Do agricultural productive services alleviate farmland abandonment? Evidence from China rural household panel survey data

Abstract

As an important means to solve “who will farm” and “how to farm” in the future, agricultural productive services change the allocation structure of agricultural factors and play an important role in alleviating farmland abandonment. This study uses the 2017 China Rural Household Panel Survey data and adopts the logistic model, the IV Tobit model, and the mediating effect model to investigate the impact of agricultural productive services on farmland abandonment. The results show: (1) Agricultural productive services significantly reduce farmland abandonment by 1.51% on average. (2) Mechanism analysis implies that agricultural labour substitution, land transfer effect, and technological adoption effect play important intermediary roles in alleviating farmland abandonment. (3) Moreover, compared with the eastern, central, and non-karst regions, agricultural productive services failed to reduce farmland abandonment in the western and karst regions with poor terrain conditions. Agricultural productive services could alleviate the farmland abandonment of small farmers and elderly farmers. Therefore, agricultural productive services contribute to the reuse of small-scale plots.