Study On Economic Compensation Of Farmland Protection

Everything is grown from the earth, and we can get grain only from soil. As the most valuable part of land resource and non-renewable scarce resource, farmland is a vital factor in production and living. Farmland is directly related to the national food security, ecology and stability, and sustainable development of social economy. The protection of farmland is extremely important because of the rapid urbanization, the poor share of per capita, the inferior quality and the insufficient reserve resource. In the past, farmland protection is mainly depended on the force of law and administration, lacking the focus on the external problems and the encouragement of related subjects, which hurt the will of farmers and local government to protect the farmland conscientiously. The central committee of the Communist Party of China and the State Council have realized the significance of enhancing protection of farmland by setting policies. In some areas, the compensating activities of protecting farmland have been practiced gradually. Academic community has controversial developed about the compensation of farmland. Various existing studies have been focused on compensation of farmland protection on the large scale of national or provincial level, or the microcosmic level of peasant household. However, perspectives on the problems of aggregating region and peasant household are understudied, and a systematic theory and research paradigm of multi-level and multi-factor has not been established. Also, the momentous theoretical basis of mechanism design and connotation of the value of farmland resource is not clear yet. There is a big difference in the view of which part of farmland value should be compensated. Moreover, the path exploration of compensation mainly discussed on the theoretical level, lacking of regional differences and the dynamic mechanism of the design with the social and economic development.On account of these backgrounds, this study is based on the analysis of severe situation about national farmland protection. Chongqing was taken as an example in the study, which is one of the national experimental areas of urban and rural, the co-existence of big cities and countries and the area of sharp contradictions between people and land resource. Based on the types of farmers, districts and development, methods of structural equation models, spatial data analysis, spatial counting economy analysis, CA-Markov model and TOPSIS modified by entropy weight were used. Suggestions were proposed from the compensation will of farmers, compensation standard and strategies of regional coordination. This thesis is trying to solve the problem of “how to overcome the dilemma of farmland protection through institutional innovation”. The findings of the current study are helpful to enrich the farmland protection theory, provide feasible reference to improve the economic incentives mechanism and perfect the relevant policies and regulations. The main conclusions are as follows:(1) The amount of farmland resources continued to decline, and the value farmland was distorted. The compensation of farmland protection is urgent to be established.The total area of farmland in China is large, the per capita amount is small and continuously declining. In 2013, the amount of farmland in China was 135.16×106 ha, but the per capita farmland was only 0.0903 ha. The real value of Chinese farmland per hectare was 158.45, 165.56, 185.41, 249.55, and 393.32 trillion Yuan in the year of 1998, 2001, 2004, 2007, 2010, and 2013 respectively. The value increased by 280.52 trillion Yuan from 1998 to 2013. The value of the right to develop farmland contributed to the most of the increase in farmland value, and the strategic value of national food security was the second major factor. The comparison of the real value and the market value of farmland indicated that the theoretical value was far greater than the market value. The discrepancy in value was mainly due to the social value and ecological value, which represented the externalities and public good attributes of farmland that had not been confirmed in the market. The value of farmland changed inversely with farmland conversion. Farmland loss normally resulted in an increase in farmland value while other factors, such as increases in population, changes in demand for non-agricultural land, government intervention and changes in socioeconomic levels, might exert a greater influence on changes in value. Thus, under the severe situation of farmland protection in China, capitalizing the real value of farmland and subsidizing the farmland protectors, could better mobilize protectors’ initiative and enthusiasm.(2) There were differences among the farmers’ willingness to protect farmland and participation in compensation project in different regions and different types of farmers. Farmers’ willingness to participate in compensation of farmland protection has been influenced by the change of farmland value, the public perception, the characteristics of farmers and the tendency of choice.Farmer’s cognition of the farmland value displayed obvious stage. At the same time, farmers’ protecting willingness showed similar progressiveness. In the 1980 s, farmers’ perception of farmland value was low, and the cognition of value was very little. At that time, the value of the agricultural production of farmland own the highest degree of recognition, the conscious of “subsistence peasants” and “rational peasants” made them hold the strongest willingness of farmland protection. In the 1990 s, the importance of farmland became weaker, and the dependence of the working and security on farmland was decreased. Instead, the value of development right was greatly recognized by the farmers, the willingness of farmland protection was weakened. Till the early twentieth Century, farmers hold a high degree of approval for the ecological value, the development right value and the emotion value of farmland. With farmers’ perception of farmland’s multi value, willingness to protect the farmland increased compared with the 1990 s. There were differences of farmers’ willingness to protect the farmland and participation in compensation projects in different regions and types of farmers.Based on the structural equation model, the four factors of household characteristics, public awareness, changes in the value perception, and farmers’ preferences tendency had a significant effect on the farmers’ willingness to participate in compensatory project. Four indicators of labor force, perceived changes in the value of agricultural production, awareness of farmland importance and compensation standard had the best explanation for the above four factors. Public perception, choice tendency and the farmer’s characteristics were positively correlated with the participating willingness. Public awareness had been the greatest impact. Farmers’ perception of the change of farmland value was negatively correlated with the participating willingness. The negative correlation showed that the farmers’ willingness to protect farmland could be very strong when farmers’ perception of farmland value was increased even without compensation. As the direct participants of farmland protection, farmers’ willingness should be respected. The target of farmland protection and farmers’ benefit should be taken as the premise. Extensive publicity enhanced the farmers’ cognition of farmland importance, the grim situation and farmland protection policy cognition. A reasonable compensation standard of farmland protection should be established. In the choice of compensation way for farmland protection, the cash and insurance compensation was taking out under financial capacity and the public opinion. For regional differences in the willingness, compensation should be carried out by focusing on the key population and areas.