Off-farm employment, land renting and concentration of farmland in the process of urbanization: Chinese evidence
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm employment on the concentration of farmland via households’ land rental activities in rural China.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper uses Probit and Tobit models to estimate the effect of off-farm employment on land rental activities. Furthermore, the paper compares the degree of land concentration between pre-renting and post-renting in terms of Gini coefficients of farmland ownership at village level.
Findings
The authors find that off-farm employment has a positive effect on the renting out farmland, and insignificant effect on renting in farmland. Moreover, off-farm employment intensifies the concentration of farmland from small farms toward big farms by renting activities.
Originality/value
The authors believe that the results will contribute positively to the assessment of the effect of off-farm employment on land concentration in the context of the urbanization process in China.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the financial assistance of the Sino-Danish Center for Education and Research, the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 71333012).
Citation
Su, W., Eriksson, T. and Zhang, L. (2018), "Off-farm employment, land renting and concentration of farmland in the process of urbanization: Chinese evidence", China Agricultural Economic Review, Vol. 10 No. 2, pp. 338-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/CAER-10-2016-0169
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited