Farmers' land allocation responses to the soybean rejuvenation plan: evidence from “typical farm” in Jilin, China

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to test the impact of the soybean rejuvenation plan and the subsidy on farmers' land allocation decisions, which may reference policy adjustment from a micro perspective. Design/methodology/approach - The paper develops a multi-objective optimized programming model on farm-level, which simulated the land-use changes, as well as the resulting changes in benefits of the rational “typical farm”. The simulation scenarios include changes in subsidy policy and production efficiency, and the baseline scenario was the production status in 2018. Findings - The results show that an increase in soybean producer subsidy will encourage farmers to allocate more land for soybean planting, which can be considered as a policy tool in promoting soybean production in China. Besides, the effect of subsidy in adjusting soybean acreage for farms is further affected by external conditions such as production technology (such as breeding technology, pesticide and fertilizer application efficiency). Meanwhile, large-scale farms show more significant land adjustments when facing changes in policies and external conditions. Originality/value - The value of this paper is to simulate the effects of soybean policy and subsidy change on farmers' land-allocation decisions through a multi-objective farmer decision-making model, which provides a micro perspective to understand the implementation effect of the soybean revitalization plan.