(3) The presence of spatial differentiation was based on the protection of farmland resources comprehensive compensation standard value and fractal dimension value.From the perspective of the whole city, its downtown area of Chongqing should be the core area with the highest compensation standard, which was gradually decreasing to the outwards of that core area in the form of circle-layer pattern. Northeast and southeast of Chongqing were the lowest two parts of farmland’s compensation standard. And the whole tendency presented a spatial feature of “two cycles and two wings, high west and low east”. From the partial area point of view, the distribution of farmland’s compensation standard has a typical spatial variability. Although the standard was gradually decreasing to the outwards of the core area, Wanzhou district, and Qianjiang district were the high increasing areas, compared to their neighbors. The spatial association of farmland value indicated that a significant positive correlation of total value of farmland in space exists. Higher value areas were close to higher value areas, and lower value areas were close to lower value areas. Sub-dimension indicators of Chongqing’s farmland compensation standard showed a similar regional differentiation pattern on geographic space, which indicated that western Chongqing > central Chongqing > northeast of Chongqing> southeast of Chongqing. In order to enhance the feasibility of compensation, the elastic range of the compensation standard of farmland protection was thus adopted. That is to say, take the development right value of farmland resources to be the lower limit, the non-market value to be the median, and the comprehensive value to be the upper limit. Based on various purposes or specific periods, different compensation standards of farmland protection should be carried out.Spatial differentiation of farmland’s compensation standard was significantly affected by demographic, socio-economic, traffic location and farmers’ behavioral factors. The thicker of the population density, the higher of the level of urbanization. Demographic factor and spatial differentiation of compensation standard had a significant spatial clustering relationship. Socio-economic factor also shows a significant effect. However, there was a difference in the degree of that effect. The mechanism of economic compensation of farmland protection should be built on the evaluation of farmland’s value. To improve the pertinence and effectiveness of economic compensation, the elastic interval of compensation standard should be made according to the regional realities.(4) Design the regional coordination strategy of compensation in accordance to the compensation efficiency of farmland protection.Taking the 37 counties with farmland distribution in Chongqing to be the study subjects, this study determined the priority of compensation based on the construction load of farmland. Thus, the compensation of farmland protection in Chongqing is divided into three regions: the high efficient compensation area, the secondary compensation area and the low efficiency compensation area. These three regions involved twelve, fourteen and eleven counties, and account for 38.97%, 37.40%, and 23.63% of the total area, respectively. There were significant difference in various aspects, such as the resource endowment of farmland, the orientation of regional development, and the city level support of constructive compensation in the three regions.Considering the difference of the three regions, the regional coordination strategy of farmland compensation was devised. For the compensation timing of farmland protection, three kinds of compensation area, including the advance pilot area, the pilot area and the overall advance area, were set up. Also, different regions hold various kinds of compensation ways. For instance, most of the high efficient compensation area and secondary compensation area were suburban area of the city, which owned a better location than counties. Thus, the compensation in the way of cash and insurance was suitable for both, supplemented with the credit policies of farmland protection and modern agriculture. The low efficiency compensation area and some counties in the secondary compensation area were usually the counties that far from the economic and social political center of Chongqing. To enhance the hemopoiesis function of the agriculture in the reserve construction area, cash and insurance could be used as the main way, supplemented with technical compensation.(5) Construction ideas and key technology of economic compensation of farmland protection are reasonable and feasible, but they should be amended in different areas.Construction thinking and key technology of economic compensation of farmland protection were reasonable and feasible in Jiangjin district, based on scope changes of economic compensation of farmland protection, differences of design in economic compensation standards, spatial sequence of economic compensation, and farmers’ willingness of economic compensation protection. In terms of the scope changes of economic compensation of farmland protection, interpretation of remote sensing and dynamic monitoring of GIS technology had been used to monitor land use change, and CA-Markov model was used to predict the range of economic compensation of farmland protection in the future. As to the standards of economic compensation of farmland protection, the income approach, alternative fractal dimension and overall market value method were used to assess the fractal dimension and the integrated value of farmland resources, based on the content reconstruction of farmland resources value. Theoretical value of the compensation of farmland resources with different values in different regions had been thus determined. Combined with local financial affordability, the real economic compensation standards were determined, and the sources of compensation funds were clarified. About the specific ways of economic compensation, a high degree of recognition could be determined, based on the perceived sensitivity of economic compensation standards, the ways of compensation, and the basis of compensation of farmers. In terms of regional coordination of economic compensation, comprehensive compensation and focal compensation should be carried out to improve the economic efficiency of economic compensation and the efficiency of farmland protection, on the basis of efficiency first to optimize the layout of land. The construction of ideas and methods in this study, could clarify the interest relationship between local governments and farmers in the process of economic compensation of farmland protection, and establish a compensation mode of farmland protection. As a typical representative of southwest hilly areas, the economic compensation program had a strong significance in demonstration and promotion in southwest hilly areas. The revenue and expenditure, and the level of socio-economic development should be also considered when applying this method in different regions, for the consideration of their complexity of economic compensation.