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The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of off-farm employment on the concentration of farmland via households’ land rental activities in rural China.

The paper uses Probit and Tobit models to estimate the effect of off-farm employment on land rental activities. Furthermore, the paper compares the degree of land concentration between pre-renting and post-renting in terms of Gini coefficients of farmland ownership at village level.

The authors find that off-farm employment has a positive effect on the renting out farmland, and insignificant effect on renting in farmland. Moreover, off-farm employment intensifies the concentration of farmland from small farms toward big farms by renting activities.

The authors believe that the results will contribute positively to the assessment of the effect of off-farm employment on land concentration in the context of the urbanization process in China.

Over the past four decades, real values of farm real estate and the share of assets on farmers’ balance sheets attributed to farm real estate have increased. The purpose of this paper is to examine the factors that explain the concentration of the US agricultural balance sheet around a particular asset, farm real estate, and the extent to which the degree of asset concentration varies across United States Department of Agriculture production regions.

State-level data from 48 states and entropy-based inequality measures are used to examine changes in asset distributions (real estate vs non-real estate assets) both within and between regions over time.

The agricultural balance sheet is found to concentrate into real estate in the USA over the period 1960-2003 with the rate of concentration varying across production regions. In some regions, the concentration is mainly due to changes in real estate prices, while in other regions concentration is also driven by changes in real estate holdings or changes in total factor productivity.

This study formally estimates the degree to which the concentration of balance sheet items can be explained by the observed changes in farm real estate prices relative to observed changes in agricultural factor productivity or changes in farm real estate holdings. The computed regional differences in asset concentration and its main drivers have implications for changes in equity and solvency positions of farmers as well as agricultural lenders’ risk exposure.

Based on the brief historical review, the purpose of this paper is to expound the target and bottom line for the farmland institutional reform of in China, analyze the “Chinese scenes” and historical heritage of farmland institutional arrangement, evaluate the policies and their effects over the last four decades and outline the keynotes and possible direction of the future reform.

The paper builds the analytical clue of “institutional target – institutional heritage – policy effort – realistic dilemma – future direction” and review and forecast the Chinese farmland institutional reform.

The farmland institution is an important issue with Chinese characteristics. Over the last four decades, the farmland institutional reform in China has focused on “stabilizing the land property rights” and “promote the farmland transfer.” As the study indicates, the promotion of farmland transfer has not effectively improved the scale economy of agriculture and stabilizing land property rights by titling may restrain the development of farmland transfer market because farmland transfer is of special market logic.

It depends on the revitalization of farmland management rights to resolve the transaction constraint of personal property and its endowment effect in farmland transfer. And, classifying the land management property to involve farmers into the economy of division can be reference for the reform of traditional agriculture worldwide.

The purpose of this study to provide a reference basis for effectively managing the risk of agrometeorological disasters in Henan Province, speeding up the establishment of a scientific and reasonable system of agrometeorological disasters prevention and reduction and guaranteeing grain security.

Firstly, according to the statistical data of areas covered by natural disaster, areas affected by natural disaster, sown area of grain crops and output of grain crops from 1979 to 2018 in Henan Province, China. We have constructed an agrometeorological disaster risk assessment system for Henan province, China, which is composed of indicators such as rate covered by natural disaster, rate affected by natural disaster, disaster coefficient of variation and disaster vulnerability. The variation characteristics of agrometeorological disasters in Henan Province and their effects on agricultural production are analyzed. Secondly, the grey relational analysis method is used to analyze the relation degree between the main agrometeorological disaster factors and the output of grain crops of Henan Province. Based on the grey BP neural network, the rate covered by various natural disaster and the rate affected by various natural disaster are simulated and predicted.

The results show that: (1) the freeze injury in the study period has a greater contingency, the intensity of the disaster is also greater, followed by floods. Droughts, windstorm and hail are Henan Province normal disasters. (2) According to the degree of disaster vulnerability, the ability to resist agricultural disasters in Henan Province is weak. (3) During the study period, drought and flood are the key agrometeorological disasters affecting the grain output of Henan Province, China.

