Land rental market,off-farm employment and agricultural production in Southeast China:A plot-level ca study
Shuyi FENG a,⁎,Nico HEERINK a,b ,Ruerd RUBEN c ,Futian QU a
a College of Public Administration,Nanjing Agricultural University,Nanjing 210095,PR China
b Development Economics Group,Wageningen University,The Netherlands
c
Centre for International Development Issues,Radboud University,Nijmegen,The Netherlands
a r t i c l e i n f o a
财务实习
b s t r a
电脑护眼模式
c t
Article history:
Received 4April 2009
Received in revid form 31May 2010Accepted 15June 2010This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment,input u,and rice yields for 215plots cultivated by 52houholds in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province.Our findings show that houholds that rent extra land are relatively more productive,but contradict results of earlier studies which found that tenure status of plots affects the level of land investments.We further find that off-farm employment does not signi ficantly affect rice yields.This result contradicts tho of earlier studies which found that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment dominates the positive income effect.Another novel finding is that people working locally off-farm tend to switch from green manure planting towards the u of organic manure on their rice plots.We conclude that policies that will further stimulate the development of land rental markets,which is still in its infancy,can contribute signi ficantly to higher rice production in Southeast China.Another implication of our results is that worries about the negative impact that the continuously growing off-farm employment may have on China's goal to remain lf-suf ficient in grain production are less relevant at the moment for the region examined in our study.
©2010Elvier Inc.All rights rerved.
JEL classi fications:J22Q12Q15
Keywords:
Land rental market Land tenure contracts Off-farm employment Rural houholds China
1.Introduction
电脑打开蓝牙Economic reforms implemented since the end of the 1970s have stimulated the development of land and labor markets in rural China.Recent studies show an increasing incidence of land rental activities (Deininger &Jin,2005;Kung,2002),while off-farm employment has become a signi ficant phenomenon since the mid-1980s.By 2000,more than 200million rural laborers worked off-farm (de Brauw,Huang,Rozelle,Zhang,&Zhang,2002;Zhang,Huang,&Rozelle,2002).As China's economy continues to grow,the development of land and labor markets is expected to continue or even accelerate.The developments may have important conquences for agricultural production.
Land rental markets can enhance allocative ef ficiency and agricultural productivity by equalizing the marginal product of land across houholds with different land –labor endowments and by facilitating transfers of land from less productive houholds to more productive ones (Carter &Yao,2002;Deininger,2003;Jin &Deininger,2009).However,in prent-day China land rental arrangements are generally informal,short term,and between houholds living in the same village.R
ented plots are therefore subject to tenure incurity,which may discourage land investment and hamper agricultural productivity increas.
The effect of off-farm employment on agricultural production is ambiguous.Off-farm employment reduces the labor available for agricultural production,especially if hiring agricultural labor to replace family labor incurs transaction costs and if hired labor is not as ef ficient as family labor.But off-farm employment also enables houholds to increa their incomes,to overcome credit
China Economic Review 21(2010)598–606
⁎Corresponding author.Tel.:+862584396009;fax:+862584396531.E-mail address:shuyifeng@njau.edu (S.
Feng).1043-951X/$–e front matter ©2010Elvier Inc.All rights rerved.doi:
10.1016/j.chieco.2010.06.002
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
China Economic Review
and insurance constraints and to increa their investment in agricultural production (Rozelle,Taylor,&de Brauw,1999;Taylor,Rozelle,&de Brauw,2003).In addition,the reduction in food consumption by houhold members working off-farm (e.g.tho who migrate)may have an impact on agricultural production decisions if houhold production and consumption decisions are non-parable (Burger,1994).
