China’s on-going debates over large-scale farming: what are the pros and cons?

Purpose – The Chinese Government relies heavily on increasing farming scale to address the new challenges facing China’s agricultural development. A basket of polices targeted at increasing farming scale has been issued in recent years thereby resulting to debates over large-scale farming in China. The purpose of this paper is to summarize and highlight the debate over China’s on-going large-scale farming. Design/methodology/approach – This paper contributes to the policy debates over large-scale farming in China by reviewing the existing literature on the positive and negative impacts of large-scale farming on agricultural development, land productivity, and national food security. This paper overviews the different ideas and findings of studies associated with the topic. Findings – The mainstream literature supports the idea that large-scale farming will address the challenges facing China’s agricultural development, while others argue that it crowds out the benefits of small farmers, and raises concerns over inequalities of resources allocation and income distribution, and undermines social stability. While proponents argue that large-scale farming may lead to rise in land productivity, opponents argue that it may result into decrease in land productivity and national grain output. Originality/value – This paper is a policy review based on existing works. It organizes the different debates over large-scale farming in China, and highlights the key arguments put forward.