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. John Giles & Ren Mu, 2018. "Village Political Economy, Land Tenure Insecurity, and the Rural to Urban Migration Decision: Evidence from China," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 100(2), pages 521-544.
    6. Wang, Xiaobing & Yu, Xiaohua, 2011. "Scale Effects, Technical Efficiency and Land Lease in China," 2011 International Congress, August 30-September 2, 2011, Zurich, Switzerland 115736, European Association of Agricultural Economists.
    7. 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.
    8. Jia, Lili, 2012. "Land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply in China," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 66, number 66.
    9. Muhammad Rizwan & Ping Qing & Abdul Saboor & Muhammad Amjed Iqbal & Adnan Nazir, 2020. "Production Risk and Competency among Categorized Rice Peasants: Cross-Sectional Evidence from an Emerging Country," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(9), pages 1-15, May.
    10. Peter Simmons & Yuanyuan Xie, 2013. "Where is the grass greener? A micro-founded model of migration with application to Guangdong," IZA Journal of Migration and Development, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 2(1), pages 1-23, December.
    11. 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.
    12. 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.
    13. Chen, Jiandong & Cheng, Shulei & Song, Malin, 2018. "Changes in energy-related carbon dioxide emissions of the agricultural sector in China from 2005 to 2013," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 94(C), pages 748-761.
    14. repec:hal:wpaper:halshs-00744438 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Marwan Benali & Bernhard Brümmer & Victor Afari‐Sefa, 2018. "Smallholder participation in vegetable exports and age‐disaggregated labor allocation in Northern Tanzania," Agricultural Economics, International Association of Agricultural Economists, vol. 49(5), pages 549-562, September.
    16. Deininger,Klaus W. & Xia,Fang & Savastano,Sara, 2015. "Smallholders? land ownership and access in Sub-Saharan Africa: a new landscape ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7285, The World Bank.
    17. Kai Huang & Xin Deng & Yi Liu & Zhuolin Yong & Dingde Xu, 2020. "Does off-Farm Migration of Female Laborers Inhibit Land Transfer? Evidence from Sichuan Province, China," Land, MDPI, vol. 9(1), pages 1-14, January.
    18. 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).
    19. Chang, Hongqin & Dong, Xiao-yuan & MacPhail, Fiona, 2011. "Labor Migration and Time Use Patterns of the Left-behind Children and Elderly in Rural China," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 39(12), pages 2199-2210.
    20. Ma, Xianlei & Heerink, Nico & van Ierland, Ekko & Lang, Hairu & Shi, Xiaoping, 2020. "Decisions by Chinese households regarding renting in arable land—The impact of tenure security perceptions and trust," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 60(C).
    21. 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.

    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.