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PurposeSoil nutrient management and fertilizer use by farmers are important for sustainable grain production. The authors examined the effect of an experimental agricultural extension program, the science and technology backyard, in promoting sustainable soil nutrient management in the North China Plain (NCP). The science and technology backyard integrates farmer field schools, field demonstrations, and case-to-case counselling to promote sustainable farming practices among rural smallholders.Design/methodology/approachThe authors conducted a large-scale household survey of more than 2,000 rural smallholders. The authors used a multivariate regression analysis as the benchmark to assess the effect of the science-and-technology backyard on smallholder soil nutrient management. Furthermore, the authors used coarse exact matching (CEM) methods to control for potential bias due to self-selection and the (endogenous) switching regression approach as the main empirical analysis.FindingsThe results show that the science-and-technology backyard program increased smallholders' wheat yield by approximately 0.23 standard deviation; however, no significant increase in maize yield was observed. Regarding soil nutrient use efficiency, the authors found a significant improvement in smallholders' phosphorus and potassium use efficiencies for both wheat and maize production, and a significant improvement in nitrogen use efficiency for wheat production, but no significant improvement of nitrogen use efficiency for maize production.Originality/valueThis study evaluated a novel participatory agricultural extension model to improve soil nutrient management practices among smallholders. The integration of agronomists' scientific knowledge and smallholders' local contextual experiences could be an effective way to improve farmers' soil nutrient management. This study provides the first quantitative estimates based on rigorous impact assessment methods of this novel extension approach in rural China.

Mongolia is a country with rich natural resources, including more than 70 million domesticated animals. The livestock sector is the traditional economic sector of Mongolia, and it is a major food source of the nation. Currently, the country faces an overgrazing problem caused by an increase in the number of animals whereas rangeland carrying capacity is limited. Exporting more meat and other products of animal origin has the potential to reduce the livestock population to sustainable levels, reduce overgrazing pressure, and increase the country’s export income. Policies aimed at promoting animal product exports should take the comparative advantages of different types of products of animal origin into account in order to maximize their impact. This paper aims to provide science-based evidence to support such policies by investigating the comparative advantage of meat and other selected products of animal-origin using the revealed comparative advantage index. Official statistics for 81 products over nine years were used for the data analysis. The results suggest that Mongolia’s meat export policy should focus on large volumes and relatively lower processing level products in the short run and should shift to differentiated value-added products in the long run. We recommend that the Government of Mongolia improves its meat sector’s regulation and develops formal supply chains in order to effectively monitor food safety and create high-quality Mongolian brand products of animal origin.

Based on data from the China Household Finance Survey, this article investigates the relationship between formal sector credit constraints and rural households’ entrepreneurial performance. Using an endogenous switching regression model, we find that credit-constrained entrepreneurial households’ profits are significantly and positively affected by credit access, which is measured by total formal and informal production loans owed. With an extra RMB 10,000 in credit, constrained entrepreneurial households’ average profits would be raised from RMB 10,604 to RMB 10,732 (i.e. by 1.2%). Entrepreneurial profits of households that are not credit-constrained do not depend on loan sizes. Based on our findings, we stress the importance of the development of new-type rural financial institutions, proper compensations for expropriated land, and stimulating savings and investments in different types of assets for improving the performance of rural entrepreneurs.

In this study, we present new empirical evidence on gender wage differences among rural–urban migrants in China. We use a data set that includes migrants residing in urban communities and those living at their workplaces—the latter were not included in the previous studies. We find that the gender wage gap among migrants is 16%–18% and does not differ between migrants living at workplaces and those living in urban communities. However, gender differences in industry sorting play a more important role for migrants living at their workplaces, whereas differences in education and experience are of importance for those living in urban communities. Overall, differences in the returns to characteristics are the main driver of the gender wage gap, especially for migrants living in urban communities.

The rapidly increasing availability of agricultural machinery services in rural China may promote development in the farmland rental market, but it can also hamper it. This study provides a theoretical and empirical examination of how and to what extent agricultural machinery services affect the participation of smallholders in farmland rental markets. In the theoretical part, a price band model for quasi-fixed inputs is developed and applied to analyse the responses of smallholders with varying land endowments to changes in the demand for land due to the increased availability of machinery services. The empirical analysis is based on survey data collected from 2041 smallholders in Handan Prefecture in the North China Plain. The availability of machinery services for crop management activities (fertilisation, spraying and irrigation) was found to have a significant positive effect on the renting in of land and a significant negative effect on the renting out of land. The availability of machinery services for basic activities (ploughing, seeding and harvesting) had no significant effect on land rental decisions. These results imply that policies aimed at promoting markets for agricultural machinery services may sometimes frustrate policies aimed at stimulating farmland rentals among smallholders.

