| Cultivated land is an important guarantee to maintain the supply security and ecological security of national agricultural products.The balance system of cultivated land occupation and compensation is the core of China’s cultivated land protection policy.In the past 20 years,this system has played an important role in controlling the cultivated land occupied by construction and ensuring the quantity and quality balance of cultivated land.In the face of the increasing demand of China’s rapid economic development for arable land and the new higher requirements of the national agricultural product supply security for the quantity and quality of arable land,the contradiction between economic development and arable land protection is becoming more and more prominent,and the limitations and difficulties faced by the policy of arable land occupation compensation balance are becoming more and more obvious.Especially,the imbalance of cultivated land quality under the appearance of cultivated land quantity balance seriously affects the stability of China’s agricultural product supply.The variety and quantity of imported agricultural products are increasing year by year.Therefore,it is necessary to make an in-depth study on the historical evolution,implementation performance and time limitations of the policy,analyze the economic connotation of the policy,and reveal the internal mechanism leading to the imbalance of the quality of the policy.And then put forward countermeasures and suggestions to improve the policy of cultivated land protection.From the aspect of promoting the sustainable development of cultivated land resources,to ensure the realization of the national agricultural product supply security goal.Focusing on the background of land property rights and cultivated land protection policies with Chinese characteristics,based on the national sample data and specific case analysis,and using the methods of normative research and empirical research,this study makes an in-depth analysis of the quality imbalance in China’s cultivated land compensation system,and explores the institutional reasons for the continuous decline of cultivated land quality.At the same time,this paper puts forward measures and suggestions to optimize and improve the balance policy of farmland occupation and compensation,which is of great significance to effectively promote the supply security of national agricultural products and the sustainable development of rural economy.Starting from reviewing the introduction of China’s cultivated land protection policy,this study examines the evolution process of the system,analyzes the current operation status and existing problems of the system,and uses game theory and empirical methods to reveal the deep-seated causes of the system.In the study,we found that:First,China has introduced and implemented the most stringent farmland protection policy in the world.Since the implementation of the system,the cultivated land occupation and compensation system has experienced the stages of "dynamic balance of quantity","equal emphasis on quantity and quality","trinity of quantity quality ecology" and "combination of compensation and reform,calculation of large accounts".This has played a historic role in controlling the disordered occupation of cultivated land,restraining the decreasing trend of cultivated land,promoting the intensive use of urban and rural land,promoting food production and ensuring the supply security of national agricultural products.However,with the rapid growth of urbanization construction land demand,the bottleneck constraint of cultivated land reserve resources and the prominent imbalance of regional economic development,the quality imbalance caused by cultivated land compensation system itself has seriously affected the supply security of national agricultural products.Second,the implementation of the system ensures the dynamic stability of the total amount of cultivated land in China,but it leads to the decline of the overall quality of cultivated land and the deterioration of the ecological environment.The reason is that the current policy itself has inherent defects that cannot be overcome,and there is a mismatch between the macro objectives of the central government and the meso objectives of the local government and the micro objectives of farmers.The drive of land finance and the lack of incentive mechanism for cultivated land protection not only lead to the decline of cultivated land production capacity and the difficulty of implementation of cultivated land protection measures,but also lead to the low efficiency of national land use,uneven distribution of social responsibility for cultivated land protection and uneven regional economic development.Thirdly,the logical starting point of the system is the supply security of agricultural products.Within the framework of this policy,the central government has established a top-down principal-agent system based on the goal of ensuring the supply safety of agricultural products,and assigned the responsibility of the supply safety of agricultural products to local governments.However,in the process of performing the agency responsibility step by step,the policy weakening of "strip" governance and the island effect of "block" management make the local government push the responsibility of agricultural product supply to the central government for the consideration of its own development competition and interest impulse,which leads to the virtual administrative goal of cultivated land protection.However,the farmers who should be the main body of cultivated land protection are "atomized",so they are excluded from the implementation and supervision system of the policy.Fourth,through the empirical analysis of the change of the national cultivated land quantity and quality data,the results show that if we control the influence of agricultural technology improvement,agricultural product structure change,climate factors,price index and other factors,the average grain yield per mu of cultivated land in China shows a significant downward trend after the implementation of the policy.The reason is that the system design itself makes the hard restriction of cultivated land quantity balance bring negative incentive to the decline of cultivated land quality.Fifthly,from the case analysis,we find that the balance of occupation and compensation policy has taken a sample in the specific implementation.Because there is a large elastic space in the process of evaluating the quality of supplementary cultivated land,the phenomenon of "occupying high-quality and supplementing low-quality" emerges in endlessly.This paper further combs the specific direction of the land transfer fee,and finds that the annual funds available for the construction of high standard farmland are very small.Obviously,local governments that rely heavily on "land finance" do not have the ability and power to invest in the construction of local high standard farmland.Sixthly,we should learn from the useful experience of developed countries（regions） in the field of cultivated land quality protection,actively promote the marketization of occupation compensation balance index transaction among different regions,strengthen the supervision and acceptance mechanism,mobilize all parties to actively participate in the work of occupation compensation balance of cultivated land,so as to ensure the implementation of the policy of occupation compensation balance of cultivated land.The innovation of this study is as follows:First,on the basis of investigation and data analysis,it is found that since the Chinese government implemented the policy of balance of occupation and compensation,behind the constant total amount of cultivated land and the sustained growth of grain,is the decline of cultivated land production capacity.Through the empirical analysis of China’s cultivated land occupation and compensation data from 2013 to 2016,it shows that under the control of agricultural production technology,planting structure,labor input,climate change and other variables,the average grain yield per mu of regional agriculture has a significant negative relationship with the number of local cultivated land occupied and the number of supplementary cultivated land.This reveals the fact that the cultivated land occupied is mainly superior,while the supplementary cultivated land is mainly inferior.Secondly,by using dynamic game model and sequential game model,it is found that the objective dislocation of the protection subjects’ interests and responsibilities will inevitably lead to the imbalance of cultivated land occupation and compensation quality.The supervisory responsibility of the central government is gradually weakened in the hierarchical organization.Local governments are encouraged by land finance,and they often choose the former in the balance between development competition and cultivated land protection.Under the condition of information asymmetry,the central government’s order of cultivated land occupation compensation balance has been virtualized and distorted by the local government.Thirdly,based on the practical characteristics of the dual structure of urban and rural land in China and the long-term dependence of the government on land finance,through case study and analysis,this study conducted in-depth calculation from two aspects: the change of grain production and the use of land transfer fees.It is found that the reason why local governments "occupy high-quality land and supplement low-quality land" in the balance of cultivated land occupation and compensation is that they rely heavily on "land finance",and the funds available to improve the quality of cultivated land supplement are very limited,and there is no ability or motivation to invest in improving the production capacity of cultivated land. |
