Can Moderate Agricultural Scale Operations Be Developed against the Background of Plot Fragmentation and Land Dispersion? Evidence from the Suburbs of Shanghai

Yishao Shi, Qianqian Yang, Liangliang Zhou and Shouzheng Shi
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Yishao Shi: College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Qianqian Yang: College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Liangliang Zhou: College of Surveying and Geo-Informatics, Tongji University, Shanghai 200092, China
Shouzheng Shi: School of Geography Science and Geomatics Engineering, Suzhou University of Science and Technology, 99 Xuefu Road, Suzhou 215009, China

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 14, 1-22

Abstract: Agricultural scale management has become the inexorable trend of modern agricultural development. Plot consolidation and centralized land management are traditionally viewed as the premise and foundation of agricultural scale operations in Europe, India, and China. In order to quantitatively verify whether this view is suitable for Shanghai suburbs, this paper measured the dynamic evolution characteristics of agricultural land and agricultural operations scale in suburban Shanghai at the plot level and peasant household level, using landscape metrics and agricultural statistics methods, respectively. At the city or regional level (the suburbs of Shanghai), the driving mechanism of the change of landscape aggregation degree of farmland was revealed using principal component analysis and multiple linear regression analysis. The results show that (1) in the suburbs of Shanghai, the expansion of the plot scale is restricted by various objective conditions, and the plot fragmentation pattern is inevitable and will exist for a long time; (2) the degree of land management dispersion exhibits an overall increasing trend; (3) moderate scale operations at the peasant household level generally demonstrate an increasing trend and are not obviously correlated with changes in the plot scale; and (4) service scale operations represent the main remedy for future agricultural development; (5) the improvement of agricultural mechanization level was positively correlated with the cultivated land aggregation index (AI), but economic development, industrial restructuring, and urbanization were negatively correlated with the AI of cultivated land. The results show that the appropriate scale of management of agriculture can still be developed in the suburbs of metropolis against the background of land fragmentation and dispersion. Of course, it is essential to change the concept and path of agricultural scale management development.

Keywords: plot fragmentation; land dispersion; moderate-scale operations in agriculture; landscape metrics; driving factors; suburbs of Shanghai (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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