Abstract
Arable land resources are essential for food security and sustainable agricultural development, and an objective and comprehensive evaluation of overseas arable land resources is indispensable to the decision-making of various Chinese enterprises. However, overseas arable land resources and factors influencing China’s investment therein have rarely been investigated. In the present study, the authors select eight indexes related to the quantity and quality of arable land and utilize the entropy weighting method and technique for order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) method to comprehensively evaluate arable resources in 48 “Belt and Road” countries for the period 2008–2016. Renewable internal freshwater resources and irrigated farmland area are found to be the primary factors affecting the wealth of arable land resources. Based on this evaluation, the authors conduct empirical tests concerning the main factors affecting the scale of China’s investment in foreign arable land using a panel Tobit model. The results show that Chinese companies tend to invest in countries with high levels of arable land resources and low corruption risk. Based on these findings, this study concludes that Chinese enterprises should engage in joint development with host countries and support the sustainability of long-term investment in cultivated land.
Highlights
In recent years, there has been a worldwide boom in overseas arable land investment [1,2]
We propose that the inconsistent results of the existing empirical research have a lot to do with scholars’ methods of evaluating the arable land resources of the host country
By using the panel Tobit model, we find that the arable land resources and corruption level of the host country are the main factors that affect China’s overseas investment in arable land
Summary
There has been a worldwide boom in overseas arable land investment [1,2]. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) reports indicate that overseas arable land investment is a kind of transnational investment [9], and other studies conclude that overseas arable land investment brings employment opportunities to farmers [10], and improves agricultural output levels by sharing agricultural science and technology in underdeveloped areas [6,11] There are both supporters and opponents of investment in overseas farmland, as a developing country with poor arable land resources China’s investment in overseas arable land has attracted great attention from international researchers [7,10,11,12]
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