Few studies provide empirical estimates of the effect of land rental market development on allocative ef ficiency and agricultural productivity in rural China.Carter and Yao (2002)find for a panel data t of 339houholds,surveyed in 1988,1993and 1997in five counties in Zhejiang and Jiangxi Provinces,that allocative ef ficiency is achieved by houholds that rent out land,but surprisingly not by houholds that rent in land.Lohmar,Zhang,and Somwaru (2001)find for a sample of 830houholds,surveyed in 1998in 6provinces,that allocative ef ficiency and aggregate agricultural production increa,becau the houholds that rent in land have a signi ficantly higher marginal product of land than houholds that do not rent additional land.Jin and Deininger (2009)examine the impact of land rentals using a panel of almost 8,000houholds in about 800villages that are reprentative of China's nine agriculturally most important provinces for the period 2001–2004.Their study finds that,by transferring land from less able and more af fluent houholds who joined the non-farm ctor to poorer ones with ample family labor,land markets allow more effective u of potentially idle land that can contribute to signi ficant agricultural productivity gains.
Related rearch on land tenure in rural China focus on the land tenure incurity resulting from frequent land reallocations,and the impact of this incurity on houhold investment (as measured by application of green manure or organic manure)and agricultural productivity (Benjamin &Brandt,2
002;Jacoby,Li,&Rozelle,2002;Li,Rozelle,&Brandt,1998).Rural land in China belongs to the village collectives,with farm houholds having ur rights for a fixed contract period (at the moment 30years for most cultivated land).Land is generally allocated to farm houholds on the basis of their houhold (and/or labor force)size,but may be reallocated to correct for demographic changes (Tan,Heerink,&Qu,2006).Most studies investigating the incurity caud by reallocations find that it has a signi ficant but small negative effect on investment ( manure,organic manure),but no signi ficant effect on productivity.The main explanation is that land investment plays a minor role in agricultural production compared with other agricultural inputs such as land,labor,and chemical fertilizers (Yao,2007).
Many empirical studies have investigated the effect of off-farm employment on agricultural production in rural China.Recent studies in this field apply the “new economics of labor migration ”(NELM)framework developed by Stark and Bloom (1985),in which the migration decision is part of a t of interwoven economic choices made by houholds facing imperfect markets.Rozelle et al.(1999)and Taylor et al.(2003)estimate a simultaneous-equation model from data collected among 787farm houholds from 31villages in Hebei and Liaoning Provinces in 1995,and find the positive income effect of migrant remittances nearly offts the negative lost-labor effect of migration on crop
production.On the other hand,using a village computable general equilibrium model that takes into account existing factor market imperfections,Shi et al.(in press)find for a remote village in Jiangxi Province that the negative lost-labor effect of off-farm employment on agricultural incomes is much stronger than the (small)positive income effect.None of the studies,however,pays attention to the reduced food consumption effect identi fied by Burger (1994).
To our knowledge no studies have analyzed until now the joint impact of land rental market development and off-farm employment on agricultural production in China.Rural China is characterized by surplus and underemployed rural labor,while land rental markets are rather thin (Brandt,Huang,Li,&Rozelle,2002;Brandt,Rozelle,&Turner,2004).Rural houholds facing such land and labor market imperfections are likely not to make decisions on land and labor market participation in isolation,but to decide on them simultaneously.The purpo of this paper is therefore to analyze the joint effects of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on agricultural production in rural China.We will investigate the impact on land investment,input u,and agricultural productivity parately,as the land renting and off-farm employment may affect each aspect differently.The remainder of this paper is structured as follows.Section 2prents the theoretical framework of our analysis.Section 3introduces the estimation procedure.In Section 4,estimation resu
lts are prented.The paper concludes with a summary of its main findings and with some policy implications in Section 5.2.Conceptual framework
In this paper we will u plot-level data to examine the impacts of land renting and off-farm employment on agricultural production.The model employed is bad on the structural models developed by Feder,Onchan,Chalamwong,and Hongladarom (1988),Place and Hazell (1993)and Hayes,Roth,and Zepeda (1997)to examine the impact of tenure curity on investments,input u and productivity in agriculture.Assuming that houholds decide on land renting and off-farm employment before making decisions on land management and investment 1,the reduced-form equations can be written as follows:
LI i =LI i A in ;l o ;TS i ;Z p i ;Z q ;Z h
;L ;A ;r ;w ;p X ð1Þl a i =l a i A in ;l o ;TS i ;Z p i ;Z q ;Z h
;L ;A ;r ;w ;p X ð2ÞX i =X i A in ;l o ;TS i ;Z p i ;Z q ;Z h
;L ;A ;r ;w ;p X ð3ÞQ i =Q i A in ;l o ;TS i ;Z p i ;Z q ;Z h
;L ;A ;r ;w ;p X
ð4Þ
1
This assumption will (partly)be relaxed in our empirical analysis.
