Sustainable intensification of cultivated land use and farming households' livelihood transition

Abstract: Sustainable Intensification of Cultivated Land Use (SICLU) has been an effective tool to optimize the patterns of agricultural system. A tradeoff can be made for the contradiction between growing food demand and environmental resource constraints, further to realize the green transition of regional cultivated land use, according to the local conditions. The farming households have been one of the most important micro-socio-economic subjects, particularly for the independent decision-making unit in the cultivated land use. The Farming-Households Livelihood Transition (FHLT) can directly influence the cultivated land use, in terms of the contradiction between population, economy, resources, and environment. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the correlation and mutual feedback between SICLU and FHLT under the background of the "new agriculture, rural areas and farmers". In this study, four aspects of SICLU were explored from the international concept of Sustainable Intensification (SI), including the ideological origin, conceptual connotation, goal setting, and theoretical deduction. Another four aspects of FHLT were also considered from the micro perspective of farming households, including the livelihood environment, livelihood capital, livelihood strategy, and outcome succession. Then, the mutual relationship between SICLU and FHLT was established to optimize the mode of cultivated land use in agricultural development, further promoting the SICLU transformation from multiple dimensions. The results show that: 1) The SICLU presented five connotations, including intensive management, high efficiency of yield, resource-saving, non-degradation of ecological environment, and social sustainability, indicating the balances and synergies between them. Since the SICLU was closely related to three realistic goals, including ecological, economic, and social benefits, the best compound benefit of cultivated land use was the optimal solution during optimization among the three. 2) The FHLT was originated from the gradual evolution of livelihood environment, capital and strategy. Specifically, the livelihood environment influenced the accumulation of livelihood capital in the early stage, while the livelihood capital influenced the choice of livelihood strategy, and the livelihood strategy determined the direction of livelihood transition. 3) There was a feed-back relationship between SICLU and FHLT, in terms of the cultivated land dependency, land awareness, the level of cultivated land use and behavior response. The external environment and resource endowment of cultivated land dominated the direction of FHLT via the accumulation and survival of farming-households livelihood capital. The FHLT changed the dependence relationship and land consciousness of farming households on the cultivated land, leading to the behavior of cultivated land use, the level of SICLU, the farmers-livelihoods feedback, and the livelihood transformation. Consequently, it is necessary to adopt classified policies to guide farming households of different livelihoods to change their cultivated land use behaviors, optimize livelihood strategies, and comprehensively regulate the sustainable and intensive transition of regional cultivated land use. This finding can also provide a strong reference for understanding the process and response mechanism of SICLU and FHLT.