By Liu Shouying, Li Qing & Wang Ruimin

Research Report Vol.18 No.2, 2016

Agricultural modernization in China has always been impeded by the problem of small-scale and scattered operation of rural farmland, which is mainly caused by hindered transfer of rural farmland and a flawed land transfer system. In fact, the central government has policies of encouraging voluntary, law-based, and paid transfer of rural farmland among farmers. In recent years, rural farmland transfer takes the trend of accelerated growth and presents some new features as rural population moves to non-agricultural industries at a faster pace.

I. Features of Farmland Transfer

1. Farmland transfer accelerates greatly in recent years From early 1980s and early 1990s, a very small proportion of farmland was transferred. According to the data collected from rural survey sites nationwide, from 1984 to 1992, 93.8% of farmers never transferred farmland, and only 1.99% transferred some of their farmland. By 2003, higher percentage of farmers transferred farmland. Based on the survey sampling 20,842 households in the eastern, central and western areas, conducted by rural survey sites set by Ministry of Agriculture, the proportion of transferred farmland accounted for 9.1% of the total farmland, with 9%, 11.6% and 3.86% for the eastern, central and western regions respectively[ ].

For the past few years, an increasing amount of farmland has been transferred, with a total area of 403 million mu (1 mu is roughly about 0.0667 hectares) by the end of 2014, 2.16 times that of 2010, as shown in Table 1. The area of transferred farmland accounted for 30.32% of farmland contracted and operated by households, up by 15.65 percentage points compared with 2010. Geographically speaking, the proportion of transferred farmland is in descending order from the central to eastern, and to western regions, and so is the growth rate of farmland transfer. By the end of 2013, the proportion of transferred farmland was 26.06% in the eastern region, 30.64% in the central region, and 19.53% in the western region, 10.44, 7.5, and 5.28 percent higher than in 2011 respectively. The proportion of transferred farmland is high in several provinces and cities, like Shanghai (65.81%), Jiangsu (56.96%), Beijing (48.79%), and Zhejiang (45.32%), as shown in Table 2.

2. Farmland is still mainly subcontracted or leased

According to the policies of Ministry of Agriculture, farmland can be transferred in five ways includes subcontracting, leasing, joint stock partnership, exchanging, and transferring, taking up 46.53%, 33.17%, 6.68%, 5.94% and 2.97% respectively in 2014, as shown in Table 3. The proportion of subcontracted and leased farmland among the total transferred farmland was 79.7%, with the area of subcontracted farmland and leased farmland increased by 95.83 and 173.47 percent compared with 2010. During the same period, however, the proportion of subcontracted farmland fell by 5.08 percent, while that of leased farmland rose by 6.83 percent.

Geographically speaking, farmland is mainly transferred through subcontracting and leasing in all regions, accounting for 75.69%, 79.46% and 79.93% of the total transferred farmland respectively in the eastern, central and western regions. The central regions has the highest percentage of subcontracted farmland, more than 60% of the total transferred farmland in 2011 and over half in 2013. In contrast, less than 40% of farm land in the eastern and western regions was subcontracted. The proportion of leased farmland in the central region was way lower than that in the eastern and western regions, but rose from 2011 to 2013, as shown in Table 4. It is worth noting that the proportion of farmland with joint stock partnership was high, over 10% in 2011 and 11.26% in 2013 in the eastern regions, while that in the central and western regions was only 6.11% and 3.81% respectively.

3. A stable proportion of transferred farmland is set to grow grain crops but with wide regional differences

From 2010 to 2014, the area of subcontracted farmland growing grain crops increased from 103 million to 229 million mu, with the proportion rising from 55.06% to 56.82% of the total transferred farmland, as shown in Table 5. Provinces differ in the percentages of transferred farmland for growing grain crops. In 2013, as high as 91.23% and 86.98% of transferred farmland in Jilin Province and Heilongjiang Province respectively was used for grain production, with the area of transferred farmland for grain production in major grain-producing areas higher than the national average, like Inner Mongolia (74.03%), Jiangxi (65.30%), Anhui (69.21%), Henan (65.08%). However, some major grain-producing areas tend to grow non-grain crops. The proportion of transferred farmland growing non-grain crops is 88.83% in Beijing, 76.99% in Guizhou, 76.31% in Hainan, 74.67% in Guangdong, and 73.76% in Yunnan.

4. An increasing number of farmland transfer contracts are signed

As farmland is transferred to multiple parties like non-farmers, farmers attach more importance to signing contracts. By the end of 2014, the number of farming households with farmland transfer reached 58.33 million, 25.34% of the total households contracting and managing farmland, 10.82 percentage points up from 2010. Besides, 42 million farmland transfer contracts have been signed, involving an area of 269 million mu, increased by 108.10 percentage points and 154.49 percentage points compared with 2010. Moreover, the area of farmland with contracts accounted for 66.75% of the total area of transferred farmland, 10.14 percentage points higher than that in 2010.

II. Changes in Farm Operation Scale by Farming Households

With accelerated growth of farmland transfer, farmers expand their scale of farmland operation. As of late 2013, the number of farming households with farmland less than 10 mu was 226 million, more than 85.96% of the total households contracting and operating farmland, and the number of households with farmland over 10 mu took up 14.04%. Specifically speaking, the numbers of farming households with farmland between 10 and 30 mu and between 30―50 mu have as high percentages as 10.28% and 2.55% respectively. As of 2014, the number of farming households with less than 50 mu of farmland was the lion’s share (98.71%), which corresponds to the ratio between family size to land area, technical conditions and farmers’ operation skills (see Table 7).

In addition, there are a number of farming households with large-scale operation. In 2014, 2.354 million farming households operated 50―100 mu of farmland; 750,000 farming households had 100―200 mu; and 310,000 farming households operated over 200 mu. In China where small-scale farming prevailed for a long time, it is of necessity to focus on the effects of a large number of households with moderate scale of farming on agricultural efficiency and rural income distribution in the future.

III. Farmland Transferred Among Different Parties

In recent years, farmland is operated by different parties with higher proportion of transferred farmland.

Farmland is mainly operated by farming households, but transferred among an increasing number of other parties. In 2014, 58.31% of transferred farmland is operated by farmers, who are still the major player, as shown in Table 9. However, farmland is also transferred among plenty of parties, like farming specialized cooperatives (21.84%), enterprises (9.68%), and others (10.17%). It is worth noting that, compared with 2010, farmland transferred to farming households dropped by 11.04 percentage points; that transferred to rural cooperatives rose by 10.01 percentage points; that transferred to enterprises increased by 1.62 percentage points; and that went to other parties fell by 0.58 percentage points. ...

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