Farmland transition in China and its policy implications

Land Use Policy 92 (2020) 104470

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Land Use Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/landusepol

Farmland transition in China and its policy implications Li Ma

a,b,c

, Hualou Long

a,b,c,

*, Shuangshuang Tu

a,d,

*, Yingnan Zhang

a,b,c

, Yuhan Zheng

T a,b,c

a

Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China College of Resources and Environment, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China Key Laboratory of Regional Sustainable Development Modeling, CAS, Beijing 100101, China d Key Laboratory of Environment Change and Resources Use in Beibu Gulf, Nanning Normal University, The Ministry of Education, Nanning 530001, China b c

A R T I C LE I N FO

A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Sustainable land use Supply-demand perspective Structure-function perspective Food security Urban-rural integrated development Rural vitalization Ecological civilization

China’s land use structure is closely related to its economic development. Based on the theoretical analysis framework of China’s farmland transition (FT), this paper establishes an evaluation index system for quantifying FT from two dimensions, the dominant transition and recessive transition, and uses K-means clustering to quantitatively divide the phases of FT in China over the past four decades. The results show that the FT in China has experienced several phases from slow transition, rapid transition, to steady transition and innovation transition, and demonstrates clear regional differences. The dominant transition phase, social and ecological farmland transition, mainly occurred during 2000–2010. The economic farmland transition occurred earlier, during 1990–2000. Spatially, the economic farmland transition gradually shifted from the southeast coastal area to the inland. The “structure-function” transition of China’s farmland in the past four decades can be divided into four phases: the preliminary exploration and development phase, the steady development and expansion phase, the market-oriented reform and deepening phase, and the reform and innovation phase. Finally, relevant policy implications and suggestions were proposed for the optimal management and regulation of farmland according to the characteristics of FT, its challenges and people’s new demand for farmland functions.

1. Introduction As the Chinese economy is currently undergoing a transition from high-speed to medium-high speed development, China’s economic development has entered a transition period featuring structural adjustment, layout optimization, and quality and efficiency improvement. Due to the increased pressure on economic growth and the need for comprehensive reform, there are urgent requirements for scientific research into rural development and land use, and it has also become imperative to adjust land use structure and function (Liu et al., 2018). According to the report regarding the national general survey of soil contamination released by China’s Ministry of Environment Protection in 2014, 19.4% of China’s farmland has been polluted, and approximately 3.3 million hectares of farmland has been degraded, accounting for 2.4% of the total amount nationwide. As the conflict between man and land has become increasingly prominent, a series of land problems have emerged, including the intensified change of non-agricultural land, the continuous reduction of cultivated land area, the increase of farmers who have lost their land due to land acquisition, weakening of land security functions, marginalization and abandonment of farmland, decline in the multiple cropping index, and the loss of productive

⁎

farmland, all of which have seriously affected agricultural production and rural development (Liu et al., 2017, 2018). Land use transition is a hot topic concerning rural reform and development, and the management and regulation of land is a strategic tool to promote economic development (Qu and Long, 2018; Long et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2020). Since the end of the 20th century, intensive land use has become an important factor affecting global sustainable development. Land use faces the challenge of managing trade-offs between immediate human needs and maintaining the capacity of the biosphere to provide goods and services long term (Hui et al., 2015; Foley et al., 2005). In the early 1990s, Mather first proposed the forest-area transition hypothesis (Mather, 1990, 1992). In 1995, Grainger enriched the concept of land use transition from the perspective of national land use morphology (Grainger, 1995a), and then extended it to other studies of land use patterns (Grainger, 1995b; Long et al., 2007; Turner et al., 2007; Yeo and Huang, 2013). As one of the major factors influencing rural development, Farmland transition (FT) is an important indicator reflecting rural changes, and in-depth research has been performed from the perspectives of the conceptual connotation, method innovation, and influencing factors (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010; Long and Qu, 2018; Song

Corresponding authors at: Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (H. Long), [email protected] (S. Tu).