Land tenure security perceived by farmers is generally considered an important precondition for rural development. In this paper, we first propose a holistic framework of land tenure security that integrates Van Gelder's tripartite view of tenure security with Ho's credibility thesis. Following this framework, we empirically investigate the interrelation between the cognitive and the affective components of tenure security perceptions, and analyze how these perceptions are influenced by psychological factors, such as personality traits and economic preferences. We apply the generalized structural equation modeling to a dataset collected in 2019 among 1359 rice farmers in three provinces in eastern China. We found that the cognitive component shows an inverse “U-shape” relationship with the affective component, indicating farmers are not necessarily worried about the possible future land reallocation even if they think it is very likely to take place and that the widely used indicator, i.e., estimated probability of land reallocation, is thereby not sufficient to reflect a farmer's overall perceived tenure security. We also found that individual differences in personality traits (e.g., neuroticism) can help explain observed variations in perceived tenure security. The results showing perceived land tenure security of rural farmers also comprises nonequivalent “feeling” and “thinking” components and their influencing psychological factors have important implications for future research and policy making on rural institutional development.

The upscaling of farming operations in China has been advancing rapidly in recent years. This trend is likely to increase the use of agricultural machinery inputs, and possibly also the use of chemical pesticides, which is already extremely high. The relationship between farm size and the intensity of chemical pesticide usage is a subject of debate, and little is known about the mechanisms that might underlie this relationship. In this paper, we apply an integrated framework of larger-scale farming, agricultural mechanization and the intensity of chemical pesticide usage to examine and quantify the mediating effect of agricultural mechanization on the relationship between larger-scale farming and the use of chemical pesticides. Results obtained by applying seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) considering two-way fixed-effects and mediation analysis to county-level data for Jiangsu Province (2002–2019) suggest that an increase of 1% in the ratio of scale of farming is related to a total decline of 0.070% in chemical pesticide usage per hectare of land. Mediation analysis subsequently identifies mechanical sowing/transplanting is the only mediating variable, through which an increase of 1% in the ratio of scale of farming reduces the unit consumption of chemical pesticides by 0.017%.

What are the procedures and trends for obtaining approval for imported genetically modified (GM) crops in China, and how do approval dates and length of approval in China compare with those in other countries? The answers are crucial for current food security in China and the future of crops derived by gene editing.

Intercropping entails the concurrent production of two or more crop species in the same field. This traditional farming method generally results in a highly efficient use of land, but whether it also contributes to a higher technical efficiency remains unclear. Technical efficiency refers to the efficiency with which a given set of natural resources and other inputs can be used to produce crops. In this study, we examined the contribution of maize-based relay-strip intercropping to the technical efficiency of smallholder farming in northwest China. Data on the inputs and crop production of 231 farms were collected for the 2013 agricultural season using a farm survey held in Gaotai County, Gansu Province, China. Controlling for other factors, we found that the technical efficiency scores of these farms were positively affected by the proportion of land assigned to intercropping. This finding indicates that the potential negative effects of intercropping on the use efficiency of labour and other resources are more than offset by its higher land-use efficiency when compared with monocropping.

We use household survey data and results from a lab-in-the-field experiment to examine the impact of governance perceptions on the cooperativeness of water users in the maintenance of 19 small-scale irrigation schemes in northern Ghana. Cooperativeness is measured by two indicators, one indicator derived from the experiment and the other obtained from the survey. We distinguish the governance perceptions of users into six main components, and regress the two indicators on these six components. We consistently find for both indicators that cooperativeness is lower when users perceive that their water user association (WUA) is more successful in resolving conflicts. We also find that perceptions of accountability, transparency, and participation in governance jointly affect cooperativeness in a positive way, but collinearity problems refrain us from identifying which component(s) do(es) so. Type of leadership—whether or not the WUA leader was democratically elected—does not have a significant effect on cooperativeness, while having received irrigation-related training positively affects cooperativeness as measured by labor contributions to scheme maintenance. We argue that these novel insights can be of great importance for promoting sustainable management of small-scale irrigation schemes, but needs further research to examine its external validity.

Reforms in irrigation management can make important contributions to reducing irrigation water scarcity. This paper attempts to examine the role of participatory irrigation management (PIM) in farmers’ mulched drip irrigation technology adoption decisions. It is based on a comparative analysis between government-promoted mulched drip irrigation technology (GMDIT) and localized self-governed mulched drip irrigation technology (LMDIT) in rural Xinjiang, China. Data from a survey conducted in 2017 across 739 households covering 1763 plots in Awati County in Xinjiang were used to estimate a nested logit model. The results indicate that PIM induces farmers to switch from traditional flood irrigation technology to GMDIT but does not promote the adoption of LMDIT. We conclude that promoting PIM can make an important contribution to more sustainable water use in this drought-prone area but that the self-governance of localized irrigation systems requires more attention by local governments.

