Abstract
Village-level agricultural specialization in China is becoming increasingly important for rural development. However, existing knowledge of specialized agricultural villages (SAVs) based on singular assessment criteria and data describing static time points becomes insufficient in addressing multifaceted developmental questions today. We examined the long-term development patterns of SAVs in Anhui, China, with attributes from multiple angles, and explored how local factors affected SAV development across space and time using random forest regression. We found that as time elapsed, economic rationality drove specialized farmers closer to sale dependency and made SAVs more susceptible to market and economic factors, which builds upon previous findings analyzing SAVs at specific time points and consolidates the importance of market factors in the long-term development of SAVs. However, this susceptibility manifests differently in these two geographically contrasting regions north and south of Huai River. The northern SAVs received increased influences from market and economic factors, while the southern SAVs were continuously controlled by market and location factors. The dynamic spatial and temporal patterns of the two regions point to different dependencies, which emphasized local sales in the north and distant sales in the south. We propose that policies and strategies regarding SAV development accommodate these dynamics and address appropriate influencing factors accordingly.
Highlights
Agricultural production in the twentieth century was characterized by three major processes: intensification, specialization, and concentration [1]
Our findings suggest that a spatial mismatch may exist between the source of economic factors that influence specialized agricultural villages (SAVs) development and the location of the SAVs, one that can only be revealed at the right spatial scales
Our analysis suggests a differential treatment for SAVs north and south of Huai River in Anhui and similar areas when policies to promote SAV development are being made: (1) for the SAVs north of Huai River whose development is dominated by market and economic factors, local authorities or stakeholders should focus on the types of agricultural products and improve their quality by bettering the production environment and expanding relevant markets
Summary
Agricultural production in the twentieth century was characterized by three major processes: intensification, specialization, and concentration [1]. Agricultural specialization has been broadly defined as the process of concentrating resources such as labor and capital on producing a limited variety of goods [1] Cases such as the One Village One Product project of Japan and the Saemaul Undong Movement in the Republic of Korea have shown specialization’s potential in reaching higher production efficiencies and incomes [4,5,6], revealing its potential in dealing with the rural decline prevalent in many countries [7,8]. While large-scale grain production is increasing in size and quantity, most of the agricultural production in China is still being carried out by smallholder farmers [9] This huge proportion of the farming practice has been operating under an abundant labor force and scarce available land resources. This, coupled with the farmers’ need to maximize profit, the diverse geographical environment, and the sub-regional market, serve as the breeding ground for small-scale agricultural specialization
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