599
S.Feng et al./China Economic Review 21(2010)598–606
600S.Feng et al./China Economic Review21(2010)598–606
where LI,l a,X,and Q are land investment,labor u,u of non-labor inputs,and yield on each plot(subscript i),respectively.The explanatory variables A in and l o are houhold decisions on whether to rent additional land and participate in off-farm employment,respectively.TS is the plot-specific tenure curity indicator,Z p are other plot characteristics,Z q are farm characteristics,Z h are houhold preferences,L is the houhold labor endowment,A is the land endowment,r is the market land rent,w is the market labor wage,and p X is the price for non-labor inputs.By estimating Eqs.(1)–(4),the direct plus indirect)effects of land renting(A in),the resulting tenure curity of plots(TS),and off-farm employment(l o)on land investment, labor u,non-labor inputs,and land prod
uctivity can be assd.
3.Model specification and estimation
This paper us data from a farm houhold survey and a plot-level survey that were held in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province,Southeast China.The villages were lected using a ries of criteria including economic development level,market access and geographical conditions.Local rearchers and policy makers were consulted and veral site visits were made as part of this process.The three villages are considered reprentative of the diversity of rural conditions that can be found in Northeast Jiangxi Province and in the much larger hilly area of Southeast China with rice-bad production systems(Kuiper,Heerink,Tan,Ren,&Shi, 2001).The three villages lected are Banqiao in Yujiang County,Shangzhu in Guixi City and Gangyan in Yanshan County2.
The farm houhold survey was carried out in2000and the beginning of2001.The questions in the survey referred to the entire year2000.In each village,23%of the houholds were interviewed.A stratified random sample was ud for lecting the houholds,with the hamlets within each village forming the strata(Kuiper et al.,2001).The information collected includes demographic characteristics,asts,land tenure,and participation in factor markets.Data on houhold migration a
nd local off-farm employment decisions collected during that survey are ud for the empirical analysis below.
Plot-level data,however,were not collected then.Out of the329houholds interviewed in2000and2001,52houholds were randomly lected,and plot-level agricultural production data were collected in January2003for the entire year2002.Of the52 houholds in the three villages,19houholds rented in irrigated land in2002,while33houholds did not(and are therefore considered ‘lf-sufficient in land’).Plots cultivated with rice,the most important crop in the rearch area,are included in the sample.In total215rice plots were surveyed;172were contracted directly from village collectives 20%of the plots)were rented from other farm houholds.Contracted plots occur in both lf-sufficient houholds and houholds that rent in,while rented plots are restricted only to houholds that rent in.Collected information includes input u and output of each plot,plot characteristics,and soil quality.
3.1.Model specification
The conceptual framework in Section2suggests the variables that potentially affect agricultural production decisions.An overview of the dependent and explanatory variables included in the analysi
s,subdivided by houhold land market regimes(land renting in vs.lf-sufficient in land)and tenure status of the plot(d),is prented in Table1.
Land investment is reprented by green manure planting(LI gm)and organic manure application(LI om)3;long-term land investments,such as wells,fences or fruit trees,are virtually abnt on the rice plots examined in our study.The land investment variables are both dummy variables which equal one if the houhold invests on the plot.As can be en from Table1,green manure is planted on33%of the plots,and organic manure is applied on46%of the plots in the sample.
Input u includes labor(l a)and chemical fertilizers(X cf)4.The inputs are expresd per unit area to correct for differences in plot size.Labor is measured in man days.There arefive different commonly ud types of chemical fertilizers,which are aggregated and measured in value terms.Houholds work on average around41days and u47yuan of chemical fertilizers on each mu of land(e Table1).
