Does farmland abandonment harm agricultural productivity in hilly and mountainous areas? evidence from China

ABSTRACT

This study aims to provide empirical evidence for the relationship between farmland abandonment and food security from the perspective of agricultural productivity. Specifically, based on 4,850 farmer households in the hilly and mountainous areas of rural China, this study uses the endogenous switching regression (ESR) method to solve the problem of self-selection in farmers’ decision-making on farmland abandonment and quantitatively examines the impacts of farmland abandonment on agricultural productivity. This study finds that in these hilly and mountainous areas, farmland abandonment improves land return by 14.06%. Namely, farmland abandonment can improve agricultural productivity, which also means that farmland abandonment may not be harmful to food security. The findings of this study may help developing countries better understand the problem of farmland use transformation and improve agricultural productivity, and it can provide references for enhancing the security of global food and nutrition.

KEYWORDS:

• farmland abandonment
• agricultural productivity
• land use
• food and nutrition safety
• endogenous switching regression
• rural China

Acknowledgments

We gratefully acknowledge financial support from the Social Science Planning Project of Sichuan Province (Grant No. SC21C047). The authors also extend great gratitude to the anonymous reviewers and editors for their helpful review and critical comments. Additionally, all authors are very grateful to the Center for Social Science Survey at Sun Yat-sen University who provides the data. Specially, Panpan Lian is very grateful for the support from Undergraduate Innovation Training Program Project and Key team of summer social practice activities for college students of Sichuan Province.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was funded by The Social Science Planning Project of Sichuan Province (Grant No. SC21C047); Social Science Planning Project of Sichuan Province of China [SC21C047].