Prediction of cultivated land operation scale in China*

Cong Chen, Guangqiao Cao

(Nanjing Institute of Agricultural Mechanization, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs, Nanjing, 210014, China)

Abstract: Large-scale agricultural operation is an effective way to improve production efficiency and resource utilization rate, which can promote the development of agricultural mechanization, reduce production costs and increase farmers’ income. Most of the studies have focused on the estimation and calculation of the moderate agricultural scale, which is not consistent with the reality of the coexistence of multiple agricultural scales in China. This paper attempts to estimate the distribution function of cultivated land transfer operation scale based on the historical statistical data, simulate the number of farm households with different scale of operation development and analyze the distribution of the scale under different operation models. The research results show that: (1) By 2025, the number of farm households with cultivated land operation area over 6.67 hm2 will reach 3.57 million, the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 20 hm2 will reach 1.09 million, the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 33.33 hm2 will reach 597 500, and the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 66.66 hm2 will reach 223 300 in China. (2) Family farms will become the mainstream of the scale operation entities. Family operation farms will reach 11.46 million, operating the largest area of cultivated land which account for 39% of the total cultivated area. The number of cooperatives is few, accounting for only 0.22% of the total number of farm households. However, due to the relatively large average operation scale, the cultivated land area managed by the cooperatives accounts for 27% of the total cultivated land area. Large-scale operation has become the main way of agricultural operation, with the large-scale operation of total cultivated land reaching 70%.

Keywords: agriculture; cultivated land; scale of operation; prediction; cultivated land transfer

0 Introduction

China has a large population with relatively little arable land. The average area of cultivated land per household is small, and the overall income of grain planting is low. However, the expenses of children’s education investment, entertainment expenditure, housing investment, medical pension, etc. are increasing with the increased desire of farmers to improve their quality of life. It is impossible to obtain the income needed for living simply through the grain growing. Two different intentions of cultivated land operation are gradually formed. One is hoping to reduce or abandon the cultivated land operation and obtain higher income through working as migrant workers; and the other is hoping to improve the overall income by increasing the scale of cultivated land operation because large-scale operation is an effective way to improve the production efficiency and resource utilization rate, which can promote the development of agricultural mechanization, reduce production costs and increase farmers’ income. No matter how the developed or developing countries are trying to promote the scale of agricultural operation, certain constraints have impeded the progress of the scale operation. Firstly, the operating inertia of farm households impedes the transfer of cultivated land. For farm households who are used to cultivating their piece of land for a long term, it requires strong external force to drive the farmers to make changes. Hence it is necessary to support the farmers to transfer to other industries and enhance the employ ability skills of the farmers in the city, and to encourage innovative ways of operating, such as commissioned production, co-production and other ways to indirectly enhance the scale of operation at the same time. Secondly, agricultural vulnerability and high-risk problems also impedes the progress of scale operation. Agricultural production is greatly influenced by climate changes, seed quality, pests and diseases and other uncontrollable factors, and is prone to the risk of reduced yield. At the same time, scale expansion means greater investment in production materials, while the anti-risk capacity and investment strength of the main operation entities are generally weak, and are in need of state subsidies, financial credit and policy insurance support. Finally, the cultivated land endowment condition is also a natural factor that hinders the large-scale operation. The cultivated land resource endowment conditions in the hilly and mountainous area are poor with finely fragmented land parcels and low mechanization level, it is difficult to carry out intensive production operation. The production efficiency is low and the scale of operation cannot be expanded. Scientifically predicting the scale of cultivated land operation is critical for the state to formulate agricultural support policies and for the agricultural enterprises to make production decisions.

