Structural changes in the development of China’s farmland consolidation in 1998–2017: Changing ideas and future framework

Abstract

Land consolidation and rehabilitation (LCR) is China's national strategy for the protection of China's cultivated land and for the insurance of national food security. This paper traces the development of LCR policies over the past 20 years to investigate the key characteristic in different periods and to identify the future direction of development. The data used in this research was mainly drawn from the rural land consolidation and rehabilitation monitoring and control system. We used penalty comparison function on indicators of land consolidation scale to detect change-points of LCR development and gained a detailed understanding of characteristics using a policy analysis approach. Three distinct phases were found: capital farmland stage with quantity management (1998–2007), well-facilitated farmland construction stage with quality improvement (2008–2012), and exploration stage of ecological construction (2013–2017). This paper indicates that China will soon solve the physical infrastructure problems related to farmland. Based on the key issues currently facing farmland in China, we proposed the concept and framework of healthy farmland as a guiding principle for future land consolidation development. Exploring the local theory and enhancing the effectiveness of policies will become the focus, thus laying the foundation for the achievement of quantity, quality, and ecology of cultivated land in China.