China’s minimum grain procurement price program aims to boost grain production and ensure food self-sufficiency. It may also affect the already very high levels of chemical fertilizer and pesticides consumption, but little is known about these potential side-effects. In this paper, we apply panel data regression techniques to a large rural household-level data set for the period 1997–2010 to examine whether and how the minimum grain procurement price program affected households’ agrochemical use. We find that the minimum grain procurement price program negatively affected both chemical fertilizer and pesticides use, with pesticides use being more responsive than the use of fertilizer. The higher wheat and rice prices that resulted from the program stimulated the use of agrochemicals, but they also stimulated area expansion which contributed to lower agrochemical use per unit of land. These counteracting indirect effects were overshadowed by the large negative direct effect of the minimum procurement price of rice on the use of fertilizer and pesticides.

Resource misallocations between firms have been found to have substantial impacts on the aggregate total factor of productivity. This study examines the impacts of a real estate boom on resource misallocations. We propose that real estate booms drive up demand in real estate-linked industries and that these ‘windfall’ demand spillovers reduce intra-industry competition and increase productivity inequality within industries. Using the difference-in-differences approach, we document that industries that are more linked to the real estate sector experienced increased dispersion in firm productivity in the post-boom era. Real estate booms therefore increase intra-industry resource misallocation.

Intercropping, i.e. the cultivation of crop species mixtures, can potentially reduce pressure on land resources by generating higher yields through exploitation of complementarities between crop species. Although intercropping is practiced on a non-negligible proportion of China’s arable land, little is known about the factors that influence farmers’ decisions to use intercropping. In this study we develop a theoretical framework that distinguishes exogenous factors from endogenous factors in farmers’ activity choices in general and the use of intercropping in particular. We apply this framework in an empirical analysis of socio-economic factors affecting the use of traditional and novel relay intercropping systems, with a special focus on the impact of farm size, using primary data collected among 299 farmers in Gaotai County, northwest China. We find that large farms do no not plant more land with the traditional wheat/maize intercrop as compared to small farms, while land planted with the two novel intercrops is significantly larger on large farms. Availability of machinery has no negative effect on the area under intercropping, and has a significant positive effect on the use of one novel intercrop type. Our results confirm that risk considerations do not play a role in relay intercropping use decisions of Chinese farmers. We conclude that positive yield and natural resource effects of intercropping can still be realized if the ongoing farm scale enlargement policy is combined with a policy promoting novel intercropping types, particularly those types that can make use of already available machinery.

•Factors affecting sustainable management of rangeland by user groups in Mongolia are examined.•Model specification is based on Agrawal's user-based resource governance framework.•Data collected in 2010 among 330 herding households, belonging to 11 Pasture User Groups, are used for the empirical analysis.•We find that well-defined rangeland boundaries are key in supporting rangeland quality.•Inequality in herd sizes within a PUG negatively affects rangeland quality.

Attempts at irrigation development in Ghana, as in many other parts of sub-Saharan Africa, have been characterized by governance challenges at various levels. This paper aims to provide an empirical assessment of irrigation governance in 37 small-scale irrigation schemes in northern Ghana, derived from the perceptions of their users. We first distinguish six dimensions of governance based on the available literature to include participation, accountability, conflict management, transparency and cooperation, equity and fairness, and sustainable use. Next, we measure these irrigation governance dimensions using ratings provided by local water users. We then examine the relationship between these governance measures and some objective factors that possibly drive the assessments of users. The results indicate an overall good governance in the sampled schemes. Relatively, sustainable use had the lowest score and conflict management had the highest score. We further find that in schemes located in areas with relatively high annual precipitations, users report better irrigation governance. Within schemes, both users with plots at the head end and users with plots at the tail end are more critical about irrigation governance than other users. Remarkably, the number of users of a scheme has no significant effect on their overall assessment of its governance, although users in larger schemes are more positive on opportunities to participate in governance bodies and to keep these bodies accountable. To improve their sustainability, small-scale irrigation schemes (dams) may be better maintained for domestic and livestock watering. Promoting water-conserving irrigation techniques such as drip irrigation and ground water techniques is essential.

China's land market is characterized by a dual urban-rural system, with the government in control of rural-urban land transfers. In recent years, different types of pilot projects have been implemented to experiment with liberalizing markets for rural-urban construction land transfers. The objective of this study is to gain insights into the distributional effects of three different types of land liberalization rules by making a comparative analysis of three pilot projects carried out under each of these liberalization rules. We find that transfers facing more liberalized rules result in higher shares of land revenue flowing to the rural sector and thereby reduce the ruralurban income gap. But direct transfers between rural and urban land users also contribute to growing income inequality within the rural sector, as households living in urban fringes benefit relatively more from such transfers. A tradable quota system can reduce the impact of location on the price of land, and thereby contribute to a more equal distribution of the revenues of rural-urban land transfers within the rural sector.

