Impact of farmers' differentiation on farmland-use efficiency: Evidence from household survey data in rural China

Abstract

Farmer diff erentiation has important implications for the efficiency of farmland use. Applying the model of DEA and Tobit, using the household survey data, this paper investigates the effects of the farmer stratum diff erentiation on the efficiency of farmland use. The empirical results showed that the type of farmer diff erentiation was positive and statistically significant at 5% level. The regression coefficient is 0.295; this result implies that if this variable improves one percentage, the efficiency of farmland use will increase by 29.5%. The farmer horizontal diff erentiation and farmer vertical diff erentiation pass the significance test at the 1% and 5% level, respectively. This indicates that they all have a significant positive impact on the farmland use efficiency. We conclude that corresponding measures should be implemented to further facilitate the farmer diff erentiation. Another implication of our results is that the policies matched with the farmer diff erentiation and transfer should be gradually perfected, and then they will provide a better environment of the society and economy for free migration of farmers.