[go: up one dir, main page]
IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/chieco/v19y2008i3p347-358.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Do fragmented landholdings have higher production costs? Evidence from rice farmers in Northeastern Jiangxi province, P.R. China

Author

Listed:
  • Tan, Shuhao
  • Heerink, Nico
  • Kruseman, Gideon
  • Qu, Futian
Abstract
Land fragmentation is generally seen as an obstacle to agricultural productivity improvements, but it can also facilitate labor smoothing and risk diversification. In this paper we examine the impact of land fragmentation on the variable production costs of rice farmers in three villages in Jiangxi Province, P.R. China. We find that changes in the number of plots and plot size distribution, as measured by the Simpson index, do not affect total production costs per unit output, but cause a shift between cost categories. Farmers with more and smaller plots tend to use more labor and fewer modern technologies as compared to farmers with fewer and larger plots. Other aspects of land fragmentation, however, do affect total production costs. A reduction of the average distance to plots and an increase in farm size decrease the total production costs per ton. We conclude that land consolidation programs can only contribute to the joint policy goals of increasing agricultural production capacity and reducing the rural labor surplus, if such programs are accompanied by measures aimed at creating alternative market opportunities and at providing appropriate off-farm employment opportunities.

Suggested Citation

  • Tan, Shuhao & Heerink, Nico & Kruseman, Gideon & Qu, Futian, 2008. "Do fragmented landholdings have higher production costs? Evidence from rice farmers in Northeastern Jiangxi province, P.R. China," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 19(3), pages 347-358, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:19:y:2008:i:3:p:347-358
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1043-951X(07)00043-0
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Blarel, Benoit, et al, 1992. "The Economics of Farm Fragmentation: Evidence from Ghana and Rwanda," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 6(2), pages 233-254, May.
    2. Kuiper, Marijke & van Tongeren, Frank, 2004. "Growing Together or Growing Apart? A Village Level Study of the Impact of the Doha Round on Rural China," Conference papers 331250, Purdue University, Center for Global Trade Analysis, Global Trade Analysis Project.
    3. Guang Wan & Enjiang Cheng, 2001. "Effects of land fragmentation and returns to scale in the Chinese farming sector," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 33(2), pages 183-194.
    4. Huffman, Wallace E., 1991. "Agricultural Household Models: Survey and Critique," Staff General Research Papers Archive 11008, Iowa State University, Department of Economics.
    5. Nguyen, Tin & Cheng, Enjiang & Findlay, Christopher, 1996. "Land fragmentation and farm productivity in China in the 1990s," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 7(2), pages 169-180.
    6. Fenoaltea, Stefano, 1976. "Risk, transaction costs, and the organization of medieval agriculture," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 13(2), pages 129-151, April.
    7. Tom Kompas, 2004. "Market reform, productivity and efficiency in Vietnamese rice production," International and Development Economics Working Papers idec04-4, International and Development Economics.
    8. Heston, Alan & Kumar, Dharma, 1983. "The persistence of land fragmentation in peasant agriculture: An analysis of South Asian cases," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 199-220, April.
    9. Jabarin, Amer S. & Epplin, Francis M., 1994. "Impacts of land fragmentation on the cost of producing wheat in the rain-fed region of northern Jordan," Agricultural Economics, Blackwell, vol. 11(2-3), pages 191-196, December.
    10. Wu, Ziping & Liu, Minquan & Davis, John, 2005. "Land consolidation and productivity in Chinese household crop production," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 28-49.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jia, Lili, 2012. "Land fragmentation and off-farm labor supply in China," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 66, number 66, September.
    2. Deininger, Klaus & Savastano, Sara & Carletto, Calogero, 2012. "Land Fragmentation, Cropland Abandonment, and Land Market Operation in Albania," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(10), pages 2108-2122.
