Analysis on changes of land use inputs and their willingness of land use for farmers

Abstract: Understanding the variation characteristics of farmers' behavior in land use investment and comprehending the current farmers' willingness of land use and food production are very useful and necessary for the formulation of relevant policies to ensure the security of China's food. With a stratified random sample method, 23 villages of 4 counties, 1 city and 1 region in Xianning city were surveyed and 1252 farmers' behavior data in land use was collected. From the perspective of the main factors of food production such as labor forces, land resources, agricultural machinery, fertilizers and pesticides, the farmers' behavior changes in land use investment from 1981 to 2011 and their current willingness of food production were analyzed in this paper. The results showed: 1) In aspect of labor investment, rural labors substantially shift to non-agricultural areas outside the region, the current main agricultural labors were characterized by female, middle-aged and low educational degree labor force. The labor investment per unit of land area reduced two-thirds significantly from 1981 to 2011. 2) In aspect of land resources input, because of the influence of land circulation, the actual operation of farm household farming land scale had significantly increased trend. However, farmers had not enlarged the main food crops' area. The double cropping paddy such as early paddy and late paddy transferred to middle-season paddy as well as paddy field shifted to dry land. As a result, the area of three kind food crops had shrunk by one seventh during the past 30 years. 3) As for the other factors of production inputs, farmyard manures were reduced, NPK chemical fertilizers were gradually replaced by compound fertilizers. The consumption of pesticides increased quickly. More and more families used agricultural machinery service in cultivation; the level of agricultural mechanization was improved significantly. 4) Agricultural technological progress and economic reason are two most important driving factors to effect farmers' behavior change in land use, the preferential agricultural policies such as "three make up one free" had limited impact on farmers' investment behavior. 5) The target of farmers' land use was divided into differentiation. The two thirds farmers just produce grain for his family, to some extent, it may will affect the safety of the food market. There farmers producing grain for market will become more and more important to regional food safety. The traditional model of "every family producing food" was replaced by the new model of "more specialized and large-scale peasant household production". Government land and agricultural policies, such as land consolidation and preferential agricultural policy, should focus on these farmers and support large-scale professional management farmers, and encourage small farmers out of agriculture to non-agricultural industries. 6) How to effectively stabilize the production area of main food crops is a severe problem. It needs more positive strategies to guide regulation of farmer's behavior in land use. With the conversion of marginal cultivated land to ecological land, the ecological land increased and the rural region has a precious opportunity to improve the ecosystem quality and enhance regional ecosystem services.