Make The Best Use Of Land:A Research On The Use Of Fragmented Farmland

This is an empirical research on the form and use of Chinese land property,and the performance of farmland institution.Fragmented farmland is a general land form in aboriginal areas which has a long agricultural history and a large number of aborigines.At the same time,it is also a fundamentally restriction factor to increase use efficiency of Chinese farmland.Mainstream individual action paradigm and the theoretical framework of “Definition of Property Rights-Economic Incentives” cannot analyze the use problem of fragmented farmland.With the collective action paradigm and the theoretical framework of “Characteristics of Property Rights-Structure of Property Rights”,this article analyzes how to reach the goal of making the best use of land by the use of fragmented farmland.Aboriginal areas has typical form of fragmented farmland,but it is different from Chinese farmland property rights.Fragmented farmland is influenced by the pluralism of land nature,resource endowment for “large population and less land”,and the institution of land equally allocation.The use of fragmented farmland shows its externality,and has the property rights characteristics of non-excludability,non-standard,immovability,and transfer-difficulty.Private ownership of land is common in aboriginal areas,and it forms market-oriented resource allocation and small-farmer family management.Because of externality,the use of individual farmland is restricted by other people,and individual farmers are not positive to farm.As a result,farmland resource are laid aside or underused,which is also a problem of “tragedy of anti-commons”.While,the farmland in China is collective ownership,and it forms an absolute average allocation of political resources and the double layer management system combined with centralization and decentralization.The farmland is more fragmented by the allocation of political resources.With the development of modern productivity,the problem of fragmented farmland in China is increasingly worse.Some farmers try to organize effective collective action by the institution innovation,and internalize the externality of farmland use into the profits of economic organization.In these institution innovation,there are three typical governance methods of fragmented farmland,contiguous farming by households in Shayang Country,farmland concentrated circulation in Fanchang Country and Shanghai City,and large-scale agricultural services in Sheyang Country.And,in different property right structure,these institution innovations form two different collective action modes of cooperative economy and collective economy.In the property right structure of private land ownership,farmers own entire and exclusive land management right,and they are cooperative economy.The principles of cooperative economy are unanimous and Pareto Improvement,thus the rules based on are legal rules and price mechanism.In the property right structure of collective land ownership,the collective own the land management right,and farmers are collective economy.The principles of collective economy are majority principle and Kaldor Hicks Improvement,and the rules they based on are self-governance principles and public sharing interest mechanism.From the practice of institution innovation,different type of collective action have different transaction cost and economic effects.There are three problems of cooperative economy.For the reason that land property right has the non-standard characteristic,the price mechanism of calculating the individual cost-benefits has the problem of high-cost measurement.Standard legal principles cannot solve the problem of transaction particularity.Plus,for the land property cannot move,the principle of unanimous may have the heterogeneity problem caused by farmers' different willingness,or may also encounter farmers' opportunism behavior and make unanimous action fail.Thus,cooperative economy has high transaction cost,and it cannot effectively solve the problem of fragmented farmland.Collective economy can solve or avoid these problems.The flexible autonomy principle can solve the problem of transaction particularity,the public sharing interest mechanism of “Sharing Interests and Sharing Cost” avoid the problem of measurement,the majority rule of “the minority obeying to the majority” can solve the difficulty of unanimous action.Therefore collective economy has low transaction cost,and can effectively solve the problem of fragmented farmland.This means that Chinese property right structure of collective ownership and its method of two layers management can effectively governance fragmented farmland and improve the development of agricultural modernization.Besides in China,there are two typical governance mode of fragmented farmland inother aboriginal countries,and they form different forms of agricultural modernization.One in Japan,their right to use land is the mode of market-oriented circulation,and this mode cannot effectively governance the fragmented farmland.The other in England,their mode is government-forced,and they effectively governance the fragmented farmland and form large farms agriculture,which also pays a lot.Comparatively speaking,in China,the reform of property right structure forms a governance mode of fragmented farmland which is low-cost and effective,and at the same time it forms a modern agricultural form of“small-farmer family agriculture +collective economy” with Chinese characteristics.It reflects the institution advantage of collective ownership.Chinese current farmland institution reform focuses on farmland circulation,and it is land-property-oriented.As it will weaken and even cancel the management right of collective land,the collective ownership will then collapse.In the circumstance of more fragmented farmland in China,it will not only lose the institution advantage of collective ownership,but also result in more severe problems of fragmented farmland.Chinese farmland institution reform should focus on the governance of fragmented farmland,and direct to strengthen the management right of collective land,in order to make the best use of land and improve the development of agricultural modernization.