The systematic analysis and evaluation of agrometeorological disasters are conducive to the sustainable development of agriculture, and at the same time, it can provide appropriate and effective measures for the assessment and reduction of economic losses and risks.

By calculating and analyzing the rate covered by natural disaster, the rate affected by natural disaster, disaster coefficient of variation and disaster vulnerability of crops in Henan Province of China and using grey BP neural network simulation projections for the rate covered by various natural disaster and the rate affected by various natural disaster, the risk assessment system of agrometeorological disasters in Henan is constructed, which provides a scientific basis for systematic analysis and evaluation of agrometeorological disasters.

This study aims to clarify the impact of agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) on in situ urbanization (ISURB) of rural residents, to highlight the role of industrial integration in the process of China's ISURB and to provide industrial integration suggestions for promoting urbanization quality in Chinese counties.

By sorting out the panel data of China's 1868 counties, the evaluation index system of ISURB was constructed. Difference in difference (DID) and spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) model is used for estimate the relationship between ATI and ISURB.

First, ATI can improve ISURB by 11.4% higher than other regions. Second, theoretical analysis model of ATI on ISURB is constructed from four aspects of “drive–push–pull–block.” The results show that ATI can promote ISURB by increasing upgrading of rural industries, rural employment demand and income capacity, whereas ATI may inhibit ISURB by reducing farmland. Third, considering changes in institutional, hard and soft factors, rural collective economy, information infrastructure and digital finance all promote positive impact of ATI on ISURB. Fourth, ATI will produce spillover effects on ISURB in neighboring regions, which is more pronounced in the central and western regions.

This study lacks quantification of ATI, so future studies are encouraged to further quantify ATI at the county level.

This study has policy significance for constructing ATI demonstration counties and promoting ISURB in China's counties.

It is of great practical value to promote China's ISURB. By stimulating ATI, it can improve income and employment capacity of rural residents and stimulate ISURB of China.

This study enriches the theoretical and practical research on industrial integration behaviors during the process of ISURB.

1. Use county data to measure in situ urbanization (ISURB)

2. Agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) can increase ISURB

3. Constructs a “drive-push-pull-block” model to explain the influence mechanism

4. Use spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) models

5. Consider collective economy, rural information infrastructure and digital finance

Use county data to measure in situ urbanization (ISURB)

Agriculture–tourism integration (ATI) can increase ISURB

Constructs a “drive-push-pull-block” model to explain the influence mechanism

Use spatial Durbin-difference in difference (SDM-DID) models

Consider collective economy, rural information infrastructure and digital finance

This paper aims to quantify the impact of environmental contamination on farmland valuation. It applies data fusion and hedonic pricing approaches to quantify the contribution of nitrogen and phosphorus loading on farmland sales transactions. It further suggests approaches to improve internalization of environmental cost in valuation approaches using shadow pricing. The work informs the field of environmental, social and governance (ESG) investing by fusing environmental data with financial transactions.

This paper is an empirical study implementing hedonic pricing of farmland in the Lake Huron major drainage area. Data sources and fusion were derived from AcreValue, the United States Department of Agriculture's Gridded Soil Survey Geographic database (gSSURGO) and the United States Geological Survey's Spatially Referenced Regression on Watershed Attributes database (SPARROW).

The results suggest that environmental contamination has statistically significant positive determination power on farmland prices such that prices increase with contamination. Conventional metrics such as percentage of cultivated land in the parcel, root zone depth, whether the parcel is designated by the Natural Resource Conservation Service as prime farmland, and the size of the farmland parcel contribution to farmland value as well. The results indicate that environmental impacts are not accurately accounted for in farmland transactions.

This paper points to inaccurate valuation of environmental contamination in farmland value. While geocoding allowed for positioning of farmland sales transactions relative to modeled areas of contaminant loading in the Lake Huron drainage area, the interpretation indicates that value is driven by cultivation. Hence, generalization to other areas needs a cautious approach. Empirical testing across locations and drainage areas with diverse farmland features will serve to verify the modeled data used in this study.

The lack of integration of externalities in land valuation has implications on lending and disclosure practices, as financial service providers increasingly seek to account for ESG risk on their loan books and broader investment portfolios. The impact of farmland accounting practices for contamination such as shadow pricing may impact land valuation based on future cash flows, and may serve to inform sustainability-linked lending practices to farm operations.