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landusepol.2020.104470 Received 21 September 2019; Received in revised form 10 January 2020; Accepted 12 January 2020 0264-8377/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

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Fig. 1. Theoretical analysis framework of FT in China.

factors might drive the demand. Additionally, methods to improve farmland utilization efficiency in the future should be understood. Answering these questions may provide an approach to address the root. Focusing on the above research gaps, this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework for FT in China from the perspective of “structure-function” and “supply-demand”, and establishes an evaluation index system for quantifying FT in China in the two dimensions of dominant and recessive transitions. Then, K-means clustering was used to quantitatively divide the phases of FT in China over the past four decades, and the phase characteristics and driving factors of FT were summarized. Finally, some policy suggestions were proposed to promote the optimal regulation and management of farmland resources, targeting providing a scientific basis for ensuring national food security, promoting efficient resource allocation, alleviating the tense man-land interrelations, achieving rural revitalization, and enhancing human well-being.

et al., 2012). For instance, Mizutani (2012) establish an analytical framework for polygon-based land use transitions, and the feasibility of this method was demonstrated by the example of Tsukuba City, Japan. Roodposhti et al. (2019) tried to derive new insights into land-use/ cover change transition potential, through a novel algorithm for calculating transition potential in cellular automata models. Bertoni et al. (2018) used the “Markov Chains Approach” to explore the impact of common agricultural policy on farmland use transitions in Italy and found that the new rules have a strong effect on regions with highintensity agriculture. Some scholars believed that population increase, urban expansion and agricultural land occupation for construction are the key factors influencing the transformation of farmland (Qu et al., 2019; Verburg and Veldkamp, 2001; Enaruvbe et al., 2019). Farmland transitions can be caused by negative socio-ecological feedbacks; however, the change in farmland will have an impact on planting patterns, food crop yield, as well as national or regional food supplies (Skinner et al., 2001; Radel et al., 2019; Bettinger and Merry, 2019). FT is closely related to the transformation of urban and rural development, and regulating the process of FT can provide a decision-making basis for the reasonable scale of China’s grain production organization (Ge et al., 2018a). Based on literature analysis, we find that the process, pattern and mechanism of farmland transformation have been studied by a few scholars, and most of them only used it as a part of land use transformation for analysis. As the largest developing country in the world, China has the largest population in the world. By the end of 2017, the area of farmland in China was 134.9 million hectares, ranking third in the world, but the area per capita is only one-third of the world average, that is, China feeds nearly 20% of the global population with 7% of the world’s farmland. Certainly, faced with the problem of the shortage of farmland resources, how to rationally develop, utilize and manage farmland land resources has become the focus and challenge of management decisionmakers (Wu et al., 2018). However, under the backdrop of socio-economic transition, the question of differences in the degree of farmland transition in different regions arises, as well as how and if people’s demand for farmland function changed in different periods, and what

2. A theoretical analysis framework of farmland transition The functions of farmland can be divided into two levels: basic functions and derivative functions. The basic functions include production, ecology, and landscape culture, which are inherent attributes of farmland because they exist due to the agricultural production process and natural materiality of farmland. Based on the basic functions of farmland, the derivative functions change with human beings’ needs, degree of understanding and ability to use farmland (Jiang et al., 2017). Farmland function transitions can be understood as a process of the mutual transitions of basic farmland functions and the gradual enhancement in farmland derivative functions. From the structure morphology of farmland, FT can be divided into dominant and recessive transitions, where the former mainly refers to the changes in the quantity, patch area and crop planting structure of farmland, and the latter is mainly reflected in the transition of the functions, property rights, and management modes of farmland. Different stages of socioeconomic development often correspond to different farmland 2

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rural population density was decreasing, and the demand for rural housing construction was also declining (Ge et al., 2018b). As people’s awareness of farmland protection has been strengthened gradually, farmland area has been slowly increasing. In addition, as the urbanrural dual structure is gradually broken and the level of agricultural mechanization is improved, moderate scale operation has gradually emerged in various forms, and farmland productivity has increased significantly, remarkably enhancing the socio-economic functions of farmland. Nonetheless, due to the increased amount of chemical fertilizers and pesticides applied, the ecological function of farmland declined during this phase. Policy orientation has facilitated FT. In the new era, some issues such as unreasonable agricultural production structure, an unclear property rights system, and difficulty in mobilizing farmers’ enthusiasm for agricultural production have become prominent obstacles that restrict rural development and the continued growth of farmers’ income. The Chinese government implements and introduces relevant policies and systems, which play the role of macroeconomic regulation and control, innovatively develop the management and transfer models of farmland, promote the transition and upgrading of farmland use and planting structure, and facilitate multifunctional coordinated development of farmland. Thereby, we can adopt the above measures to improve the efficiency of agricultural supply systems, enhance China's international competitiveness in the production of agricultural products, and adjust the development direction of FT. In addition, the market mechanisms have also promoted FT. Against the backdrop of trade globalization and consumer-oriented markets, instead of taking grains as the key link, farmers prefer to grow crops with higher economic added-value and stronger competitive advantages (Montgomery, 2008). Moreover, as people are demanding more diversified materials of higher quality, the multi-functional value of farmland has been gradually explored. Farmland use tends to pursue diversified coordinated development and high-quality innovative transition. FT and rural transformation development and restructuring mutually affect one another. Rural transformation development and restructuring stimulate FT, but to a certain extent, FT also affects the transformation of rural social, economic and spatial structures (Tu and Long, 2017). For example, in moderate scale farmland operation, the large-scale production of advantageous agricultural products leads to intensive processing of agricultural products and relevant non-agricultural employment, resulting in the socio-economic structure transformation of the rural area. Nevertheless, the marginalization and abandonment of farmland may lead to the gradual decay of a rural agricultural production function, and the rural area will face a transformation development or collapse.

functional morphologies (Song et al., 2012); the supply function of farmland is constantly changing with the change in human needs, which leads to the transformation of the farmland’s “structure-function”. Based on the socio-economic development timeline, a theoretical analysis framework of FT in China was established since its reform and initiation of opening-up policies from the perspective of “structurefunction” and “supply-demand”, which will be helpful to comprehensively analyze the driving mechanism of FT (Fig. 1). (1) Farmland use changed from preliminary exploration to steady promotion. In the early stage of reform and development, the Chinese socio-economic development level was relatively low and the level of international import and export trade remained undeveloped, and income from farming was the main source. To guarantee national food security, grain crops are the primary kind of crop planted. In this phase, due to the lowlevel of agricultural mechanization, the farming modes were dominated by small and refined household production, resulting in the consumption of a large proportion of the agricultural labor force. However, since few bio-chemicals were applied, the environmental load on farmland was small, and the biodiversity was relatively high. During this phase, farmland fulfilled the prominent functions of food security, ecological conservation, and employment security. By the end of the 1980s, with the gradual improvement in the land system, rural policies, technical conditions and economic development level, the food consumption of rural households gradually changed from self-sufficiency to the combination of self-sufficiency and market security. As moderate scale operation of land was tried in rural areas in developed regions and the suburbs of metropolis, the scale of farmland use showed a steady expansion trend. With the gradual improvement of the professional level, utilization scale and efficiency of farmland, the planting structure was characterized by diversified development. (2) Farmland use changed from steady promotion to deepened reform. In general, the transitions of rural employment modes promoted FT. Since the 1990s, with the advancement of urban economic system reform, the urbanization process has gradually accelerated, accompanied by changes to be small-scale peasant economy and the nonagricultural transfer of agricultural labor. The new jobs offered in cities attracted farmers to migrate into the city, which has significantly increased farmers’ income. On the one hand, with the non-agricultural transfer of rural surplus labor, the labor input into farming has been gradually reduced. Farmland plots with large farming radius, inconvenient transportation, and poor quality faced marginalization and even abandonment. On the other hand, farmers, as “rational economic men” would spontaneously transfer the farmland with good location conditions and quality to achieve moderate scale operation. Meanwhile, the average patch area of farmland increased, with concurrent improvement to the farmland economic and ecological functions. The objective needs of farmers promoted FT. At this stage, the phenomenon of family splitting and house building was quite common. In addition, the increase in the income of farmers further stimulated the demand for housing, which accelerated the arrival of the construction boom. As a consequence, as villages were expanded rapidly, a large amount of farmland was occupied, resulting in disorderly development and a serious waste of land resources (Long et al., 2010). Therefore, farmland area rapidly declined during this phase. Changes in the international trade environment also influenced the FT. After China’s accession to the WTO in 2001, foreign low-priced agricultural products began to substitute China’s land-intensive products. To strengthen its comparative advantage in agricultural products, China increased the input and output of related agricultural products, thereby bringing the deepened reform of farmland in terms of operation scale and planting structure (Zhang et al., 2018a). (3) Farmland use changed from deepened reform to transition and innovation. To some extent, socio-economic progress promoted FT. With the continuous advancement of urbanization, the rural population and living space were gradually accumulating in cities and towns, of

