Abstract
This study calculates the effect of different types of land circulation on farmers’ decision-making regarding agricultural planting structure, using field survey data involving 1,120 households in Hubei province, China, and PSM (propensity score matching) and GPSM (general propensity score matching) methods. Results from PSM showed that land circulation could significantly increase farmers’ decisions to plant food crops, which confirms the positive effect of rural land circulation on the “grain orientation” of crop planting structure. Results from GPSM further indicate that the total land circulation, the paddy land circulation, and the dry land circulation all have significantly positive effects on planting structure adjustment towards “grain orientation.” Additionally, planting structure adjustment towards “grain orientation” increases as the scale of land circulation increases, and the former shows a higher rate of increase than the latter, which confirms that rural land circulation facilitates an adjustment in structure towards planting food crops.
Highlights
The issues arising from the loss of cultivated land, such as cultivated land fragmentation or abandonment, cultivated land outflow toward construction land, have become a serious phenomenon impeding agriculture intensification and scale economy [1, 2], impeding the modernization of agriculture
Will rural land circulation sway planting decisions towards a “non-grain orientation,” or will rural land circulation instead facilitate a “grain orientation” of crop planting? Based on field survey data for farmers in Hubei province, China, in 2018, this study used PSM and generalized propensity score matching method (GPSM) methods to address the influence of circulation of different types of rural land on farmers’ planting structure decisions
The results support the latter inference by indicating that compared with the absence of land circulation, land circulation can significantly promote the adjustment of farmers’ agricultural planting structure to the direction of “grain orientation.”
Summary
The issues arising from the loss of cultivated land, such as cultivated land fragmentation or abandonment, cultivated land outflow toward construction land, have become a serious phenomenon impeding agriculture intensification and scale economy [1, 2], impeding the modernization of agriculture. In China, the rural land circulation policy has been put forward as an effective solution to the fragmentation and outflow of cultivated land. Over the course of the introduction and refinement of this policy, the proportion of rural land circulation in China has risen from 2.6 percent in 1996 to 40 percent in 2018, and the total circulation scale has reached 2.4 million hectares [8]. The rural land circulation policy might induce farmers to change their original planting structure [9,10,11] and impact national food security [11,12,13,14]. Some scholars have raised concerns that rural land circulation might induce farmers to change
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