Landslides,Off-farm Employment And Cropland Abandonment Of Farmers In Hilly And Mountainous Areas

People’s lives depend on food.Food security has always been the focus of attention of many countries and regions,especially for developing countries such as China.In the foreseeable future,cropland will still be an important material carrier for solving food security issues.However,idle cropland resources(e.g.,cropland abandonment)have become global phenomenon,especially in rural hilly and mountainous areas,which is obviously not conducive to solving food security issues.In addition,the hilly and mountainous areas are not only an important land space for solving food security issues,but also an important functional space for protecting the ecological environment.In hilly and mountainous areas,cropland abandonment leads to a decrease in agro-ecological landscape and is harmful for ecological security,even it can cause soil degradation and increase the risk of forest fires.Meanwhile,hilly and mountainous areas are facing more threats from geological disasters,most obvious of which is the frequent occurrence of landslide disasters.Hilly and mountainous areas,as a special and important land space,its farmers’ behavior of cropland use plays a key role in protecting the ecological environment and food security stabilizer.Thus,there is a hot topic to explore the driving factors of farmers’ behavior of cropland use in agricultural economics,human geography,land resource management,and rural development.This study starts with the exploration of cropland resource utilization behavior and driving mechanism in the hilly and mountainous areas,and specifically discusses the quantitative impact and its mechanism of off-farm employment and landslides on the abandoned cropland in the hilly and mountainous areas.Specifically,based on the sustainable livelihood framework,this study couples the theories of the regional system of man-land relationship,new labor migration economics,and Marxist rent to build the theoretical analysis framework of “Natural Environmental Impact Difference → Livelihood Strategy Difference → Cropland Use Difference”.Meanwhile,this study uses the combination of logical deduction and mathematical derivation to give the theoretical explanation for the micro-mechanism of landslides and offfarm employment affecting cropland abandoned by farmers in hilly mountainous areas.This study also empirically identifies the above micro-mechanism by CLDS2014,CHFS2015,and Sichuan typical sampling survey data in 2019.The conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)Marxist land rent theory reveals the "Chinese paradox" of the cropland use in the hilly and mountainous areas of China.According to the differential rent Ⅰ of Marxist land rent theory,the mathematical derivation and empirical data simulation results of this study show that under general circumstances,farmers in hilly and mountainous areas face worse production conditions than farmers in plain areas,so that more labor is required to produce the same amount of agricultural products in hilly and mountainous areas.With China’s socialist market economic system,farmers in hilly and mountainous areas will not be able to earn an average social profit.At this time,the best strategy for farmers is to withdraw from agricultural production,or to engage in agricultural production in the plain areas.As a result,the cropland is abandoned in the hilly and mountainous areas.This theoretical explanation is also supported by the results of practical investigation.This study analyzes the difference between the abandoned cropland in the plain area and the hill and mountainous areas.The results show that in terms of the cropland abandoned behavior of farmers,the farmers in the hill and mountainous areas are 7 percentage points higher than the farmers in the plain areas.And the abandoned area of farmers in hill and mountainous areas are 0.02 mu higher than those in the plain areas.Namely,cropland abandonment is most likely to occur in hill and mountainous areas arising from its poor production conditions.(2)Taking Sichuan province as an example,for farmers in hilly and mountainous areas,their behavior incidence of cropland abandonment has increased,their scale of cropland abandonment has expanded,and the degree of cropland abandonment has deepened from 2013 to 2018.This study uses the Sichuan sample from CLDS2014 to represent the situation in 2013 and the Sichuan typical sample survey data in 2019 to represent the situation in 2018.Based on the two survey data,in hilly and mountainous areas,farmers’ behavior incidence of cropland abandonment has increased from 21% in 2013 to 24% in 2018;farmers’ average area of cropland abandonment has expanded from 0.41 mu in 2013 to 0.77 mu in 2018;farmers’ ratio of cropland abandonment has increased from 12.11% in 2013 to 21.45% in 2018.In addition,the mean difference is significant at the level of 1% except for behavior incidence of cropland abandonment,which indicates that from the perspective of incidence,scale and degree,the phenomenon of cropland abandonment became more common from 2013 to 2018 in hilly and mountainous areas.(3)Landslides have a significant and positive impact on the farmers’ cropland abandonment in hilly and mountainous areas.After controlling farmers’ livelihood capital characteristics and location characteristics,compared with the farmers who have not experienced landslides,the incidence and area of cropland abandonment of farmers who have experienced landslides will increase by 4.4% and 4.2%,respectively.Namely,compared with the farmers who have not experienced landslides,farmers who have experienced landslides tend to abandon cropland and expand area of cropland abandonment.This conclusion is also supported by the results of different empirical strategies such as OLS regression,subsample regression,and typical sampling data.