Spatio-temporal pattern and driving mechanisms of cropland circulation in China

Land circulation is the transfer of land management rights without change of contracting and ownership rights. This is an effective solution for alleviating land fragmentation, facilitating the transfer of surplus rural labor, and improving rural income. Based on the provincial-level survey data from the Ministry of Agriculture of China, this study analyzes the spatio-temporal pattern of cropland circulation based on the cropland circulation rate (CCR), and explores the driving mechanism of cropland circulation from the perspectives of population, economy, agricultural investment, and legalization. The results showed that the CCR exhibited a polarized spatial pattern of "high value in the east and low value in the west" across China. Moreover, we observed significant spatial agglomeration of CCR, with Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Shanghai as centers of high CCR values and Sichuan and Gansu as centers of low CCR values. Furthermore, the spatial disparity of CCR showed an obviously narrowing trend during the period from 2014 to 2018. As for the circulation modes of cropland, the dominant mode in China is leasing (sub-contracting), which is easy to implement and directly increases farmers' incomes. This paper further found that the critical driving forces of cropland circulation can be summarized as follows: transformation of rural labor to non-farming occupations, improvement of rural income, and legalization of land circulation markets. It should be noted that many off-farm workers have not given up their management rights for cropland, which is due to the following reasons: unstable job opportunities and insufficient social benefits of off-farm workers, low income from land rent and agricultural production, and lack of legal framework for land circulation. Therefore, urban-rural binary household registration (hukou) and migrant worker employment systems in China should be gradually reformed to accelerate the non-farming transformation of rural labor. Preferential policies for industrial investment can be made to attract more factories to operate in rural areas, which will bring more non-farming jobs to local famers and directly increase their incomes. Moreover, financial subsidy policies, land tenure system reform, and farmland consolidation strategies should also be launched to make land circulation more profitable for both land-givers and land-receivers. Finally, laws and regulations could be perfected and enforced to improve the legalization level of the land circulation market.