Migration can make an important contribution to rural poverty reduction and overall productivity growth, but it may be limited by prevailing rural land tenure arrangements. Since 1998, the Chinese government has implemented a number of land tenure reforms with the aim of improving the tenure security and the transferability of land. Although these reforms enhanced legal tenure security, it is not clear to what extent they remove existing land tenure bottlenecks in migration. Both actual tenure security, i.e. local implementation of laws that warrant tenure security, and household perceptions of tenure security are likely to play a role. In this paper we examine the impacts of actual and perceived tenure security on rural household migration in China, taking into account the degree of development of land rental markets. We argue that actual and perceived tenure security can have both positive and negative effects on migration decisions and that the presence of land rental markets may modify these effects. A two-step control function approach that controls for endogeneity of tenure security perceptions is applied to household and village-level data collected in Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Liaoning provinces and Chongqing municipality. We find that both actual and perceived tenure security affect migration, but the impact of perceived tenure security measured by land reallocation expectations is much stronger and is positive, whereas the independent impact of actual tenure security is negative. Households perceiving a lower risk of losing land when one or more members migrate are more inclined to migrate, independent of the availability of land rental markets in their villages. Actual tenure security, as measured by absence of land reallocations and possession of land certificates, has an independent negative effect on migration only in villages with underdeveloped land rental markets.

Policies aimed at strengthening tenure security through the elimination of land reallocations and provision of land certificates have been implemented with different degrees of success in rural China. In this study, we examine the impact of tenure security perceptions and trust on household decisions to rent in land in a region where tenure security is high and in a region where households face much lower land tenure security. Our regression results suggest that when land tenure is less secure, household perceptions of tenure security positively affect decisions to rent in additional land and the size of the rented land, whereas trust is important for the choice between oral and written contracts. When land tenure is relatively secure, household tenure security perceptions are less relevant, and trust becomes more important for land rental decisions. However, tenure security perceptions do seem to play a role in the choice between oral and written contracts in such high tenure security environments.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of the compensation amount as well as the mode through which compensations are paid on farmers’ satisfaction with the compensation received for farmland expropriation in China. Design/methodology/approach Using rural household survey data collected among 450 households in three provinces, located in eastern, central and western China, this paper estimates the impacts of compensation payments, compensation modes, household characteristics and other control variables on farmers’ satisfaction applying an ordinal probit model. Findings The major findings are: farmers’ satisfaction with the compensation depends not only on the size of the compensation but also on the gap between the compensation and the market value of the expropriated land; and the compensation amount positively affects farmers’ satisfaction when the social security compensation mode is used, but does not significantly affect farmers’ satisfaction when other modes are used. Originality/value First, it contributes to the literature on farmland expropriation by providing empirical evidence of the direct impact of the compensation amount and other factors on the degree of farmers’ satisfaction with farmland compensations. Second, potential interactions between compensation amount and compensation mode are taken into account in estimating factors affecting farmers’ satisfaction.

Cooperatives are established to improve farmers' production conditions, to increase their bargaining power and to enable them to benefit from modern value chains. In China, farmers are members of a cooperative for multiple reasons. Little is known on whether and how cooperative membership affects farmers’ choice of marketing channels. This paper examines determinants of farmers’ choice of marketing channels, especially how cooperative membership impacts upon this choice. Our analysis is based on survey data collected in 2015 among 625 apple growing farm households in the provinces Shaanxi and Shandong. We employ endogenous switching probit models to deal with potential endogeneity of membership in estimating the determinants of marketing channel choices. We find that cooperative membership has a positive impact on selling to wholesalers and a negative impact on selling to small dealers, but no significant impact on selling to the cooperative itself. As products sold through cooperatives generally comply with relatively stringent food quality and safety standards, these results imply that policies promoting cooperative members to sell their products through cooperatives are likely to have a significant impact on food quality and food safety in China.

Although uncertainly is a common feature of agricultural markets, we know little about the effect of uncertainty on farmers’ choice of business relationships. This paper distinguishes production uncertainty, environmental uncertainty, and behavioral uncertainty in examining four kinds of business relationships of Chinese vegetable farmers: market exchange, cooperative membership without marketing transaction, cooperative membership with marketing transaction, and contract farming. We applied a multinomial logit model to data collected among 413 farmers in Hebei and Zhejiang provinces. The results suggested that all three types of uncertainty significantly affect the business relationships chosen by vegetable farmers. In particular, it was found that as production uncertainty increases, farmers prefer contract farming and both cooperative membership with and without marketing transaction over market exchange; while as behavioral uncertainty increases, farmers are less likely to be involved in contract farming. Environmental uncertainty does not affect the likelihood that farmers choose market exchange or contract farming, while mixed results are obtained for its effects on cooperative membership with and without marketing transaction. [EconLit citations: L140; Q130].

