Sustainable Development Of Small Agricultural Production Under The Conditions Of Land Fragmentation

Scholars pointed out that intensive agriculture will lead to serious problems such as soil degradation and ecological environment damage, China has four-thousand years farming history and Chinese farmers kept arable land well in long history, F.·H.·King, an American soil expert, pointed out Chinese traditional agriculture has its own advantage on protecting soil and environment. However large population with fewer arable lands and the traditions of Chinese history that fathers divides lands equally for each son, result in a typical characteristic of fragmentation of arable land in China. Therefore intense agriculture is not suitable for China. Meanwhile, some recent studies indicate that fragmentation of arable land might be increase farmers’ income. If fragmentation of arable land has advantage on protecting environment and farmers’ income both, then fragmentation of arable land is reasonable. This paper builds a system dynamics model to describe how fragmentation influences on soil quality, ecological environment and farmers’ total income, to find out whether small agriculture is able to protect ecological environment and increase farmers’ income simultaneously.The conclusions are:First of all, fragmentation has significant positive impact on soil quality and ecological environment. The more fragmentation is, the better soil quality and ecological environment will be, Secondly, the best returns for farmers’ short-term income and for long-term income are different. In short-term intensive agriculture is a good choice but about40years later arable land fragmentation starts to show advantage. Farmers make decisions based on income. Their decisions according to short-term income always result in damaging the environment. So it is necessary to guide farmers. Lastly, add three more variables in the model to see if there are any methods can change farmers’ decisions. The three variables are market risk, non-agricultural income and green vegetables’ price. By running the model we find market risk and non-agricultural income have influence on farmers’income but they are not the keys. The price of green vegetables is the most important. The more expensive it is, the more farmers are likely to choose environment-friendly agriculture. According to these, building up a consumer market for green vegetables and raising green vegetables’ price can guide farmers to choice environment-friendly agriculture.