A Study On Rural Households' Farm Size And Performance

According to Theory of Scale Economy, expanding the scale of rural households' farmland appropriately can reduce costs and achieve economies of scale. Therefore, large-scale farmland management has been a significant way to increase farmers'income which has been widely recognized by the whole society. This paper analyses the size of rural households'farmland and their performance by the subject of micro-economy-rural households, and measure out the optimum-scale farmland and their performance at the premise of farmers' profit maximization. This paper may offer some references for relevant departments in making policies and some scientific basis for advancing the development of optimum-scale farmland management.On the basis of research results of foreign and domestic, a sample of rural households are drawn from 6 districts of Jianghan Plain and mountain and hill area in Hubei province, then a questionnaire survey on farmland's size and their performance was conducted among them. And then a statistical analysis of current size of rural households' farmland and their performance was made of the results. Establishing econometrics model to measure out the optimum-size farmland and their performance of whole sample and the two survey regions and analyze the differences between the two regions. Conclusions obtained are as follows:(1) The current size of rural households'farmland is small.The farmer households' production cost is high and profit is low at the current size of rural households'farmland in study area, which can't help increase farmers'incomes.The size of farmland per rural household of study area is 0.6780 ha; the size of farmland per rural household of Jianghan Plain is 0.9643 ha; the size of farmland per rural household of mountain and hill area is 0.3525 ha, the size of farmland is generally small.The rural households'grain production cost is reaching 4668.32 Yuan at the current farmland size in study area, while the profit is only 2987.15 Yuan. The small-scale restricts the consequents of the agricultural economies of scale. The rural households' production cost is high and profit is low at the current farmland size, which can't help increase farmers'incomes.(2) The current size of rural households' farmland of study area is smaller than the optimum-size farmland at the premise of farmers'profit maximization. Farmers should transfer land and transfer surplus labor in the country.The optimum-size farmland at the premise of farmers'profit maximization of study area is 2.4391 ha, the current size of farmland per rural household of study area is only 0.6780 ha, each rural household need to transfer farmland 1.7611 ha. The optimum-size farmland at the premise of farmers'profit maximization of Jianghan Plain and mountain and hill area is 2.8376 ha and 1.8956 ha, but the current size of farmland per rural household of Jianghan Plain and mountain and hill area is only 0.9643 ha and 0.3525 ha, each rural household need to transfer farmland 1.8733 ha and 1.5431 ha. Under the assumption of profit maximization, the exsiting size of the farmland is less than the optimum-size farmland. Farmers have the demand of transfering farmland and large-scale production. In other words, in the current phase of rapid urbanization, factors which restrict the growth of rural land transfer market mainly on the supply side; long as the policy allow land transfer, and protect the legitimate rights and interests of the land transferred-out households, farmland transfer market will become increasingly active.If we analyze the situation of agricultural labor of rural households, we will find out that under current size of the farmland, surplus labor exists. Although with the accelerating process of urbanization, the current employment rate of non-agricultural rural households increased to a certain extent. However, under the existing small-size land management conditions, there are still surplus agricultural laborers. Each household in study area, Jianghan Plain and mountains and hill area need to turn out laborers 1.51,1.46 and 1.61 persons respectively.(3)The production profit of rural household with optimum-scale rural households' farmland is higher than the production profit of farmer with the current size of farmland.Overall the study area, Jianghan Plain and mountain and hill area the profit of grain production in the optimal size farmland is 13,515.33 Yuan,17,123.92 Yuan and 8,782.12 Yuan. Comparing with the current farmland size, the production profit of farmers greatly increased. On the whole sample, the profit of pre household increased 10528.18 Yuan. In Jianghan Plain the profit of per household increased 12238.38 Yuan, in mountain and hill area the profit of per household increased 7868.72 Yuan.That is to say, expanding the size of farmland is very effective to improve the profit of farmers in agricultural production.(4) The optimum-scale farmland and their performance differ in different survey areas.Due to different environment, different levels of socio-economic development, different levels of agricultural production, different prices of input factor and output factors, different household labor resource in different regions, the optimum-scale farmland and their performance are different. After calculation:the optimum-scale farmland of Jianghan Plain is 2.8376 ha, grain production profit per household is 17123.92 Yuan; the optimum-size farmland of mountain and hill area is 1.8956 ha, grain production profit per household is 8782.12 Yuan. There are significant differences between regions:Performance of scale of plains whose economic is developed is higher than mountain and hill area whose economic is underdeveloped.Therefore, the government should adopt policies and legal means, to let farmland orderly transfer, to implement appropriate scale land management, to develop non-agricultural industries, to encourage the redundant laborers to find off-farm jobs, allowing farmers who pursue agricultural profits to adjust the size of farmland to "appropriate context", raising labor productivity, allowing all input factors to achieve the best combination, to gain more economies of scale, reaching the purpose of increasing production and incomes.