Houholds grow either a single or a double rice crop in the surveyed area.Rice yields(Q)vary for different varieties and are aggregated and measured in values per unit area.As can be en from Table1,the average rice yield is297.73yuan per mu5.
Explanatory variables in the analysis include houhold decisions in terms of land renting in(A in)and off-farm employment (l o),indicators of plot tenure curity(TS),plot characteristics(Z p),farm characteristics(Z q),houhold characteristics(Z h), houhold land and labor endowments(A and L),market land rent(r),market wage rate(w),and non-labor input prices(p X).
Houholds that rent land(A in)are expected to have a higher marginal product of land,and therefore a higher agricultural productivity,than tho that do not.The impact of off-farm employment(l o)on agricultural investment,input u and production is ambiguous,as explained in Section1.If the income effect dominates the sum of the lost-labor and reduced food consumption effects,the net impact will be positive;if the latter two effects are stronger,it will be negative.In our analysis we distinguish between local off-farm employment(l ol)and migration(l om)6.Local off-farm employment may only have an income effect,
2See Feng and Heerink(2008)for a detailed introduction of the three villages.
3The rearch on the effect of tenure curity on land investment focus on the u of green manure planting and organic manure application as the main forms of land investment in rural China(Jacoby et al.,2002;Li et al.,1998).
钻石戒子4Data are also available on ed,herbicides and pesticides and animal traction.The inputs are not included in the analysis for simplicity,becau they are relatively minor inputs.
5The calculation of the rice yield is bad on prices for the year2002.Since the autumn of2003,rice prices have incread rapidly.
6Migrants are family members working off-farm and not living together with other houhold members.Houholds participate in migration if at least one houhold member works as a migrant.They participate in local off-farm employment if they have at least one houhold member working off-farm but no houhold members working as migrants.
becau houhold members that are involved in local off-farm employment normally live and consume at home and are often able to combine local off-farm employment with on-farm agricultural production.For migration,on the other hand,all three effects may be relevant.
Tenure curity (TS )is reprented by the tenure status of the plot.Plots are either contracted from the village collectives (for a 30-year period)or rented from other houholds.A dummy variable,which equals one if the plot is rented,is ud to indicate the tenure status.The land rental arrangements are normally verbal and of short duration.Rented plots are therefore less cure than contracted plots an
《》读后感d are expected to receive less land investment,and thus to produce less output.On the other hand,the u of variable inputs is expected to be higher on rented plots becau houholds renting additional land tend to maximize short-term agricultural pro fits on the plots.Thus the net effect of tenure curity on yield is ambiguous.Following Pender and Fafchamps (2001),the interaction between the houhold land renting variable and the rented plot dummy (A in *TS )is included in the model.In this way it is possible to examine whether rented plots are managed in a signi ficantly different way compared to non-rented plots,given that houholds that rent additional land may have a higher productivity than ‘lf-suf ficient ’houholds.
The control variables in model (1)–(4)consist of plot characteristics (Z p ),farm characteristics (Z q ),houhold characteristics (Z h ),houhold time and land endowments (L ,A )and market land rent,wage rate and non-labor input prices (r ,w ,p X ).Plot characteristics compri the following indicators:
-Soil fertility (Z pf ).Houholds in the survey were asked their perceptions about soil quality,which were given a value of one if houholds perceived soil fertility as poor,two if houholds perceived soil fertility as average,and three if houholds perceived soil fertility as good.It is expected that land productivity is higher on plots with good soil fertility.Land investment and input u may be higher on
fertile plots,if the marginal returns of land investment and input u are higher than on plots with poor soil fertility.They are expected to be lower,if the marginal returns are lower.
