management, food security and farmer'income, need to trade off, to make a comprehensive consideration on the yield growth effect, income growth effect and structural adjustment effect.