Agricultural Machinery Input, Labor Resource Allocation, and Rural Household Land Transfers

This paper explores the impact of agricultural machinery input on rural households’ land transfers, which is conducive to the acceleration of agricultural modernization, agricultural production at scale, and rural revitalization. By using the micro-data on rural households(2014–2018) from China Family Panel Studies(CFPS), we made an empirical analysis of the impact of agricultural machinery input on land transfers and drew three conclusions. First, agricultural machinery input has a positive impact on land transfers, which means the more rural households invest in agricultural machinery, the more willing they are to participate in land transfers. Second, the impact of agricultural machinery input on land transfers is mainly exerted by adjusting the allocation of labor resources for rural households, or rather by increasing the number of farmers engaged in agriculture and reducing the number of farmers-turned traders and workers to facilitate land transfers. Third, the impact of agricultural machinery input on land transfers concerns both the positive transfers-in and the negative transfers-out, and such an impact stays stable across income groups. Accordingly, we should further increase agricultural machinery-related subsidies, improve the agricultural machinery service outsourcing market, and help rural households to reasonably allocate their labor resource endowments and invest in agricultural machinery to increase land transfers.