Public, Semi-public and Non-profit Ownership of Agricultural Lands in the Market Economy

A special issue of Land (ISSN 2073-445X). This special issue belongs to the section "Land Socio-Economic and Political Issues".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 April 2023) | Viewed by 5254

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Guest Editor
Faculty of Law and Economics & Institute of Botany and Landscape Ecology, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-University Greifswald, Soldmann Str. 15, 17487 Greifswald, Germany
Interests: institutional change; institutional economics; environmental and resource economics; governance of natural resources; agricultural and land economics; conservation; technology adoption; sustainable land management
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In a market economy, ownership of agricultural land is often presumed to be private and for profit. Compared to forestry, however, we know surprisingly little about the extent of public and semi-public or non-profit ownership of agricultural lands. There is some empirical evidence that the share of agricultural land owned by public entities (e.g., municipalities, cities, and states) or semi-public and non-profit organizations (e.g., public companies, foundations, or trusts) could be substantial, and increased recently. In Germany, for instance, semi-public conservation foundations became large-scale land owners and usually rent out land to private farmers. In the US and UK, conservation land trusts have a long tradition, but also grew in recent decades and new movements of community land trusts for urban agriculture can be observed. To be sure, public and semi-public ownership of agricultural land is partly a historical legacy, but seemingly new drives occur. The social responsibility of land ownership in the face of sustainable development is one of them. Increasingly, public goods and services are demanded from private lands, be it for reasons of recreation, biodiversity conservation, or climate protection. Public, semi-public, and non-profit ownership might then be regarded as socially beneficial or even preferable compared to private, for-profit ownership.

This Special Issue intends to shed a light on the extent, development, and consequences of public, semi-public, and non-profit ownership of agricultural land in market economies in urban and rural settings. What is the significance of these types of agricultural land ownership? How do public and semi-public entities behave on agricultural land markets? How do they contract with farmers? Do public, semi-public, or non-profit owners provide more public goods from agricultural lands? We invite scholars from different social science disciplines to contribute reviews, research articles, case studies, or perspectives to this Special Issue.


Prof. Dr. Volker Beckmann
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • public land ownership
  • semi-public land ownership
  • non-profit land ownership
  • rental contracts
  • public goods
  • agricultural lands
  • land markets

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

22 pages, 318 KiB  
Article
The Effect of Farmland Transfer on the Technical Efficiency of Farm Households in China: An Empirical Result of External Environmental Factors
by Danny Cyra Yangchen, Mingyong Hong and Qisong Yang
Land 2023, 12(1), 64; https://doi.org/10.3390/land12010064 - 26 Dec 2022
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2049
Abstract
In the context of food security, the market-oriented allocation of factors under the collective ownership system has had a profound impact on agricultural production. As a hot issue under the Household Responsibility System (HRS), the impact mechanism of farmland market transaction on agricultural [...] Read more.
In the context of food security, the market-oriented allocation of factors under the collective ownership system has had a profound impact on agricultural production. As a hot issue under the Household Responsibility System (HRS), the impact mechanism of farmland market transaction on agricultural production efficiency deserves discussion. Based on the stochastic frontier production function model, this paper analyzes the impact of farmland transfer on farmers’ production technical efficiency under the external environmental factors by using the moderating effect and threshold effect. The study found that farmland transfer can improve farmers’ technical efficiency. The market price of agricultural products and farmland transfer subsidies have a positive moderating effect on the impact of farmland transfer on technical efficiency. Furthermore, farmland transfer subsidy shows a nonlinear effect on the impact of technical efficiency. Full article
16 pages, 263 KiB  
Article
Impact of Relationship Governance and Third-Party Intervention on Farmland Transfer Rents—Empirical Evidence from Rural China
by Jia Chen, Jingwen Xu and Hongxiao Zhang
Land 2022, 11(5), 745; https://doi.org/10.3390/land11050745 - 18 May 2022
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 1881
Abstract
The marketization of transfer rent is an important symbol of the development of the farmland factor market. At present, the price formation mechanism of rent in China’s farmland market is not perfect. Based on the theoretical analysis starting with the post transaction cost [...] Read more.
The marketization of transfer rent is an important symbol of the development of the farmland factor market. At present, the price formation mechanism of rent in China’s farmland market is not perfect. Based on the theoretical analysis starting with the post transaction cost of leasers, this paper uses 1648 farmland transfer samples collected by the China Land Economic Survey (CLES) in 2020, and employs OLS, 2SLS and CMP methods to empirically test the impact of relationship governance on transfer rent and the role of third-party (including county and township governments and village committees) intervention on the change in relationship governance pattern and rent decisions. The results show that the close relationship between the two sides of transfer represents the strong relationship governance functioned by the constraints of the trust and reputation mechanism, which can reduce the post transaction cost. Additionally, the two sides play a game on this part of the transaction cost, making the transfer rent lower than the market price. Furthermore, the involvement of third parties such as county and township governments and village committees in the transfer has replaced the role of relationship governance in reducing transaction cost, and changed the relationship governance pattern of acquaintance society, which makes the transfer rent close to the market price. Full article
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