The Research On Famer Households' Farmland Management Behaviour

Farmland takes an especial and non-replaceable function in the agricultural production. Land acts as a centrum of farming organization in terms of the relationship between land resource and other agricultural production elements. Since land is a resource of production as well as the object of work, the course of farming is equal to the course of farmland use and management. At present, the management of farmland is organized by farmer households in our country, and the farmer household is the basic micro-economic unit in the country. The behaviour of farmer households in farmland management determines the gross production and increase rate of agriculture of our country. At the same time, the behaviour of farmer households in farmland use is closely related to the farmers' income. Farmland management can reflect the combination effect of farmland and labor objects, labor force, and labor instruments such as machines, establishments and so on. Farmland, labor force, labor instruments and labor objects comprise the production mode of farmer households. With the increase of population, farmland area per capita is becoming small and small. Because the efficiency of small household management of farming is difficult to improve, and the scale management is difficult to realize, the gross production of agriculture is facing challenge. Therefore, it is necessary to study the forming process and mechanism of the farmland management of farmer households, and search for the factors that have impacts on the performance of farmer households.We chose three villages from Nantong, Jiangsu province with different urbanization levels and non-faming farmers' working area to investigate the farmers' cognition to land and production aspects using a survey involved more than 100 farmer households. Based on the survey, we had the data of farmland management and agricultural production of recent years as well as the farmers' cognition. Then the farmland transfer status, farmland management characteristics and performance of farmer households of Nantong city were analyzed. Combined with the cognition survey, the reasons why do farmer households behaviour the way they do was also discussed, and the factors that had effects on the management decision process of farmer householders were summarized. In the end, the countermeasures and suggestions were proposed to optimize the behaviour of farmers and improve the agricultural production and the economic development of rural area of China. The results of this study can be summarized as follows: 1) the benefit of farmland management of farmer households is very low, and the agricultural income has a smaller proportion in the gross income of farmer households; 2) the development of economy and the variety of occupations of farmer households can not accelerate the farmers giving up their farmland efficiently; 3) non-faming labors working at other palaces is an important precondition of farmland transfer; 4) the effect of agricultural policies such as the agricultural taxes derating on farmer households is very limited; 5) the stability of tenure and land rights is important to farmers, and can affect their decision making; 6) farmer households have multi-motives in the decision making process. The results of this study showed the importance of policy implications on farmland use and management. Such findings will be useful to the policy makers to make efficient agricultural policies to facilitate farmer households' farmland management behaviour.