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FARMING SCALE

Benefits of China’s land consolidation

Nature Food volume 2, pages 926–927 (2021)Cite this article

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The merging of small farms into fewer large ones is a key part of China’s food security and rural revitalization strategy. Yet, the benefits of implementing large-scale farms vary under different land consolidation pathways.

After four decades of booming agricultural production, China has become one of the most food-secure countries in the world and can now claim to successfully feed its population. Per capita availability of grain in China increased from 324 kg in 1980 to 464 kg in 2020 and meat from 12 kg to 53 kg, while the population increased from 983 million to 1.44 billion in the same period1. However, some of the initial driving forces of agricultural intensification are now bringing about constraints to the further development of agriculture production. The ‘household contract responsibility system’ (HCRS) was a major driver of agricultural production in the early stages of rural reform. The small-scale and fragmented household farming plots under the HCRS system have gradually become a barrier to further improvement in resource use efficiency, mechanization and market competitiveness. Excessive use of nitrogen fertilizer, which boosted yield increases in the 1980s, has become a major source of water pollution and greenhouse gas emissions. Writing in Nature Food, Gu and colleagues describe how they used ecological modelling and geostatistical analysis informed by more than 40,000 rural surveys and statistical datasets to estimate the potential area of China’s cropland that could be consolidated, as well as the associated costs and consequent benefits of improving nitrogen fertilizer use efficiency and labour income2.

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  1. School of International Development, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK

    Yuelai Lu

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  1. Yuelai Lu
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Correspondence to Yuelai Lu.

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Lu, Y. Benefits of China’s land consolidation. Nat Food 2, 926–927 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00444-0

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