Rental rates of grain land for consolidated plots and their determinants in present-day China

Liangjie Xin and Xiubin Li

Land Use Policy, 2019, vol. 86, issue C, 421-426

Abstract: To promote its agricultural competitiveness, China must expand the scale of farming. Due to the country’s distinct land system, renting land is the main way to expand the scale of farming in China; however, a national supervision system of land rental rates has not been established. This study aims to investigate how much land rental rates are, how they vary regionally, and what factors impact them. The amount of rented farmland in China has increased steadily in recent years. In 2016, 35.1 percent of the national total farmland was recorded as being rented out, and land rental rates have been rapidly increasing. In the fourth quarter of 2017, rental prices for irrigated land and rain-fed land were 1763 and 1370 US dollars (Base year = 2014; 1 USD = 6.5 RMB), respectively. For farmers of large farms, rent has become the largest cost related to agricultural production. Rates in the main agricultural production regions and the regions around developed cities are significantly higher than those in other regions. Land quality, land area, land tenure, road access, grain prices and subsidies are important in explaining grain land rental rates. Unexpectedly, the rental prices for larger consolidated plots are lower than those for smaller consolidated plots, and a scarcity of funds may be the main cause of this pattern. We suggest that to actively promote agricultural scale management, China’s government should continue to improve agricultural infrastructure such as irrigation conditions and roads, secure land tenure, and stop intervening in market prices and subsidizing larger farms.

Keywords: Agricultural scale management; Grain land rental rates; Determinants; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0264837718313905
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:lauspo:v:86:y:2019:i:c:p:421-426

DOI: 10.1016/j.landusepol.2019.05.037

Access Statistics for this article

Land Use Policy is currently edited by Jaap Zevenbergen

More articles in Land Use Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Joice Jiang ().