Intercropping and agroforestry are mixed plant species cultivation systems that can potentially reduce pressure on land and water resources by generating higher crop yields and by increasing resource use efficiencies through exploitation of complementarities between species. While it is frequently claimed that mixed cultivation systems remain popular in Chinese agriculture, there are also reports that it is in decline. Little quantitative evidence is available on the prevalence of intercropping and agroforestry. Therefore, we conducted a village-level survey in 68 villages across six provinces in China in 2014 to document the prevalence of these mixed species cultivation systems in 2009 and 2014. We found that intercropping was practiced on approximately three percent of the arable land in the surveyed villages, while agroforestry was practiced on approximately one percent of the arable land and one percent of the area of plantation plus forest land. The use of both systems did not significantly change between 2009 and 2014. An explorative village-level analysis of factors associated with mixed species cultivation practices reveals a significant positive association with labour availability, and a smaller, but mostly significant, negative association with agricultural machinery power. These survey results provide the first systematically collected quantitative evidence on the current use and trend of mixed cultivation systems in China. The collected evidence indicates that these systems are currently used on a small proportion of the land, but have not declined in recent years. Intercropping continues to provide pathways for ecological intensification of agricultural food production.

To maintain self-sufficiency in rice production and national food security, the Chinese government strongly supports research that aims at increasing the productivity of rice cultivation. Rice with genetic material from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt rice) is transgenic rice that can reduce lepidopteran pest damage and the use of insecticides. It was developed in the 1990s and earned biosafety certificates in 2009. However, because of political reasons, its commercialization in China has been postponed, and, to date, Bt rice is not grown in China. We assess the opportunity cost of postponement of Bt rice commercialization in China between the years 2009 and 2019 and consider the external costs of pesticide use and potential technology spill-overs of Bt rice. We estimate the cost of postponement of Bt rice over the analyzed period to be 12 billion United States (US) dollars per year.

Tenure security is commonly recognized as an important factor in stimulating long-term investments in land. Recent studies suggest that a distinction between legal, actual and perceived tenure security needs to be made in analyzing tenure security. This study discusses the relationships between legal, actual and perceived land tenure security in rural China, and empirically examines the impact of actual on perceived land tenure security by applying Probit models to household and village survey data collected in four provinces. Using household expectations about the absence of land reallocations within the next five years as the dependent variable, we find that tenure security is positively affected by the possession of land certificates in villages that periodically reallocated land but not in villages that did not do so. The estimated impact is larger for land certificates issued in the new round of land certification than for land certificates that were issued earlier.

This study aims to identify the mechanisms through which land tenure governance affects the technical efficiency of grain production in an integrated framework and to examine the impacts of the public governance, village self-governance, and relational governance of land tenure on the technical efficiency of contracted land and rented-in land. Farm-level survey data collected from Liaoning, Jiangxi, and Jiangsu provinces covering the years of 2014 and 2015 is used for the empirical analysis. The findings indicate that (i) public governance associated with land certification significantly increases the technical efficiency of grain production; (ii) village self-governance and administrative land reallocations can serve as substitutes for the land rental market in optimizing the distribution of land resources and improving technical efficiency; and (iii) compared to multi-year transfer contracts, both annual and open-ended transfer contracts have negative impacts on technical efficiency.

Intercropping, i.e. mixed crop species cultivation on a field, can potentially reduce pressure on land and water resources by generating higher resource use efficiencies and crop yields through exploitation of complementarities between species. Intercropping systems in China and elsewhere have come under pressure through labor migration, growing water scarcity, changing crop prices and other factors. However, little hard evidence is available on how these socio-economic factors interplay and affect the prevalence of intercropping systems now and in the near future. The objective of this study is to explore the effect of growing scarcity of (water and labor) resources and declining (maize) grain prices on the share of intercropping in the optimal cropping plan and on associated agricultural income levels in an intercropping-dominated agricultural system in China. To undertake this analysis, we developed a mathematical programming model to simulate crop production for a model village in Gaotai county in the Hexi Corridor in northwest China, for given resources and economic conditions in 2013 and possible changes (scenarios) in the future. In the Hexi Corridor, conventional wheat/maize intercropping contributed greatly to rising food production while cash crops integrated with maize provided important cash income. With the introduction of seed crops and stricter water regulations, intercropping has become less prevalent in this area in recent years. In the absence of water constraints and at price levels and labor availability in 2013, our model results indicate that an optimal land use would entail that all land would be devoted to intercropping. Sole cumin and sole cotton enter the optimal cropping plan when water becomes scarce and the maize price declines substantially, while increases in hired labor wages have a strong negative impact on intercropping only when on-farm labor becomes scarce.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of adopting certified food production on chemical fertilizer and pesticide use in China. Design/methodology/approach The authors estimate fixed effect models to track the changes in agrochemical consumption at household level over time and evaluate the effect of certified food production, using an unbalanced panel data set covering 4,830 households in six provinces over the period 2005–2013. Findings On average, the authors do not find significant effects of certified food production on either chemical fertilizer or pesticide consumption among Chinese farmers. The effects are heterogeneous across villages, but the heterogeneous effects show no clear pattern that is consistent with different types of certification. The findings are robust to the use of alternative panel structure and certification indicators. The lack of knowledge about certification among farmers, the price premium and differences in regulation enforcement across regions may explain why the authors do not find negative effects on agrochemical use. Practical implications This study suggests that careful inspections and strong enforcement of certified food production is needed to ensure that the environmental goals of certified food production can be achieved and the reputation of certification in China can be improved. The inspection of certification producers and the enforcement of current regulations should be stricter for the further healthy development of certified food production in China. Originality/value This study is the first attempt to systematically evaluate the impact of food certification on the use of agrochemicals in Chinese agriculture.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of land property rights integrity, subdivided into use rights, mortgage rights, and transfer rights, on household perceptions of long-term tenure security in China. To this end, we establish a theoretical framework that links China&rsquo, s collective forest tenure reforms undertaken since 2003 to property rights integrity and two sources of tenure (in)security based on property rights theory: forestland reallocation and expropriation. Probit models are applied in the empirical analysis to household data collected in Jiangxi province in 2011 and 2013. The results indicate that household perceptions of tenure insecurity resulting from forestland reallocation expectations are affected by transfer rights, whereas household perceptions of insecurity resulting from forestland expropriation expectations are not affected by forestland rights. We thus suggest that it is crucial for policymakers to identify the sources of local property rights insecurity before they take steps to strengthen land tenure security. This paper contributes to the available literature on the relationship between property rights integrity and tenure security by identifying different sources of tenure insecurity, emphasizing the effect of property rights integrity on long-term tenure security, and taking into account the potential endogeneity problem.

