The Impact of Off-Farm Employment on Farmland Production Efficiency: An Empirical Study Based in Jiangsu Province, China

Abstract

The secret to ensuring food security and the growth of agricultural development is farmland production efficiency. In the context of urbanization, this means that farmers need to increase their off-farm employment behavior. The research goal of this paper is to explore whether this will have a impact on farmland production. This paper is based on the data of the China Land Economic Survey conducted by Nanjing Agricultural University and uses Tobit and other methods to conduct empirical tests. The main findings of this paper are as follows: (1) When the proportion of the household’s off-farm employment time is less than 73%, an increase in off-farm employment reduces farmland production efficiency. When the proportion of the household’s off-farm employment time exceeds 73%, an increase in off-farm employment increases the farmland production efficiency. (2) This paper eliminates the scale efficiency contribution in farmland production efficiency to obtain pure technical production efficiency. After verification, off-farm employment and farmland pure technical production efficiency show a U-shaped correlation and the inflection points of the two U-shaped curves coincide. (3) The reason for the inflection point is that after the off-farm employment of farmers reaches the inflection point, with a further increase in off-farm employment, the renting-out behavior of farmland increases and there is increased input of labor-saving technology in agricultural land production, because of which the production efficiency and pure technical efficiency of the farmland increase. To sum up, off-farm employment does not necessarily mean reduced farmland production efficiency. Farmland leasing behavior plays a key role in mitigating the impact of off-farm employment on farmland production. Therefore, in the process of urbanization, the improvement of the land transfer market, the development of agricultural socialized services, and the promotion of cooperative operation will help to ensure the productivity of farmland.