Resources integration and change in land value affected by land transfer and consolidation of rural villages in hilly areas

Abstract: Smooth land transfer, more efficient integration of various resources, and increases of land value are the key of sustainable development of agricultural industry. Based on the land use map of transferred land parcels, rural economic statistics, and sample survey data from 239 households in Xiaoyuan village of Ciyun town and Huangzhuang village, Yangyan village of Yongxing town, Jiangjin district, Chongqing, China, we analyzed the changing features of resource integration and its efficiency from land of scattered small operation to concentrated large scale operation as affected by land transfer and consolidation in hilly areas. Then, economic, social, ecological, and development values of cultivated land before and after land transfer were also estimated by the value estimation methods including income method, market method, opportunity cost method and shadow engineering method. The results indicated that the continuous farm land area was enlarged, land patch shape tended to be more regular and land surface was more flat as a resulted of land transfer and land consolidation. Besides, the agricultural infrastructure system was significantly improved. The relative improvement of mean land patch size, mean land patch shape index and land surface relative elevation increased by 38.19%, 2.54% and 30.95%, respectively. On the other hand, the absolute improvement of rural road density and field irrigation ditch density were more than 50 m/hm² and 75 m/hm², respectively. Moreover, agricultural production costs were increased and the comprehensive resource use efficiency was greatly improved. The labor and material cost for agriculture production per hectare after land transfer were 1.58-24.84 times and 1.22-8.04 times more than before, but the labor, land as well as capital productivities were 21.46 - 45.74 times, 6.26-14.59 times and 1.09-3.71 times higher than those before land transfer. The total input-output ratio of agricultural production after land transfer was 1.1 times higher than before. Furthermore, the area of investment for developing agricultural industry changed from agriculture only to diversities. Self-raised funds from farmers before land transfer accounted for 100%, while the proportion of farmers' self-raised funds and government investment were respectively 24.53%-79.31% and 20.69%-75.47% after land transfer. In addition, funds by financial institutions invested in agricultural production accounted for 18% and 13.54% in the case study areas of Q1 and Q6. Last, both the economic output value and social guarantee value of cultivated land had a significant growth and increased by more than twice after land transfer, while the ecological service value of cultivated land all declined with the average loss rate of 34.83%. At the same time, cultivated land value structure became imbalance. The social guarantee value accounted for more than 45% before and after land transfer. The ecological service value and economic output value before land transfer were more or less equal at around 25% each, while the economic output value increased by two times and ecological service value sharply reduced to less than 10% after land transfer. Since the new idea that land consolidation goes ahead by integrating funds of various agricultural sectors to focus on land parcels planning and agricultural infrastructure construction under the agricultural industrial development policy, farmers' transfer of their cultivated land driven by the interests of the market or guided by the government was more favorable for land transfer in hilly areas. The effect of land transfer and land consolidation not only facilitated the transformation of farmer's contracted land to professional investors, leading enterprises and family farms, but also led to the conversion of agricultural business models and agricultural industry types. Thus, it promoted the integration of various resources efficiently (e.g., land resource, agricultural infrastructure resource, capital, labor, etc.) and improved the resources integration efficiency, resulting in a significant increase in land composite value. These findings in our study contributed to a better understanding of the effect of the land transfer and consolidation on development of agricultural industry, and also provided a reference for the overall adjustment of regional land-use planning policy and agricultural development policies.