Farmland marginalization and its drivers in mountainous areas of China

The marginalization phenomenon characterized by devaluation and abandonment of farmland began to appear in mountainous areas. The purpose of this study was to reveal the extent of farmland marginalization and its drivers, and a two-stage tracking survey involving 7045 plots from 1012 households from the southwest mountainous areas of China in 2011 and 2018 by employing a variety of metrics and binary Logit model. The results showed that the average profit and rent of cultivated land per mu (1 mu = 666.67 m²) presented a significant downward trend in study areas. With the continuous decline of farmland profit, the utilization of land has undergone a significant transformation, such as the transformation of crops from labour-intensive to machine-intensive. The ratio of plots transferred out with free rent increased from 3/5 to 4/5 and the rate of abandonment increased from 21.6% to 27.2% during the study period. Farmland marginalization characterized by land devaluation and abandonment is intensifying in mountainous areas of China in recent years. Plot levels such as distance from the residence, damaged by wild boar, low plot quality and labour famine are the key factors of farmland marginalization such as abandonment, while the rising cost of farming is the root cause. The driver of marginalization was that urbanization increased labour cost, farming profits declined until they became losses, and the farmland was finally abandoned. Nowadays, farmland marginalization is not an unique phenomenon in mountain areas of China and it is more common all over the world. The government should stop large-scale farmland reclamation projects in mountainous areas of China and we can compensate for the loss of farmland by improving the quality and utilization efficiency of the remaining farmland.