Table 1
Descriptive statistics of the variables ud in the plot-level analysis.Source:Farm houhold survey.Item
Symbols
Unit
Renting in houhold (19)Self-suf ficient houhold (33)All plots
Contracted
Rented
Contracted Number of sample plots
6043
112
215Mean (standard deviation)
Dependent variables Land investment Green manure LI gm 0or 10.32(0.47)0.19(0.39)0.39(0.49)0.33(0.47)Organic manure LI om 0or 10.50(0.50)0.37(0.49)0.47(0.50)0.46(0.50)Input u Labor
l a Man day/mu b 37.6(20.0)37.7(36.0)43.4(19.6)40.6(23.9)Chemical fertilizers X cf Yuan c /mu 54.0(30.9)54.9(13.5)40.3(21.7)47.0(24.4)Rice yield
Q
Yuan /mu
327(79.8)
355(81.4)
260(79.1)
298(89.3)
Independent variables
Houhold factor allocation Renting land a
A in
0.72(0.26)0.76(0.24)0.14(0.20)0.43(0.37)Renting land a ×rented plot interaction A in *TS 0.00(0.00)d
0.76(0.24)d
柳江盆地0.00(0.00)0.15(0.32)Participating in migration
l om 0or 10.53(0.50)0.40(0.49)0.54(0.50)0.51(0.50)Participating in local off-farm employment l ol 0or 10.20(0.40)0.12(0.32)0.29(0.45)0.23(0.42)Plot characteristics Rented plot TS 0or 10.00(0.00) 1.00(0.00)0.00(0.00)0.20(0.40)Fertility
Z pf 1.93(0.84) 2.09(0.84) 1.93(0.80) 1.96(0.82)Topsoil depth Z ptd cm 16.7(4.54)17.8(3.86)16.4(3.74)16.8(4.02)Plot size
Z pps Mu 1.83(1.17) 2.46(2.59) 1.49(1.23) 1.78(1.62)Distance from home Z pd Minute
11.8(8.22)d 17.9(13.6)d
11.2(10.3)12.7(10.8)Farm characteristics
Total number of cattle Z qc 1.17(1.76) 2.16(3.22)0.67(0.47) 1.11(1.82)Age of houhold head
Z qa Years 51.2(13.1)46.8(13.3)45.5(9.81)47.3(11.7)Education of houhold head Z qe Years
3.78(2.49)
4.37(2.61)
5.24(2.86) 4.66(2.78)Female to male adult ratio Z qfm 1.12(0.67) 1.14(0.57) 1.09(0.69) 1.11(0.66)Number of plots
Z qp 4.33
(1.74)
4.30
(1.32)
4.98
(1.96)
4.67
(1.81)
Houhold characteristics Houhold size
Z hhs Persons 5.60(1.44) 5.40(1.43) 4.79(1.91) 5.13(1.73)Number of dependents Z hd Persons
1.98(1.32)
2.26(1.42) 1.39(1.02) 1.73(1.24)Number of durable asts
Z hda 7.08(1.41)7.30(1.32) 6.46(1.67) 6.80(1.57)Houhold land and labor endowment Irrigated land per adult IA Mu 2.39(1.65)d
3.25(2.10)d
2.06(1.38) 2.39(1.68)Village dummies Banqiao Dummy BQ 0or 10.22(0.42)0.12(0.32)0.34(0.48)0.26(0.44)Shangzhu Dummy
SZ
0or 1
0.15(0.36)
0.07(0.26)
0.55(0.50)
0.34(0.48)
Note:a :Houhold renting in decisions are predicted probabilities derived from a probit model.b :1mu=1/15ha.c :1USD =6.83yuan (exchange rate on October 27,2009).d :Difference in means within renting in houhold group is statistically signi ficant for results highlighted in bold.
601
S.Feng et al./China Economic Review 21(2010)598–606
-Topsoil depth (Z ptd )is estimated by soil scientists,and measured in centimeters.The expected impact on yields,land investments and input u are similar to tho for soil fertility.
-Plot size (Z pps ).Large plots are easier to manage and have higher input u ef ficiency (economies of scale).They are therefore expected to receive fewer inputs,have higher yields,or both.
-Distance from home (Z pd ).The distance between the homestead and each plot is measured in minutes travel time.Longer travel time rais the cost of carrying organic manure and other inputs to the plots.Planting green manure on distant plots is sometimes risky becau of high supervision costs involved in keeping out wild animals.A larger distance from home is thus expected to reduce land investment,input u and rice yield.The square of this variable is added to the equation to capture possible nonlinearities in its impact.
