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GRK 1070 SP 3.3: Property rights and access to credit, inputs and agricultural knowledge in the North China Plain: implications for technical efficiency, sectoral change, and rural income inequality
Project
Project code: DFG-GRK 1070
Contract period: 01.01.2004
- 01.01.2013
Purpose of research: Basic research
Agricultural and rural development policies as well as formal and informal institutional arrangements concerning farmers’ access to land, capital, agricultural knowledge, and agricultural inputs influence the intra-sectoral changes of agriculture in the North China Plain. The general objective of the subproject is to analyze the determinants of the change in the number and types of farms over time and the implications of the observed lack of structural change in the farming sector on sustainability in its three dimensions. The central hypothesis is that the transition from the current unsustainable high-input, low-output part-time smallholder agriculture to a more efficient commercially oriented full-time agriculture is hindered by a range of policies and institutional arrangements. Especially for part-time farm households in Hebei province which derive their major share of total household income from rural non-farm sources as well as from migration of household members to urban areas, we hypothesize that land ‘possession’ and related ‘farming’ is mainly motivated by subsistence and old-age security motives and as a strategy to diversify incomes out of agriculture.
Section overview
Subjects
- Agricultural Policy
- Business administration
- Agricultural Sociology
Collaborative Project
Funding programme
Excutive institution
Institute of Agricultural Sciences in the Tropics (Hans-Ruthenberg-Institute) (490)