Energy consumption in rural areas in China is characterized by high consumption of fuelwood, straw and other biomass. Off-farm employment can play an important role in the transition towards more sustainable sources of energy by increasing rural household incomes and reducing the amount of labor...

Land fragmentation is generally seen as an obstacle to agricultural productivity improvements, but it can also facilitate labor smoothing and risk diversification. In this paper we examine the impact of land fragmentation on the variable production costs of rice farmers in three villages in...

Land conservation investments can make an important contribution to avoidance and mitigation of land degradation. Lack of tenure security and land transferability may, however, limit the extent to which farmers undertake such investments. Using real option value theory, this paper investigates...

This paper performs a plot-level analysis of the impact of land rental market participation and off-farm employment on land investment, input use, and rice yields for 215 plots cultivated by 52 households in three villages in Northeast Jiangxi Province. Our findings show that households that...

The current system of converting farmland to urban land use in China can be characterized as a hybrid system that combines government controls with market-based transfers. In this paper we argue that this hybrid governance structure causes an over-conversion of farmland from the rural to the...