Rural Labor Migration and Households＇ Land Rental Behavior： Evidence from China

There has been growing debate about whether the changing demographic composition due to rural labor migration could potentially threaten China＇s agricultural productivity. The Chinese Government is promoting the ＂three rights separation system＂ to consolidate agricultural land through the land rental market with the explicit intention of fostering new agricultural management subjects and improving agricultural produetivity. The present paper estimates the effect of rural labor migration on households＇ participation in land renting in and renting out activities based on a unique dataset from three rounds of nationally representative surveys. Our results indicate that rural labor migration has a significant negative effect on households renting in land and has a positive effect on households renting out land in rural China. Therefore, the government should adopt targeted policies to effectively encourage farmers with higher agricultural capacity to rent in land to alleviate the negative effect of rural migration on households renting in land. Supporting policies should guarantee that rural migrants enjoy the same welfare services as urban residents.

Does Security of Land Operational Rights Matter for the Improvement of Agricultural Production Efficiency under the Collective Ownership in China?

Under the"separation of three rights"policy,the impact of security of land operationalrights on agricultural production efficiency has attracted much attention in recentyears.Data envelopment analysis and mediation effect analysis were applied to 888family farms run by new-type agricultural operators from Songjiang to identify themechanism of the effect of land operational rights security on agricultural productionefficiency through long-term investment.The results show that greater security of landoperational rights generally increased agricultural production efficiency.Approximately37.94 percent of the impact could be explained by long-term investment.The resultsalso indicate that significant heterogeneity exists in the effect of land operational rightssecurity on agricultural production efficiency at various levels of the family farms'efficiency distributions.lt is suggested that government should legalize land operationalrights and give them a status equal to those of households'contractual rights and landownership rights in China's future land tenure reform.

Are China＇s Farms Growing？

China＇s agricultural sector faces challenges because most farms are still small scale. China＇s policy is to encourage the consolidation o f farms and promote farms that are larger in scale. A question that arises is： Are China＇s farms growing？ The goal of the present paper is to determine whether large farms in China have emerged or iffarms remain small. To meet this goal, we systematically document the trends in the operational sizes of China＇s farms and measure the determinants of changes in farm size. Using a nationally representative dataset, the study shows that in 2013 China＇s farming sector was still mostly characterized by small-scale farms. However, at the same time, there is an emerging class of middle-sized and larger-sized farms. Most large farms are being run by households but there is a set of large farms that are companylcooperative-run. Today, farmers on larger farms are younger and better educated than the average farmer.