Context (archaeology)

Complementarity (molecular biology)

Agriculture

Scale (ratio)

Engineering

Biology

Mechanization

Cartography

China

Archaeology

Agricultural science

Economics

Civil engineering

Business

Agricultural machinery

Genetics

Geography

Agricultural land

Environmental science

Land use

Finance

Natural resource economics

Agricultural economics

Lease

Land Use Policy

In the context of the rapid rise of agricultural mechanization in China, this paper examines the impact of household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services on the land leasing behavior of Chinese relatively large-scale farmers. Based on the CFPS2018 survey data, this study suggests that farm machinery is beneficial for expanding the scale of farms. With increases in household-owned machinery, farmers are more inclined to lease-in land, and they are less inclined to rent-out land. The more agricultural machinery services farmers purchase, the more they tend to transfer-in land and the probability of transfer-out land is lower. However, uneven village terrain can weaken the effects of the two kinds of agricultural mechanization on land leasing. Moreover, this study confirms that household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services could positively regulate each other's influence on land leasing, indicating that there is a complementary relationship between the two types of agricultural machinery. Further mechanism analyses show that the channels by which household-owned farm machinery and outsourced agricultural machinery services affect land leasing are quite different. The self-purchased machinery of farmers mainly plays a role through labor complementarity effects, while outsourced agricultural machinery services mainly affect land leasing through labor substitution effects.

Household-owned farm machinery vs. outsourced machinery services: The impact of agricultural mechanization on the land leasing behavior of relatively large-scale farmers in China