Part-time farming has been increasing steadily in China. It is currently the largest segment among all the farm sectors in the country. Based on rural household survey data in Taipusi County as a case site ofecologically-vulnerable areas in North China, we firstly classify farm households into four types according to the proportion of non-farm income in total income, and then compare their agricultural land use patterns to empirically examine the impacts of part-time farming on agricultural land use in this area. The results suggest that non-farming households rent out all their land and give up farming, and this satisfies the expectation of other households to expand land area. The crop planting structure was not significantly different among the households, which reflected the farmers＇ will to pursuit labor productivity. Part-time farming households invest more capital and materials than full-time faming households because the income derived from non-farm employment relaxes the financial constraint of households. However, the amount of labor input of part-time farming households tends to be less, and farming practices are dominated by the elderly, female and laborers withrelative low educations.Yields of crops and the benefit of agricultural land use incline to reduce, which suggest that the potential of land use productivity is more elastic to labor inputs than capital inputs in the study area.
Nowadays the rising of opportunity cost of farm labor comes to the forefront of attention in China. In order to understand its impact on agricultural land-use structure, a theoretical framework of household economics is formulated drawn on Low's model. Under the theoretical framework, the impact of the rising opportunity cost of on-farm on cropping structure is deduced in theory. And then, using statistic and survey data, taking mountain area of southern Ningxia as an example, the theoretical assumes are verified. The results show that the rise of opportunity cost of farm labor leads to less diversified cropping structure.
Based on the data from the Cost-benefit Data of Farm Produce and the China Agricultural Yearbook, this paper aims to examine the spatial and temporal change characteristics of total grain production and its affecting factors. The results show that： 1） During 1980 to 2007, total grain production increased from 3.20 ~ 108 t to 5.02 x 108 t in China, with annual increasing rate of 1.68%. From the regional disparities, most of the regions present increasing trend of total grain production except for several regions with higher level of economic development; 2） Grain sown area decreased from 1.17 × 108 ha in 1980 to 1.06 x 108 ha in 2007, which has negative effect on total grain production; 3） The increase of grain yield per unit area caused by land use intensity changes contributed to the increase of total grain yield greatly. However, as the land use intensity showed that farmers pay more attention to labor-saving input but not yield-increasing input, the less enthusiasm of farmers in grain production may become an important constraint on fu- ture grain production increase in China; 4） Based on the results, this paper proposed different land management poli- cies in different regions, for example, the government should protect cultivated land, promote large scale production. As to the less developed regions, the government should pay more attention to agricultural subsidies to promote farm- ers＇ enthusiasm in grain production.
