An Empirical Study Of Rurlal Household's Desire For Scale Management Of Land And Choices Of Crops For Cultivation Four Counties In Yancheng Taken As An Example

Since the 1980s, China has witnessed the greatly increased productivity in the rural areas due to the reform of the land system, especially the establishment and implementation of the contract system based on household responsibility and linking individual reward to output. However, the small-scale operation and fragmented land have become obstacles to the development of agriculture. As a result, since the 1980s, the Chinese government has taken measures to promote across the whole country the circulation of the right to use land in various forms so as to increase productivity and Rural Households'income by carrying out scale management of land. In recent years, as the productivity in the rural areas is increased and the employment channel is expanded, the circulation of land is sped up with diversified forms. The circulation among Rural Households featuring land exchange, land leasing and transference at the very beginning has been transformed into the circulation involving governments and characterized by land pooling. After circulation, the agricultural businesses and land cooperatives in the rural areas gradually take the place of big farm households to carry out the agricultural operation of scale, and the focus of operation is shifted from grain to very profitable cash crops. To some extent, these changes lead to the transformation of the planting structure, which influences both Rural Households'income and the grain yield of a region.Based on the data collected during the fieldwork in the four counties in Yancheng, southeast Jiangsu Province of China, the thesis analyzes the land circulation and operation of scale resulted from the external investment and the choices of crops for cultivation in the planting industry. First, it analyzes the information about the desire of Rural Households' for the operation of scale and gives a general picture of Rural Households'desire for operation of scale and the relationship between it and the income of a household, the household structure, the per capita farmland area of agricultural labor in a family and the family composition features. Also, with the Logit Model, it further analyzes the factors that influence the household operation of scale, the situation of Rural Households who are willing to expand operation and grow crops and the factors that influence their will. Second, it focuses on those who carry out the operation of scale under various circulation forms and analyzes the differences between the choices of crops for cultivation before the scale is expanded and those after that. According to the analysis, the thesis concludes that:(1) at present, the desire of Rural Households to expand the scale management of land is not strong enough, and it's impractical to expand the operation by encouraging the land circulation among Rural Households; (2) the main factors that influence Rural Households' desire for scale management of land are:family composition features, the feature of the household head and the scale of the household farming; (3) whether Rural Households choose to expand the operation and grow crops depends on:per capita income of a family and the number of unemployed family members; (4) at present, the agricultural businesses, land cooperatives and big farm households have become the major parties that carry out land operation, and their production scale and operation are totally different from those of small farm households, which influence the agricultural development of the whole region.Based on the above analysis, the thesis offers a solution from the perspective of governmental policies:the governments should support the small farm households self-sufficient in grain or with medium-scale of grain production while helping the new agricultural operation parties so as to maintain the stability of grain production in a region and counter the negative influence of land circulation.