Many scholars have conducted a large number of predictions and researches on the scale of farmer households. According to the change in farmer’s production mode, Ying Tang and Huaizhong Mu estimated and calculated the moderate operation scale of cultivated land based on the labor carrying capacity of cultivated land. Ruiqing Hu and Yueheng Zhang estimated the optimal operation scale of cultivated land from the three dimensions of pure economic goals, social security goals and employment and enjoyment goals, respectively. Zenglin Ma and Zhigang Yu estimated the moderate operation scale of the land in Heilongjiang Province from the two objectives of realization of the maximization of land output and the income of farmers, respectively. Chengyu Zhang tested the moderate operation scale of agriculture in Henan Province based on the farmer’s income scale, and believed that the moderate scale should be 7.33 hm2per labor on average in Henan Province by 2023, and no more than 11.4 hm2per labor on average. Guimin Wang and Hong Tang studied the moderate scale of agriculture in hilly and mountainous areas, and concluded that the mountainous areas could also implement the scale operation. Gobin et al. conducted a quantitative analysis on the land use level in southeastern Nigeria by constructing a logistics model. Yohannes et al. used the growth equilibrium model to assess the extent of impact of labor migration on the cultivated land transfer and scale operation. Most of the studies have focused on the estimation and calculation of the moderate scale of agriculture, which is not consistent with the reality of the coexistence of multiple scales of agricultural operation in China. This paper attempts to estimate the distribution function of cultivated land transfer operation scale based on the historical statistical data, simulate the number of farm households with different scale of operation development and analyze the distribution of the scale under different operation models.

1 Current Status of Operation Scale

According to the national rural operation statistics, as of the end of 2017, China’s total area of transferred cultivated land was 34.13 million hm2, in which the area of the cultivated land transferred in the farm households was 19.6 million hm2, accounting for 57.5% of the total transferred area; the area of cultivated land transferred in the farmer specialized cooperatives was 7.73 million hm2, accounting for 22.7% of the total transferred area. Since the shareholders of the farm specialized cooperatives are farmers, the cultivated land transferred in the cooperatives can be regarded as the cultivated land transferred in the farmers. Therefore, the area of cultivated land transferred in the farmers was 27.33 million hm2in 2017, accounting for 80.2% of the total transferred area. There was a large gap in the scale of operation among the farm households with the transferred cultivated land. The scale of farm households transferring farmland out is smaller or no cultivated land. And there were also differences in the scale of operation among the farm households with cultivated land transferred in. In recent years, with the continual increase in the total amount of cultivated land transfer, the operation scale of farm households has also changed accordingly, with the details shown in Table 1.

Tab. 1 Proportion of the number of farm households with different scale of operation and the growth rate %

In the past eight years, the proportion of farm households with less than 0.67 hm2of cultivated land was stabilized at about 85.80%, which had been declining in the past six years, with average annual growth rate of -0.16%. The average proportion of farm households with 0.67～2 hm2of cultivated land was 10.46%, which had been declining in the past eight years, with average annual growth rate of -0.56%. The farm households with 2～3.33 hm2of cultivated land accounted for 2.50% of the total farm households on average, with average annual growth rate of 1.60%. The farm households with 3.33～6.67 hm2of cultivated land accounted for 0.86% of the total farm households on average, with average annual growth rate of 3.66%. The farm households with 6.67～13.33 hm2of cultivated land accounted for 0.27% of the total farm households on the average, with the average annual growth rate of 9.12%, which was the fastest. The farm households with more than 13.33 hm2of cultivated land accounted for 0.12% of the total farm households on average, with average annual growth rate of 7.57%, which was also fast. It can be seen that more than 96% of the farm households have cultivated land less than 2 hm2, and less than 0.5% of the farm households have cultivated land more than 6.67 hm2, but their development potential is the highest.

Since the number of farm households with more than 13.33 hm2is too vague, a quantitative distribution model is derived from the data distribution law in this paper, so as to make more precise division for the distribution of farm households with more than 13.33 hm2of the operation scale.

2 Model Selection and Parameter Determination

2.1 Model Selection

When the area isx(x>0), the operating area ofy=f(x) farm households is less thanx. It can be seen from the data in Table 1,f(x) is a monotonically increasing function, as shown in Figure 1.

It can be initially determined from the curve distribution in Figure 1 that

(1)

The number of farm households operating betweenx1andx2is

(2)

Fig. 1 Proportion of farm households with different scale of operation and the growth rate

2.2 Parameter determination

2.2.1 Calculate the proportion of farmer households with different scale

According to Table 1, the distribution of the operation scale of cultivated land in 2025 is estimated according to the proportion of farm households with different cultivated land area and the growth rate, as shown in Table 2.

Tab. 2 Proportion of farm households with different scale of operation in 2025 %

2.2.2 Determine the number of farm households

According to the national rural operation management statistics, the number of farm households in China has fluctuated around 263 million in recent 5 years. Therefore, the number of farm households in 2025 is set as 263 million. And 5 pairs ofxandyvalues can be obtained, as shown in Table 3～6.

