IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/lauspo/v133y2023ics0264837723003423.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Understanding cropland abandonment from economics within a representative village and its empirical analysis in Chinese mountainous areas

Author

Listed:
  • Zhang, Ying
  • Li, Xiubin
  • Shi, Tiechou
  • Li, Hongwei
  • Zhai, Liang

Abstract

China has been experiencing "Lewis Turning-Point", which means rural labor has been continuously transmitting to manufacturing sector and urban areas, ended up with old or female labor left in agricultural sector. One immediate result from agricultural labor shortage, some pieces of farmland will be abandoned, especially in mountainous area where large-farming-machinery cannot be applied due to terrain restrictions, and labor loss from agriculture cannot be supplemented. In this context, understanding land abandonment is critical for land planning and management. Specifically, it is necessary to figure out which cropland is more likely to be abandoned? To what scale of the land will be abandoned in the future? This article aims to figure out the basic rules behind land use or abandonment decision from a perspective of economics. In China, village is the basic unit for land use and land use rights transferring, thus we introduced a representative village, featured by an average farmland size with distribution pattern following questionnaire survey carried out in Wulong district, Chongqing city. We developed a theoretical land use decision-making model with its objective of maximizing land use incomes among ‘representative village’. This model is employed to simulate land abandonment rate in the year of 2011 and 2020 by changing the external variables given by the market survey, with a result of 9.25% and 33.40% respectively. The simulated land abandonment rate shows only 3.84 percentage point difference with the official data, which certified that this model is reasonable and applicable for land use decision in mountain areas in China. The model also shows a rise of labor wage will lead to huge land abandonment. To counter land abandonment, government should take some measures, such as rise of agricultural product sale price or decline the chemical fertilizer price, to alleviate land abandonment effectively.

Suggested Citation

  • Zhang, Ying & Li, Xiubin & Shi, Tiechou & Li, Hongwei & Zhai, Liang, 2023. "Understanding cropland abandonment from economics within a representative village and its empirical analysis in Chinese mountainous areas," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 133(C).
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:133:y:2023:i:c:s0264837723003423
    DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106876
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837723003423
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106876?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Wang, Xiaobing & Herzfeld, Thomas & Glauben, Thomas, 2007. "Labor allocation in transition: Evidence from Chinese rural households," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 18(3), pages 287-308.
    2. Seeborg, Michael C. & Jin, Zhenhu & Zhu, Yiping, 2000. "The new rural-urban labor mobility in China: Causes and implications," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 39-56.
    3. Mullan, Katrina & Grosjean, Pauline & Kontoleon, Andreas, 2011. "Land Tenure Arrangements and Rural-Urban Migration in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 123-133, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jia, Lili & Petrick, Martin, 2014. "How does land fragmentation affect off-farm labor supply: panel data evidence from China," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 45(3), pages 369-380.
    2. Deininger, Klaus & Jin, Songqing & Xia, Fang & Huang, Jikun, 2014. "Moving Off the Farm: Land Institutions to Facilitate Structural Transformation and Agricultural Productivity Growth in China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 59(C), pages 505-520.
    3. Peng, Y. & Turvey, C. & Kong, R., 2018. "An Analysis of China s Reforms on Mortgaging and Transacting Rural Land Use Rights and Entrepreneurial Activity," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277308, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    4. Hao Cui & Joonmo Cho, 2020. "Does the Revised Hukou System Facilitate or Restrain the Short-Term Labor Inflows into Chinese Cities?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(4), pages 1-15, February.
    5. Yinhua Mai & Xiujian Peng & Peter Dixon & Maureen Rimmer, 2014. "The economic effects of facilitating the flow of rural workers to urban employment in China," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 93(3), pages 619-642, August.
    6. Facchini, Giovanni & Liu, Maggie Y. & Mayda, Anna Maria & Zhou, Minghai, 2019. "China's “Great Migration”: The impact of the reduction in trade policy uncertainty," Journal of International Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 126-144.
    7. Zhang, Yumei & Diao, Xinshen, 2020. "The changing role of agriculture with economic structural change – The case of China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 62(C).
    8. Lu, H., 2018. "Analysis of the mechanism and effect of land fragmentation on non-agricultural labor supply: a case study of Jiangsu, China," 2018 Conference, July 28-August 2, 2018, Vancouver, British Columbia 277097, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    9. Yang Cheng & Yuxia Lv & Mark Rosenberg & Linke Hou, 2018. "Decision Making of Non-Agricultural Work by Rural Residents in Weifang, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(5), pages 1-15, May.
    10. Brosig, Stephan & Glauben, Thomas & Herzfeld, Thomas & Rozelle, Scott & Wang, Xiaobing, 2007. "The dynamics of Chinese rural households' participation in labor markets," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 37(2-3), pages 167-178.
    11. Zhao, Qiran & Yu, Xiaohua & Wang, Xiaobing & Glauben, Thomas, 2014. "The impact of parental migration on children's school performance in rural China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 43-54.
    12. Li, Jingrong & Zhang, Chenlei & Mi, Yunsheng, 2021. "Land titling and internal migration: Evidence from China," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 111(C).
    13. Glauben, Thomas & Herzfeld, Thomas & Rozelle, Scott & Wang, Xiaobing, 2012. "Persistent Poverty in Rural China: Where, Why, and How to Escape?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(4), pages 784-795.
    14. Sylvie Démurger & Shi Li, 2013. "Migration, Remittances, and Rural Employment Patterns: Evidence from China," Research in Labor Economics, in: Labor Market Issues in China, pages 31-63, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    15. Yinxin Su & Mingzhi Hu & Yuzhe Wu, 2023. "Rural Land Transfer and Urban Settlement Intentions of Rural Migrants: Evidence from a Rural Land System Reform in China," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 20(4), pages 1-15, February.
    16. Wang, Xiaobing & Yu, Xiaohua, 2011. "Scale Effects, Technical Efficiency and Land Lease in China," 2011 ASAE 7th International Conference, October 13-15, Hanoi, Vietnam 290658, Asian Society of Agricultural Economists (ASAE).
    17. Franz K. Huber & Michael Morlok & Caroline S. Weckerle & Klaus Seeland, 2015. "Livelihood Strategies in Shaxi, Southwest China: Conceptualizing Mountain–Valley Interactions as a Human–Environment System," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 7(3), pages 1-26, March.
    18. Xianlei Ma & Nico Heerink & Ekko Ierland & Xiaoping Shi, 2016. "Land tenure insecurity and rural-urban migration in rural China," Papers in Regional Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 95(2), pages 383-406, June.
    19. Longjunjiang Huang & Cong Liao & Xuan Guo & Yanlin Liu & Xiaojin Liu, 2023. "Analysis of the Impact of Livelihood Capital on Livelihood Strategies of Leased-In Farmland Households: A Case Study of Jiangxi Province, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 15(13), pages 1-29, June.
    20. Chernina, Eugenia & Castañeda Dower, Paul & Markevich, Andrei, 2014. "Property rights, land liquidity, and internal migration," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 191-215.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:133:y:2023:i:c:s0264837723003423. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Joice Jiang (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.journals.elsevier.com/land-use-policy .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.