Farm characteristics included in the model compri:
-Number of cattle (Z qc ).Cattle are very important draft animals for small-scale houholds in rural China.Their u is expected to have a positive impact on land productivity.Moreover,organic manure
cannot be exchanged in the market in the rearch area.Therefore a larger number of cattle in a houhold are expected to increa land investment,and thereby also rai land productivity.
-Age of the houhold head (Z qa ).Older farmers have more experience and are therefore expected to be more productive in agriculture.In addition,older farmers like to stick to farming traditions,so green manure planting and organic manure application may be higher while chemical fertilizer application may be lower.
-Education of the houhold head (Z qe ).Houhold heads with more schooling (in years)are expected to have more farming skills and therefore to be more productive in agriculture.Well-educated farmers may also be more aware of the potential bene fits of land investment.
-Female to male adult ratio (Z qfm )is ud to test for differences between females and males in physical strength or other factors in fluencing agricultural production.Transporting organic manure and cutting the roots of green manure for land preparation requires much physical strength.It is therefore expected that a higher female –male adult ratio leads to less land investment and more chemical fertilizer u.
-Number of plots of the houhold (Z qp )is an indicator of land fragmentation.It can have either neg
阒然无声ative or positive effects on agricultural production (Tan,Heerink,Kruman,&Qu,2008).On the one hand,a larger number of plots need more labor to manage (Nguyen,Chen,&Findlay,1996).On the other hand,it enables the houholds to diversify agricultural production and reduce risk (Bentley,1987),and to optimize their labor allocation over different crop varieties and asons,especially when there is no market for agricultural labor (Fenoaltea,1976).
Houhold characteristics have a direct effect on houhold consumption preferences,and can have either positive or negative effects on the demand for leisure and consumption goods.If houhold decisions are non-parable,this will affect production decisions as well.The houhold characteristics included in our model are:
-Houhold size (Z hhs ).A larger houhold needs more food than a small one,so the houhold size is expected to have a positive impact on land investments,input u and rice yields.
-Number of dependents in a houhold (Z hd ).A houhold with more dependents needs less food than a houhold with many adults.So,the impact of this variable is expected to be opposite to that of houhold size.
-Female to male adult ratio (Z qfm )does not only have a direct impact on production decisions (e
above),but is also likely to affect consumption decisions,becau female adults tend to consume less food than male adults.Hence,the impact of this ratio is expected to be similar to that of the number of dependents.
-Number of durable asts in a houhold (Z hda ).Wealthier houholds tend to consume more food,hence the number of durable asts is expected to have a positive impact on land investments,input u and rice yields.
The houhold time endowment equals houhold size (Z hhs )minus the number of dependents (Z hd ).In addition,houhold time endowment may depend on the ratio of female to male adults (Z qfm ),as taking care of children and doing houwork is usually a female task in Chine society.If houhold decisions are non-parable,land investment,labor u,and rice yield are expected to be positively related to the houhold labor endowment.
The houhold land endowment is reprented by the total size of contracted irrigated land per adult (IA ).If houhold decisions are non-parable,land investment,labor u and rice yield are expected to be negatively related to the houhold land endowment.
The market land rent (r ),wage rate (w ),and non-labor input prices (p X )are assumed to be the sam
e for all houholds living in the same village.They are therefore captured by village dummy variables for Banqiao (BQ )and Shangzhu (SZ ).
The resulting model that is ud for estimation can be speci fied as follows:
DV i =α0+α1A in
+α2A in
*TS i +α3l
om
+α4l
ol
+α5ln Z pf i +α6ln Z ptd i +α7ln Z pps i ÀÁ+α8ln Z pd i +α9ln Z pd行动导向教学法
i 2+α10ln Z
qc À
Á
+α11ln Z qa ÀÁ+α12ln Z qe ÀÁ+α13ln Z
qfm
+α14ln Z qp ÀÁ602S.Feng et al./China Economic Review 21(2010)598–606