    3. Daniel Ayalew Ali & Klaus Deininger & Loraine Ronchi, 2019. "Costs and Benefits of Land Fragmentation: Evidence from Rwanda," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 33(3), pages 750-771.
    4. Yu, Peiheng & Fennell, Shailaja & Chen, Yiyun & Liu, Hui & Xu, Lu & Pan, Jiawei & Bai, Shaoyun & Gu, Shixiang, 2022. "Positive impacts of farmland fragmentation on agricultural production efficiency in Qilu Lake watershed: Implications for appropriate scale management," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 117(C).
    5. Klaus Deininger & Daniel Monchuk & Hari K Nagarajan & Sudhir K Singh, 2017. "Does Land Fragmentation Increase the Cost of Cultivation? Evidence from India," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 53(1), pages 82-98, January.
    6. Kawasaki, Kentaro, 2010. "The costs and benefits of land fragmentation of rice farms in Japan," Australian Journal of Agricultural and Resource Economics, Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society, vol. 54(4), pages 1-18.
    7. Arimoto, Yutaka & 有本, 寛 & アリモト, ユタカ, 2011. "The impact of farmland readjustment and consolidation on structural adjustment: The case of Niigata, Japan," CEI Working Paper Series 2011-3, Center for Economic Institutions, Institute of Economic Research, Hitotsubashi University.
    8. Laure Latruffe & Laurent Piet, 2013. "Does land fragmentation affect farm performance? A case study from Brittany," Working Papers hal-01208908, HAL.
    9. Yishao Shi & Qianqian Yang & Liangliang Zhou & Shouzheng Shi, 2022. "Can Moderate Agricultural Scale Operations Be Developed against the Background of Plot Fragmentation and Land Dispersion? Evidence from the Suburbs of Shanghai," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(14), pages 1-22, July.
    10. Jarmila LAZIKOVA & Lubica RUMANOVSKA & Ivan TAKAC & Zuzana LAZIKOVA, 2017. "Land fragmentation and efforts to prevent it in Slovak legislation," Agricultural Economics, Czech Academy of Agricultural Sciences, vol. 63(12), pages 559-568.
    11. Laure Latruffe & Laurent Piet, 2013. "Does land fragmentation affect farm performance?," Working Papers hal-01208858, HAL.
    12. Natalia Boliari, 2017. "Can Partible Inheritance Explain Land Fragmentation? The Case of Bulgaria," Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, Centre for Agrarian Research and Education for South, vol. 6(3), pages 334-353, December.
    13. Laure Latruffe & Laurent Piet, 2013. "Does land fragmentation affect farm performance? A case study from Brittany, France," Working Papers SMART 13-04, INRAE UMR SMART.
    14. Kawasaki, Kentaro, 2011. "The Impact of Land Fragmentation on Rice Production Cost and Input Use," Japanese Journal of Agricultural Economics (formerly Japanese Journal of Rural Economics), Agricultural Economics Society of Japan (AESJ), vol. 13, pages 1-14.
    15. del Corral, J. & Pérez, J.A. & Roibás, D., 2010. "The impact of land fragmentation on milk production," Efficiency Series Papers 2010/02, University of Oviedo, Department of Economics, Oviedo Efficiency Group (OEG).
    16. Akkaya Aslan, Şerife Tülin, 2021. "Evaluation of land consolidation projects with parcel shape and dispersion," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 105(C).
    17. Siyan Zeng & Fengwu Zhu & Fu Chen & Man Yu & Shaoliang Zhang & Yongjun Yang, 2018. "Assessing the Impacts of Land Consolidation on Agricultural Technical Efficiency of Producers: A Survey from Jiangsu Province, China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 10(7), pages 1-17, July.
    18. Erwin Knippenberg & Dean Jolliffe & John Hoddinott, 2020. "Land Fragmentation and Food Insecurity in Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(5), pages 1557-1577, October.
    19. Rao, Xudong, 2014. "Land Fragmentation with Double Bonuses -- The Case of Tanzanian Agriculture," 2014 Annual Meeting, July 27-29, 2014, Minneapolis, Minnesota 169436, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Huy Quynh Nguyen & Peter Warr, 2018. "Land consolidation as technical change: impacts on-farm and off-farm in rural Vietnam," Departmental Working Papers 2018-25, The Australian National University, Arndt-Corden Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:chieco:v:19:y:2008:i:3:p:347-358. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/chieco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.