Abstract
Agricultural machinery services play an increasingly important role in the land transfer market, especially in developing countries. Prior studies have explored the impact factors of machinery use on agricultural production and land transfer, respectively. However, little research has focused on the relationship between the adoption of agricultural machinery services and the land transfer of rice farmers. To bridge this gap, this study investigated the correlation between machinery services and land transfer, using unique survey data of 810 rice farmers collected from Sichuan province in China. Additionally, this study further explored the impact mechanism on land transfer of rural households with IV-Probit and IV-Tobit models. The empirical results show the following: (i) Agricultural machinery services have a significantly positive and robust effect on both the incidence and area of rice farmers’ land transfer-in, while the impact degree is different. Specifically, with other conditions remaining unchanged, and with a 1% increase in the proportion of machinery services, the average probability of land transfer-in of rice farmers increased by 2.4%, and the area of land transfer-in increased by 13.4 mu, on average. (ii) For control variables, head education, agricultural certificates and whether the majority of land, are in a flat area have positive impacts on land transfer-in behavior. Yet, age and off-farm labor have a negative impact on land transfer-in area. Moreover, our findings highlight the importance of agricultural machinery services in stimulating the development of rural land rental markets.
Highlights
Rice is one of the main foods of the whole world, and its planting area and output are basic guarantees for global food safety, especially for developing and transition economies.Scholars have conducted a lot of research on rice planting preferences and technology adoption [1,2,3,4,5,6]
With the field survey data of 810 rice households of Sichuan Province China in 2020, iv-probit and iv-tobit models were used to probe the impact of agricultural machinery services on the land transfer of rice householders
When other conditions remain unchanged, for every 10% increase in machinery services rate, the rate in land transfer-in will increase by an average of 2.4%, while the area of land transfer-in will increase by an average of 13.4%
Summary
Rice is one of the main foods of the whole world, and its planting area and output are basic guarantees for global food safety, especially for developing and transition economies. Scholars have conducted a lot of research on rice planting preferences and technology adoption [1,2,3,4,5,6]. For China as a rice consumer, Chinese scholars attach great importance to research fields related to rice production and management [7,8,9,10]. For developing countries, where rural labor is constantly shifting to cities, in order to ensure rice production, it is necessary to figure out how to solve the shortage of agricultural labor [11]. The rural land household contract responsibility system (HCRS, which refers that the family responsibility system replaced the production team system and became the unit of production and income distribution [12]) is considered to be the most successful economic reform policy and institutional arrangement in China from the 20th century [13,14,15]
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