Tab. 3 x and y values obtained from calculation

2.3 Estimated distribution function

The data of Table 3 are substituted into SPSS for the curve estimation, and the curve is obtained through fitting as shown in Figure 2.

The results of the model estimation are shown in Table 4.

Tab. 4 Model estimation results

The specifics are shown as follows

(3)

In the model,R2is 0.998,Ftest value is 1 258.556, and the significance is 0.000. Therefore, it can be determined that the model is effective.

Fig. 2 Fitting curve

3 Results Analysis

3.1 Model test

The corresponding scale y value is simulated through the model and compared with the estimated value. It is found that the deviation of the simulated value is very small (less than 3%) as shown in Table 5.

Tab. 5 Comparison results of the deviation between the simulated and estimated values

3.2 Estimation and calculation of farm households with different scale of operation

Equation 3 is used to simulate value ofyfor the operation scales of cultivated land between 13.33～133.33 hm2, which are divided into 18 operating scale segments. And the number of farm households in each segment is obtained through calculation, as shown in Table 6.

Tab. 6 Distribution of operating scale in 2025

It can be seen from Table 4 that by 2025, the number of farm households with more than 6.67 hm2of cultivated land will reach 3.57 million, the number of farm households with more than 20 hm2of cultivated land will reach 1.09 million, the number of farm households with more than 33.33 hm2of cultivated land will reach 597 500, and the number of farm households with more than 66.67 hm2of cultivated land will reach 223 300 in China. The expansion in scale will bring the changes in the mode of operation, planting system, production technology and many other aspects. The scientific and rational application of agricultural machinery will become an inevitable choice of the farm households with large-scale operation.

3.3 Distribution of the Scale of Different Operation Models

There is no clear boundary between the various types of agricultural operation models in China. In the survey, it was also found that in order to obtain more policy support, some of the scale operation entities applied for a variety of identities. For example, after the family farm support policy was promulgated in 2013, some cooperatives started to apply for family farm operation, so that they could enjoy the preferential policies for both cooperatives and family farms. But it was found in survey that there were scale differences among various operation models. The scale of state farms and cooperatives was mostly above 33.33 hm2, the scale of family farms was between 2～33.33 hm2, and the scale of retail farm households was below 2 hm2. According to the prediction results of the cultivated land operation scale in 2025, the number of farm households with different operation modes is shown in Table 7.

By 2025, the number of retail farm households will still be the largest, with the total number of farm households reaching 250.97 million, accounting for 86.83% of the total number of farm households. But the total area of cultivated land operated by retail farm households will decrease, accounting for only 27.68% of the total cultivated land area. Family farms will become the mainstream of the scale operation entities, with the family farms reaching 11.46 million, operating the largest area of cultivated land and accounting for 39% of the total cultivated land area. The number of cooperatives is relatively small, accounting for only 0.22% of the total number of farm households. But due to the relatively large average scale of operation, the cultivated land area operated by the cooperatives will account for 27% of the total cultivated land area. State farms remain stable. But in general, by 2025, large-scale operation will become the main means of agricultural operation, with the large-scale operation of the total cultivated land area reaching 70%.

Tab. 7 Number and area of farm households with different operating modes in 2025

4 Conclusions and Discussion

Based on the historical data of the distribution of farm households with different scale of operation in the statistical data of rural management in China from 2010 to 2017, this paper constructed the distribution function of farm household operation scale, estimated and calculated the number of farm households with different scale of operation in 2025, and analyzed the farm households with different scale of operation and the cultivated land area. The conclusions are as follows.

1) By 2025, the number of farm households with more than 6.67 hm2of cultivated land in China will reach 3.57 million, the number of farm households with more than 20 hm2of cultivated land will reach 1.09 million, the number of farm households with more than 33.33 hm2of cultivated land will reach 597,500, and the number of farm households with more than 66.67 hm2of cultivated land will reach 223,300.

2) Family farms will become the mainstream of the scale operation entities. Family farms will reach 11.46 million, with the largest operation area of cultivated land, accounting for 39% of the total cultivated area. The number of cooperatives is relatively small, accounting for only 0.22% of the total number of farm households. However, due the relatively large average scale of operation, the cultivated area operated by the cooperatives accounts for 27% of the total cultivated land area. Large-scale operation will become the main means of agricultural operation, with the total cultivated land of large-scale operation reaching 70%.