(4)Off-farm employment has a significant and positive impact on the farmers’ cropland abandonment in hilly and mountainous areas.After controlling farmers’ livelihood capital characteristics and location characteristics,for every 1 percentage point increase in off-farm employment of farmers in hilly and mountainous areas,the probability and area of cropland abandonment will increase by 0.5 percentage point.Namely,with the increase of off-farm employment rate of farmers’ laborers,the incidence and area of cropland abandonment will also increase.This conclusion is also supported by the results of different empirical strategies such as 2SLS regression,subsample regression,and typical sampling data.Meanwhile,this study also finds that in hilly and mountainous areas,the way that off-farm employment affects cropland abandonment may be through affecting the allocation of off-farm assets and agricultural assets.The empirical results of this study find that off-farm employment significantly and positively affects off-farm asset allocation,and significantly and negatively affects agricultural asset allocation.In other words,in hilly and mountainous areas,the farmers reduced their enthusiasm for investment in agricultural production after labor off-farm employment.Agricultural laborers reduced by off-farm employment could not be replaced by investing in labor substitution factors such as agricultural machinery,which may eventually lead to cropland abandonment.(5)Landslides indirectly affect cropland abandonment by affecting off-farm employment in hilly and mountainous areas.The empirical results show that off-farm employment is intermediary variable in which landslides affect farmers’ cropland abandonment in hilly and mountainous areas.And the intermediary effect is partial mediation.In other words,in hilly and mountainous areas,landslides not only directly affect the cropland abandonment of farmers,but also indirectly affect the cropland abandonment of farmers by affecting labor off-farm employment.This conclusion is also supported by the results of different empirical strategies such as subsample regression and typical sampling data.The value and innovation of this study are mainly reflected in the following aspects:First,focusing on the “Chinese paradox” of cropland use,has expanded and enriched the perspective of the research on the cropland use transformation.Previous researches have paid more attention to the reform of the property rights system,land transferring and management scale in the cropland use transformation.This study focuses on the cropland abandonment(“Chinese paradox” of cropland use).And this study gives the economic explanation for cropland abandonment under the Marxist theory of land rent: more labor is required to produce the same amount of agricultural products in hilly and mountainous areas.With China’s socialist market economic system,farmers in hilly and mountainous areas will not be able to earn an average social profit.At this time,the best strategy for farmers is to withdraw from agricultural production,or to engage in agricultural production in the plain areas.As a result,the cropland is abandoned in the hilly and mountainous areas.Thus,this study has expanded and enriched the perspective of the research on the cropland use transformation.Second,this study couples with different discipline theories to build a theoretical framework for the micro-mechanism of cropland abandonment by farmers in hilly and mountainous areas,and reveal the specific driving mechanism of the theory.This research follows the cross-disciplinary research paradigm,based on the sustainable livelihood framework coupling human-land relationship regional system theory,new labor migration economics theory and Marxist land rent theory,and builds the theoretical analysis framework of “Natural Environmental Impact Difference → Livelihood Strategy Difference →Cropland Use Difference”.This study believes that the difference in natural environmental impact is not naturally close to zero.In addition,this study reveals the specific driving mechanism of “natural environment → use of cultivated land” under Marxist theory of land rent.This study is based on the sustainable livelihood framework coupling different discipline theories,and puts forward the theoretical analysis framework of “Natural Environmental Impact Difference → Livelihood Strategy Difference → Cropland Use Difference”,which deeply examines the specific driving mechanism of Marxist land rent theory.Third,the logic generation and mathematical derivation are used to discuss the microscopic generation mechanism of cropland abandonment by farmers in hilly and mountainous areas and quantitative tests are carried out.This study bases on the theory of human-land relationship regional system,new labor migration economics theory and Marxist theory of land rent,and use a combination of logical deduction and mathematical derivation to discuss the theoretical impacts of landslides on cropland abandonment,off-farm employment on cropland abandonment,and landslides and off-farm employment on cropland abandonment.After,this study use empirically identifies the above micro-mechanism by CLDS2014,CHFS2015,and Sichuan typical sampling survey data in 2019.Theoretical analysis and empirical tests show that: in hilly and mountainous areas,landslides positively affect cropland abandonment,off-farm employment positively affects cropland abandonment,and off-farm employment plays an intermediary role in the impact of landslides positively affect cropland abandonment.