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This paper posits that the majority of "smallholders" in contemporary China are commodity producers who must engage in various commodity exchanges to carry out agricultural production and accomplish their social reproduction. Consequently, "smallholder" refers to a family-based economic operation model, rather than a social identity or psychological identification. Within this framework, the study focuses on the intricate relationships between smallholders, various commodity markets, and other market participants. Specifically, it examines two aspects: the relationship between smallholders and capitalized large-scale producers and other agriculture-related capital entities, and the relationship between smallholders and the commodified labor force. The paper argues that the interaction between smallholders and capitalized large-scale producers is not a zero-sum game of mutual replacement; except in certain areas, smallholders are not driven out of agricultural production by large-scale capitalized producers, but coexist and interact with them in various ways. On the other hand, smallholders heavily rely on short-term hired labor for their agricultural production, and many also become wage earners themselves, participating in the agricultural production of other producers and earning wage income. Compared to the expansion of capitalized large-scale production, the most significant challenge facing China's smallholder economy, as this paper contends, is the intergenerational reproduction crisis brought about by the aging of the labor force and the urbanization of the younger generation. 摘要: 本文认为今天中国的"小农"绝大多数都是商品生产者，必须通过各种商品交换才能进行农业生产、并完成自身的社会再生产。因此"小农"所指的是一种家庭经济运营模式，而不是一个社会身份或心理认同。在这个认识框架下，我们在考察小农经济时，要关注的是他们与各种商品市场及其中的其他成员的复杂关系；本文因此着重考察两点：小农与资本化的规模生产者以及其他涉农资本的关系和小农与商品化的劳动力的关系。本文认为小农与资本化的规模生产者之间不是一种此消彼长、相互替代的零和关系；除了在个别领域里，小农并不会被资本化的规模生产者赶出农业生产，而是以多种方式与资本化的规模农业共存与互动。而另一方面，小农不仅在很大程度上依赖短期的雇佣劳力来完成其农业生产，而且很多小农自己也成为雇佣劳力，参与到别的生产者的农业生产中并获得工资性收入。相比于资本化规模生产的扩张，我认为中国小农经济所面临的最大的挑战是因劳动力的老龄化和下一代人的城市化所带来的代际更替的危机。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In The Theory of Peasant Cooperatives, Chayanov develops the theories of differential optima and vertical integration, which stress the vulnerability of peasant farming in capitalist markets, and argues that cooperatives can support smallholders only if they operate as 'a cooperative movement', are buttressed by a strong 'cooperative culture', and achieve 'vertical integration'. Based on extensive fieldwork in China, we identify six major obstacles that explain the failure of most cooperatives. Chayanov's arguments caution us to not only the vital importance of cooperatives to the resilience of peasant farming, but also the apparently insurmountable obstacles that cooperatives face in market economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on contract farming (CF) has to date focused on how outside capital uses CF to vertically integrate non‐capitalist producers into agro‐industrial value chains. We argue that in places where multiple dynamics of capitalist growth co‐exist, CF relationships can also emerge between different types of capitalist producers that are already in capitalist production using other organizational forms. In this situation, the well‐studied drivers that fuel the spread of CF become less consequential; the emergence of CF is instead more contingent on the complex interactions between producers and the specific conditions and events in the local environment. We conceptualize the emergence of this type of CF as a coevolutionary process and develop an analytical toolkit from this perspective to study the rise of CF in industrial pig farming in a Chinese county. Our analysis traces the evolution of agro‐industrialization over a decade (2006–2016) and shows the emergence of CF as a coevolutionary outcome shaped by the unique biography of the contract producers, the "historical accident" of a market downturn, and the reciprocal responses between contract producers and agribusinesses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]