The development of land rental markets in developing countries attracts much attention, but little is known about its impact on household income. This study empirically examines the effects of land rental decisions of farm households on their income and income components, i.e. farm, off-farm and transfer income, taking into account potential endogeneity of land rental decisions. Rural household survey data for 1080 households in 128 villages in Jiangsu Province, China are used to estimate these effects. Quantile regressions are used to examine to what extent effects differ between income groups. Results indicate that lessor households surprisingly obtain lower total income as compared to autarkic households. Among the lessee households, who gain on average from land rentals, the lower income groups obtain the largest total income gains. As to the sources of income, no significant differences in off-farm income between transacting households (i.e. lessee or lessor households) and autarkic households are found while differences in farm income between transacting households are as expected. Transfer income of lessor households is significantly lower than that of autarkic households. We explain these findings from some typical features of the rural land rental market in China and discuss the policy implications.

Wheat-maize relay intercropping has been widely used by farmers in northwest China, and based on field experiments agronomists report it has a higher productivity than sole crops. However, the yields from farmers’ fields have not been investigated yet. Yield gap analysis provides a framework to examine land productivity, i.e. the actual yields realized in farmers’ fields versus the potential yields when a crop is grown with water and nutrients non-limiting and biotic stresses effectively controlled. In this research, we aim to define yield potentials and yield gaps in intercropping systems, and apply this to an irrigated wheat-maize relay intercrop in Gaotai county (Zhangye city), Gansu province in northwest China. Data from three field experiments (2010 − 2012) were used to calibrate and test crop models for two sole crops and an intercrop. Potential yields were estimated for five years (2010–2014) by model simulations, and actual yields were determined by surveys of 310 farm households in 2014. The main results are: 1) in sole crops, the potential yield of spring wheat is 7.3 t ha− 1 and the potential yield of maize is 14.2 t ha− 1; 2) in a wheat-maize relay intercrop with a land area ratio of 0.5 for each crop, the potential yield of wheat is 4.8 t ha− 1 and that of maize is 12.0 t ha− 1; 3) comparing the yield in the intercrop and the expected yield (i.e. the yields in sole crops multiplied by the land area ratio in the intercrop for each species), the intercropped wheat gained 32% under potential growing conditions and 67% under actual growing conditions; while the intercropped maize gained 69% under potential growing conditions and 64% under actual growing conditions; 4) farmers achieved 67% of potential yield for sole wheat, and 85% for intercropped wheat; however, farmers achieved only 51% of potential yield for sole maize and 49% for intercropped maize. The farm survey showed that wheat-maize relay intercropping is still widely used by farmers in Gaotai county, and farmers gained extra yield from wheat-maize relay intercropping compared to sole crops, but the gap between potential and actual yields is especially large for maize in this region. Water is likely to be the main limiting factor for maize production despite the irrigation. We conclude by exploring how grain production in Gaotai county would be affected by substituting intercrops by sole crops. We find that the grain production will decrease between 18% to 44% if all the farmers would replace wheat-maize relay intercropping by either wheat or maize sole crop compared to the current land use. Intercropping thus contributes to food production at the regional level, and this contribution can be further increased by narrowing yield gaps.

The role of land readjustment for urban and rural development has attracted more and more attention worldwide. Research on how land readjustment can be organized most effectively, however, is still in its infancy. This paper firstly develops a framework for comparing different organization modes of land readjustment based on transaction cost economics. It then introduces and compares two different modes of land readjustment that have recently been developed in China, i.e., a public mode and a self-organized mode. We argue, and provide evidence from two case studies in Zhejiang Province and in Sichuan Province, that the (mis)fit between the transaction attributes of land readjustment and the adopted readjustment mode greatly affects their performance. Our findings are intended to serve as a reference both for further research and for policy making on land readjustment.

Improving technical efficiency in agriculture can play an important role in meeting present and future demands for agricultural products, at the same time enhancing the long-term sustainability of land and water use. This paper examines the impact of household perceptions of land tenure security on technical efficiency using detailed household-level data collected in Minle County in northwest China. The authors find that the (perceived) tenure security provided by land certificates encourages part-time farming with relatively low technical efficiency. The renting out of land by households with migrant members can only partly make up for this negative effect, because land rental markets are thin and highly fragmented. Therefore, the provision of land certificates to rural households has a negative impact on technical efficiency. For tenure security provided by the expected absence of land reallocations in the near future, on the other hand, the authors find that it reduces temporary migration and thereby contributes to higher technical efficiency.

Under the national strategy of ‘building a new socialist countryside’, concentrated rural housing is increasing in some rural regions in China. In this research we use three case studies to analyze decision making on concentrated rural housing and the potential for future low carbon rural housing. The empirical results show that concentrated rural housing can improve both the energy efficiency of houses and the living conditions of households, compared to traditional stand-alone modes of housing. Providers are the major decision makers with regard to the kind of materials, technologies and energy networks applied in rural housing development. Local governments, private property developers and local (energy) authorities in principle have the power to select and apply low carbon alternatives. The involvement of Chinese householders in concentrated housing project turns out to be low or non-existent. The introduction of market incentives, stricter building regulations, better decision making processes and communication with householders are relevant social factors for improving low carbon housing provision in rural China.

This paper examines the impact of land tenure security perceptions on rural-urban migration decisions of rural households, using data collected in Minle County in Northwest China. We find that tenure security perceptions play a significant role in household migration decisions in villages without well-functioning land rental markets but not in villages where the land rental markets are more developed. In villages with underdeveloped land rental markets, households that expect that no land reallocations will occur within their village in the near future are less involved in migration, while households that attach a greater importance to land certificates in protecting land use rights are more involved in migration.

This study examined how agricultural households involved in China's Sloping Land Conversion Program (SLCP) could respond to expected changes in environmental and livestock policies and changing commodity prices. We calibrated a farm household model using 2009 survey data collected in northeast Gansu Province, China, and examined the responses of four different household groups. Household groups were distinguished based on the resources they possessed for either cropping, livestock husbandry or off-farm employment. We also calculated the opportunity cost of converting sloping land from grain crop production to perennial grass production and included the net value of the replacement crop in these calculations. Our model simulations indicated that subsistence-oriented households were most likely to participate in the SLCP, and that SLCP payment reductions could have large negative income effects for this group. Reductions in SLCP payments increased income inequality among households in the study area. Migration- and cropping-oriented households have fewer incentives to participate in the SLCP. With rising commodity prices, SLCP payments need to rise to avoid that subsistence-oriented households reconvert their land from perennial grasses to annual grain crops. Local government policies related to livestock production are being devised in Gansu as a method to lift incomes, and these policies could also have positive environmental benefits by increasing grass production on sloping land. The introduction of these livestock promotion policies had modest income effects but did not alter the area grown with grasses under the SLCP.

The main aim of this paper is to examine the impact of changing external conditions on irrigation water institutions in northern China. To this end, we perform a case study analysis of the impact of output market development on irrigation water transactions, using survey data collected among 315 households in Minle County, Zhangye City, Gansu Province, covering the year 2009. Households in this region possess tradable water use rights. Moreover, a major agro-processing company has recently been established and the local government intervenes in the allocation of water to stimulate farmers to grow a cash crop for that company. Despite these favourable enabling and driving factors, we find that market water trade is virtually absent. Instead, we observe that reciprocal water use arrangements (water swaps) have emerged at a limited scale. We argue that factors other than an improvement in the output market (such as producer ignorance, centrally set prices, trust) need to be considered, if improvement in the market for irrigation water is to occur.

The current system of converting farmland to urban land use in China can be characterized as a hybrid system that combines government controls with market-based transfers. In this paper we argue that this hybrid governance structure causes an over-conversion of farmland from the rural to the urban sector, as compared to a competitive market situation, and a welfare reallocation that discriminates against farmland owners. We develop a partial equilibrium model that can be used to examine the impact of the current hybrid governance structure on the over-conversion of farmland and to analyze the welfare changes for different groups of actors and the resulting net social welfare loss. Using a dataset with detailed information on farmland acquisitions and urban land transactions in Yingtan City in Jiangxi Province, we illustrate how this framework can be applied. Our results indicate an over-conversion of 33.5% of the total converted farmland in this city between 1999 and 2003. The welfare of farmland owners affected by the conversion decreased by 1.38 billion RMB, while the net social welfare loss equaled more than 270 million RMB during the same period. The local government obtained 380 million RMB of revenues by re-selling farmland as urban land through competitive conveyance mechanisms between 2002 and 2005, while the manufacturing sector gained an estimated 280 million RMB from buying land use rights at relatively low prices. We conclude that the current policy of increasing urban land conveyance through competitive mechanisms does not address two major underlying causes of over-conversion, and that protection of farmland would be better served by replacing the current hybrid rural to urban land market structure by a competitive land market.

