Betting on the Big: State-Brokered Land Transfers, Large-Scale Agricultural Producers, and Rural Policy Implementation

• Main Authors: GONG, Weigang, ZHANG, Qian Forrest
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Institutional Knowledge at Singapore Management University 2017
• Subjects: Agribusiness; Agricultural and Resource Economics; Asian Studies; Public Affairs, Public Policy and Public Administration
• Online Access: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soss_research/2039; https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/context/soss_research/article/3296/viewcontent/688703.pdf
• Institution: Singapore Management University

As rural governments have become hollowed out and detached from rural society, can they still effectively implement policies that lack popular support? This article examines a county in Hunan Province, where local governments had strong incentives to implement a national policy of increasing double cropping in rice farming. Small farmers rejected double cropping as unprofitable. Local governments’ limited capacity prevented them from either reshaping small farmers’ economic calculus or coercing compliance. They strategically selected a policy tool acceptable to most small farmers (paid land transfers) and gave new private large-scale producers incentives to double crop by providing subsidies and access to large tracts of farmland. The local governments now rely on large-scale producers as their agents for policy implementation and agricultural governance. This and the collusive relationship that has formed between the two are pushing small farmers out of agriculture.