This is the first paper to fuse data from AcreValue, gSSURGO and SPARROW to discover the explanatory power of nutrient contamination in farmland value in the Lake Huron major drainage area.

The purpose of this paper is to summarize the institutional evolution of China's farmland property rights deformity with its internal logic, analyze its property rights deformity and the invasions of these rights under the family operation background, and puts forward fundamental suggestions for reforming farmland property rights in China.

The concept of “public domain” raised by Barzel in 1989 is used and extended to analyze China's farmland system.

There exist five sorts of public domain and two apparent characteristics of property rights deformity: the unclear final controlling rights for some valuable attributes of goods of the “public domain”; and the “public domain” deliberately created by the government. The public domain caused by technical factors and owner's real capability are herein excluded.

China's past and present farmland system is a result of the government's compulsory system arrangements instead of market evolution. The expansion of public domains III and V has directly shrunk peasants' residual property rights. The concept of “public domain” is developed to reveal the essence of China's farmland property rights deformity.

The objective of this chapter is to provide an approach to the farmland abandonment problem in Galicia, the Spain’s north-western region. We describe the land use pattern that characterized the traditional agricultural system, and analyze the process of structural adjustment and changes in land use recorded in the last 50 years. The empirical basis is provided mainly by an original elaboration of agricultural census data for the period 1982–2009. The results show that in the last five decades the area devoted to crops and pastures was constrained to a small portion of the territory (just over 20%), while the agro-livestock uses of hill land which were very important up to the mid-twentieth century disappeared. All this led to a remarkable expansion of abandoned land, which currently occupies at least 20% of the regional area. The drivers of this farmland abandonment are diverse and vary from one zone to another. But among them the conditioners derived from the structure of land ownership must be emphasized, coupled with the poor functioning of the land market and leasing. Land abandonment has had a major impact on the dynamics of the agricultural sector, limiting the size of farms and causing an increasing intensification in a small portion of the territory. This has also led to severe environmental problems, especially forest fires. Consequently, improving mobility and land use should be a priority of agricultural and rural development policies in this region.

Recreancy is a concept that received William R. Freudenburg’s studied attention. Freudenburg moved beyond its conventional meaning – shirking duty – to a larger realm of irresponsibility by public actors who breach a societal trust they assume. This research focuses on the issue of “Peak Farmland,” a rendering of global carrying capacity that, we suggest, qualifies for what Freudenburg called “privileged discourse” and possibly recreancy. Scholars identified with dematerialized progress argue that finite farmland in the face of increasing population will improve human welfare and spare land for nature. This iconoclasm presents an arena for testing academic probity with respect to global food security. After an overview of past carrying capacity debates, we summarize the “Peak Farmland” position of the dematerialization school and suggest an important blind spot: the dematerialization of the global land base itself. Gathering the results of multiple studies on land loss, we offer evidence that the world’s warehouse of productive land is not just peaking but eroding on a grand scale. Ignoring this form of dematerialization while proclaiming nearly unlimited carrying capacity for Earth’s denizens strains the meaning of responsible scholarship.

This chapter examines the involvement of finance companies in the purchasing and leasing of Australian farmlands. This is a new global phenomenon as, in past decades, finance companies have lent money to farmers, but have rarely sought to purchase land themselves. We investigate and discuss the activities of the Hancock company – an asset management firm that invested in farmland in northern NSW. Material on the activities of Hancock and other investment firms were obtained from documents on the public record, including newspaper reports. Semi-structured interviews with community members were conducted in the region of NSW where Hancock operated. Australian agriculture is being targeted for investment by companies in the finance industry – as part of a growing ‘financialization’ of farming. While it is financially beneficial for companies to invest, they do not do so in ‘empty spaces’ but in locations where people desire to live in a healthy environment. The Hancock company was criticized by community residents for failing to recognize the concerns of local people in pursuing its farming activities. To date, there have been few studies on the financialization of farming in Australia. By investigating the operations of the Hancock company we identify a number of concerns emerging, at the community level, about an overseas company running Australian-based farms.