Study On The Influence Of Non-agricultural Employment On The Behavior Of Farmland Transfer

The No.1 central document since 2015 has mentioned many times that we should promote the transfer of agricultural land and develop various scale of operation.The appropriate scale operation of farmland has become the consensus of China’s agricultural development.With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization,a large number of farmers have turned to non-agricultural industries.It is of great significance to study the impact of non-agricultural employment on the transfer of agricultural land for optimizing the allocation of land resources and promoting the moderate scale development of agricultural land in China.What is the impact of non-agricultural employment on the transfer of agricultural land when we promote the appropriate scale of agricultural land? Scholars at home and abroad observe the different perspectives,research methods and data sources of non-agricultural employment and farmland transfer,and draw different research conclusions.This paper first constructs the analysis framework of non-agricultural employment and agricultural land transfer through relevant theoretical analysis,and puts forward the research hypothesis of non-agricultural employment and agricultural land transfer.Secondly,based on the data of 546 farm household surveys in Sichuan Province,a variety of research methods are used to conduct empirical analysis to clarify the impact of non-agricultural employment of rural households on the transfer of agricultural land,and to analyze the causes of this impact,to verify the non-agricultural employment and agricultural land transfer Research hypothesis.In the empirical part,the steps are as follows: The first step,different from others who take the farmland transferred out area as the explained variable,this paper uses the proportion of rural households transferred out of farmland,and carries out the benchmark empirical regression with the Tobit model.The second step is the multi-dimensional robustness test.The core explanatory variable and the explained variable were replaced,and the Tobit and Probit models were used for regression respectively.The third step is to screen the benchmark sample data under the condition that the off-farm employment time is before and the farmland transfer time is behind,and then carry out regression and ovtest endogeneity test on the selected sample data.Finally,the reference samples were divided into plain region and hilly region,and the heterogeneity analysis was carried out by Tobit model regression.These practices make the results less volatile.The research conclusions of this paper are as follows: Firstly,the higher the level of peasant households’ off-farm employment,the higher the proportion of farmland transfer.According to the baseline regression results,the proportion of farmers’ off-farm employment at the significance level of 1% positively affects the proportion of farmland transferred out.The results of robustness test and endogeneity test both make the conclusion more reliable.Secondly,the number of farmers engaged in off-farm employment is large,but its off-farm employment still has a large space to improve.In 2017,485 households took part in off-farm employment,and 88.83% of farmers took part in off-farm employment.However,the proportion of households with non-farm employment duration of more than 6months per capita and the proportion of non-farm employment greater than 0.5 is relatively low.Thirdly,the level of farmland transfer of rural households is relatively low,and the influencing factors of farmland transfer may be different in different regions.Therefore,the principle of moderate,orderly and taking measures according to local conditions should be adhered to in promoting farmland transfer.In view of the above research conclusions,this paper puts forward the following suggestions: to improve the social security level of farmers,in order to increase the proportion of non-agricultural employment of farmers;Increase off-farm skill training for farmers to increase their off-farm employment time;The third is to give full play to the driving ability of village cadres and grass-roots organizations according to local conditions,which can not only promote the off-farm employment of farmers indirectly to promote moderate and orderly farmland circulation,but also directly drive farmers’ farmland of moderate scale.