Rising concern over urban-rural economic disparity in China in the early 2000s spurred a series of policy initiatives to improve people's quality of life in rural areas. A recently launched Rural Land Transition Program in Sichuan Province aims to increase land-use efficiency and rural incomes...

The concentration of crop cultivation can be measured in terms of spatial clustering and of inequality in the distribution of the cropland area. We used official agricultural statistics at the county level (N = 2,354) for each year from 1980 to 2011 for all of China to analyse the changes in...

Why is agricultural productivity so low in poor countries relative to the rest of the world? Is it due to geography or constrained economic choices? We assess the quantitative role of geography and land quality for agricultural productivity differences across countries using high-resolution...

Two geographers with extensive experience in assessing developments in Russian agriculture and rural issues focus on changes in regional patterns of agricultural output during the 1990s. Patterns of soil fertility (bioclimatic potential) and urbanization are proposed as spatial factors that have...