“Absorbing in” or “Crowding out”: The impact of high-standard farmland construction on farmers’ land withdrawal

The gradual withdrawal of small farmers from land operation and the accompanying rise of new type of agricultural operating entities are becoming a key part of China's agricultural modernization process. In this process, high-standard farmland construction (HSFC) plays an important role as a “catalyst”, but it is not clear whether HSFC inevitably leads to farmers’ land withdrawal, and whether it has a differentiated impact on different types of livelihoods and different scales of operation. Based on the background of farmer differentiation, this paper uses the survey data of 1125 rice farmers in Sichuan Province in 2024 and the IV-probit model to explore the impact of HSFC on farmers’ land withdrawal from the perspective of property rights allocation. The findings are as follows. (1) Through the dual mechanism of property rights empowerment and property rights squeezing, the village-level HSFC significantly promotes farmers’ land withdrawal behavior at the overall level. (2) In the context of livelihood differentiation of farming households, village-level HSFC promotes the land withdrawal behavior of pure farming, part-time farming, second-class part-time farming and non-farming households, and the degree of withdrawal deepens with the increase of the degree of differentiation in turn. (3) In the context of production scale differentiation, village-level HSFC will promote the land withdrawal behavior of smallholders, but not promote the land withdrawal behavior of large-scale households, and even inhibit their land withdrawal behavior. This paper aims to explain that it is necessary to rationally treat farmers’ land withdrawal behavior in the process of high-standard farmland construction, clarify the ownership of incremental farmland property rights formed by land consolidation in the process of HSFC, give adequate support and protection to initial progressive scale farmers and the elite farmers in the village, and give priority to protecting the stability of the management rights of local agricultural operating entities. Besides, the government should also pay close attention to the “sustainable livelihood” of some farmers who have withdrawn from land operation, and promote HSFC step by step, maintaining perseverance and historical patience.