This study examines the conventional wisdom that off-farm employment contributes to environmental pollution by increasing the use of agro-chemicals. In order to analyse the role of household decision making and village factor markets in more detail, we run simulations with a hybrid farm household/village computable general equilibrium model that is applied to a village in Northeast Jiangxi Province. We find that the negative lost-labour effect of off-farm employment on agricultural incomes is much stronger than the (small) positive income effect. As a result of reduced labour resources and increased leisure consumption, farm households reduce the intensity of rice cultivation as well as the production of (especially) cash crops. The shift in production activities is stronger for migration than for off-farm employment, because migrants cannot combine off-farm work with onfarm work, and because migration reduces the village market price of oxen services. The shift towards less intensive rice production means that off-farm employment (and migration in particular) reduces the levels of chemical inputs and manure used in agricultural production. The decline in fertilizer input is much larger than the decline in manure use, because manure is a nontradable commodity and is applied only once per year. We therefore conclude that migration and, to a lesser extent, local off-farm employment lead to lower incomes from agricultural production, but have benign effects on environmental quality.

In this paper we provide an overview of recent trends in the availability and quality of land and water resources in rural China, and examine the common presumption that rural resources are rapidly degrading in China. Data based on consistent definitions and measurement methods that have recently become available are used to that end. In addition, we analyse the impact of new policy initiatives to introduce market-based instruments and new institutions to address land degradation and water scarcity problems. We find that the decline in cultivated area has accelerated in the beginning of the new century. Ecological recovery programs, not urbanization and industrialization, are the major factors causing this decline. Ecological recovery programs are also a major force behind the increase in forest land area and the reduction of water erosion. Modest successes can be observed in the protection of wetlands and (until the mid-1980s) for the average quality of cultivated land. On the other hand, degradation of natural grassland and wind erosion have become much more severe in recent decades. In northern China, particularly in the 3-H (Hai and Luan, Huai and Huang) river basins, the availability of water has tightened. Groundwater tables have fallen considerably in the Hai river basin, because farmers increasingly rely on groundwater for irrigation. Evidence on other parts of northern China is mixed. Pollution of surface water is getting worse since the beginning of the 1990s in two major lakes in southern China and until recently in the rivers in northern China. Water quality problems in the larger rivers in southern China are less severe and getting less. These problems are to a large extent caused by agriculture-based non-point source pollution, especially in the major lakes and reservoirs. The sloping land conversion program, water pricing, and the establishment of water user associations and payments for environmental service projects are used as cases to examine the introduction of market-based instruments and new institutions. We argue that less government interference in the implementation of these instruments and institutions is likely to enhance ecological as well the economic benefits. Moreover, supportive measures to improve the functioning of land and labor markets are usually needed to ensure the sustainability of the impact of interventions.

Recent estimates suggest that as many as 40 million women are ‘missing’ in China. We exploit a special provision in the Chinese one-child policy (OCP; allowing for preferential treatment of ethnic minority groups) to revisit the mystery of these missing women, and in particular to explore the contribution of China's OCP in distorting sex ratios. Our results imply that preference for boys is the main driver of the gender gap, and that the OCP is responsible for about half of it. This is true even before ultrasound technologies for prenatal gender determination were available. Not surprisingly, interaction between the OCP and ultrasound technologies has contributed to the gender gap.

Contains fulltext : 90246.pdf (Publisher’s version ) (Closed access) This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that rent extra land are relatively more productive, but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments. We further find that off-farm employment does not significantly affect rice yields. This result contradicts those of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect. Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the use of organic manure on their rice plots. We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets, which is still in its infancy, can contribute significantly to higher rice production in Southeast China. Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain self-sufficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.

Land fragmentation is generally seen as an obstacle to agricultural productivity improvements, but it can also facilitate labor smoothing and risk diversification. In this paper we examine the impact of land fragmentation on the variable production costs of rice farmers in three villages in Jiangxi Province, P.R. China. We find that changes in the number of plots and plot size distribution, as measured by the Simpson index, do not affect total production costs per unit output, but cause a shift between cost categories. Farmers with more and smaller plots tend to use more labor and fewer modern technologies as compared to farmers with fewer and larger plots. Other aspects of land fragmentation, however, do affect total production costs. A reduction of the average distance to plots and an increase in farm size decrease the total production costs per ton. We conclude that land consolidation programs can only contribute to the joint policy goals of increasing agricultural production capacity and reducing the rural labor surplus, if such programs are accompanied by measures aimed at creating alternative market opportunities and at providing appropriate off-farm employment opportunities.