Impact Studies Of Leased Farmland Scale And Stability On Fertilizer Input

Transfer of land rights have remarkable effects on problem solving such as land fragmentation and small-scale operation,and it is also an important requisite to achieve appropriate scale operation of agriculture.In fact,there are several forms of transfer of land rights,including land exchange and land lease among smallholders as well as large scale of land transfer launched by government.The scale and the use tenure stability of leased land acquired by agricultural business entities are obviously different after renting land,which will cause different fertilizer decisions made by those entities.Firstly,this paper analyzes how the different scale and the different use tenure stability of leased land will affect farmers' fertilizer decisions and accordingly proposes two testable hypotheses,that is to say,the larger scale of leased land helps fertilizer to achieve economies of scale and thus helping reduce fertilizer input during food production.Besides,definite lease term and written form of contract together represent more stable land use right and have a negative effect on fertilizer input.Secondly,the writer describes the differences caused by transfer of land rights,including scale of leased land,the stability of leased land and agricultural business entities' characters through the investigation of farmers,and focuss on different fertilizer decisions caused by those differences.We primarily get evidence and surprisingly find that farmers' fertilizer input are gradually reduced with larger scale and more stable use rights of the leased land through the descriptive analysis.Thirdly,we use econometric methods to test hypotheses.Finally,we evaluate the policies about transfer of land rights and make some suggestions from the perspective of reducing fertilizer input.We get the main research conclusions based on theoretical and empirical analysis.First of all,for rice production,the economies of scale of fertilizers' per mu input indeed exist,and before the limit of most appropriate scale of leased land,the fertilizers' per mu input decrease with the increase of land scale,but after that it shows adverse trend.The most appropriate scale of leased land has been calculated as 210 mu to 294 mu in this paper.Furthermore,the form of land contract and weather the lessor and lessee agree to definite leased term have a significant effect on stability of leased land acquired by lessee.Definite leased term can help strengthen the stability of land use right and thus helping reduce short-term actions(namely,fertilizers' per mu input).In general,Written form of land contract has a better protection on land use right than oral form of land contract,and fertilizers' per mu input under the former settings are correspondingly lower.But our regression result is not consistent,and this probably because that the smallholders take the form of oral contract in the land transfer led by themselves mostly happen around relatives and friends and clashes over land are seldom happened in research area.In this condition,oral form of land contract may have the same legal protection with the counterparts of oral form of land contract.The government should make further efforts to promote farmland's use tenure stability while guiding land lessee sign formal written land tenancy contract.And we should recognize the existence value of oral land tenancy contract and permit the smallholders to lease land in the form of oral land tenancy contract through consultation on an equal footing.And the households' dominant position of contractual right should be respected in this order,but by and large the stability of leased land has a negative influence on fertilizers' per mu input.Last but not least,the characters of agricultural business entities are important factors which could affect fertilizers' per mu input,the higher education level they have,the lower fertilizers would be input during rice production,what's more,appropriate agricultural training can also help improve their professional quality and thus helping reduce fertilizers'per mu input.From these main conclusions,we suggest that:(1)Continuing encouraging land tenancy to achieve the land-scale operation and the economies of scale of fertilizers,and thus reducing fertilizer input.(2)Government should provide guidance,service and credibility to regulate farmers' farmland transfer behavior and to improve farmland's use tenure stability,and thus reducing the short-term behavior in their use of fertilizer.(3)Government should be responsive to the needs of the new agricultural business entities,and launch awareness campaigns of environmentally friendly technologies and services to reduce fertilizer input and to improve both yield and the quality of crop.