Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
Land-use polcy
The polcy mplcatons of WTO accesson on land use and farm organsatons
are also being hotly debated. Many concerns have arisen about the ability
of Chna's small farms to compete after trade lberalsaton. Although
every farm household holds title to land, the average farm size is small
(about 0.5 hectares). Leaders are pleased wth the equty effects of the
nation's distribution of land, as it allays concerns about food security and
poverty. Land fragmentation and the extremely small scale of farms will,
however, almost certainly in some way constrain the growth of farm labour
productvty and hold back farm ncome growth.
Although most policymakers appear to favour more secure land rights,
they are stll searchng for complementary measures that wll not cancel
all of the pro-equity benefits of the current land management regime.
By law, land in rural areas is owned collectively by the village (about 300
households) or small group (
cunmin xiaozu
, with 15-30 households) and is
contracted to households (Brandt et al. 2002). One of the most mportant
changes n recent years has been the extenson of the duraton of the use
contract from 15 to 30 years. By 2000, about 98 per cent of villages had
amended their contracts with farmers to reflect the longer use rights.
With the issue of use rights resolved, the government is now searching for
a mechansm that wll permt the remanng full-tme farmers to gan access
to addtonal cultvated land and ncrease ther ncome and compettveness.
One of the man efforts revolves around the development of a new Rural Land
Contract Law. The Standng Commttee of the Natonal People's Congress has
drafted a law and the congress s expected to approve t n the near future.
According to this law, although the ownership rights of land will remain with
the collective, almost all other rights that would have been held under a
private property system are given to the contract holder. In particular, the
law clarifies the rights for transfer and exchange of the contracted land—
something that could be taking effect already, as researchers are finding that
ncreasng areas of land n Chna are rented. The new legslaton also allows
farmers to use contracted land for collateral to secure commercal loans
and allows famly members to nhert land durng the contracted perod.
The goal of ths new set of polces s to encourage farmers to ncrease ther
farm and household short and long-run productvty.