3. Data and methodology 3.1. Data sources To highlight the FT characteristics over a long time, the relevant data of FT phases are selected from the national level data from 1978 to 2017. At the beginning of reform and opening up, some indicators from prefecture-level data are difficult to obtain. Therefore, the relevant data on the spatio-temporal evolution of China's FT are selected from the city-level data of 1990, 2000, 2010 and 2017. Socio-economic data comes from China Economic and Social Big Data Research Platform (http://data.cnki.net), the Statistical yearbook of Chinese cities, and China’s Land and Resources Bulletin. In the process of data handling, some missing data were interpolated by using the provincial statistical yearbooks and the national economic and social statistical bulletins of the sub-districts. Finally, 322 valid statistical units were obtained. To eliminate the impact of price factors on the analysis of economic functions of farmland, the economic data in this paper were translated into 1990 comparable prices. 3

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Recessive transition (Function) 0.64

Ecological function

Economic function

Note:*A method combining entropy weighting and multiple correlation coefficient weighting was used to determine indices’ weights (Luo and Cai, 2016). **, T1 represents the area of farmland at the beginning of the study, and T2 represents the area of farmland in the next period. ***, Farmland ecosystem diversity index (FED), FED=–Σbilnbi, bi is the ratio of the planting area of each variety of crops to the total planting area of crops.

0.47 0.53 0.50 0.34 0.15 0.30 0.44 0.25 0.45 0.34 0.21 + + + + + + + + – – + farmland area/Total land area (T2-T1) / T1※※ total power of agricultural machinery/farmland area farmland area/Agricultural practitioners Non-agricultural population /Total population Added value of primary industry/farmland area grain yield /farmland area Added value of primary industry /GDP Consumption of chemical fertilizers/farmland area Total sown area/farmland area Characterizing the degree of biodiversity of ecosystems Land reclamation index Farmland change rate Total power of agricultural machinery per unit area Per capita farmland area Labor transfer index Farmland productivity Farmland grain productivity Agricultural output contribution Agricultural environmental impact index Multiple cropping index Farmland ecosystem diversity index※※※ Index of FT

Dominant transition (Structure) 0.36

Farmland structure Amount of farmland Social function

Indicator interpretation Target layer Decision layer

Table 1 Evaluation index system of FT.

Factor layer

Indicator

Attributes

Weight※

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3.2. Methods 3.2.1. Evaluation system Following the principles of comprehensiveness, representativeness and accessibility, and based on the method of combining literature and expert knowledge, the indicators were selected from the two dimensions of dominant and recessive morphology transition of farmland. A comprehensive evaluation index system consisting of five factors layers and twenty-two individual indicators concerning the FT was initially constructed. Based on the preliminary establishment of the index system, sixteen indices available for data were selected. Linear regression was used to perform the collinearity test for all indices, and indices with a variance inflation factor value greater than 10 were eliminated. Pearson correlation analysis was further conducted for a single index of the same factor layer in pairs, retaining only one index with a significant correlation, and 11 quantifiable indices were finally obtained (Table 1). The dominant farmland transition was characterized by the land reclamation index and farmland change rate, indicating the transition of the structure and quantity of farmland in one phase. The recessive morphology of farmland has multiple attributes, including the quality of farmland, property rights, operation mode, input and output, and efficiency and benefit (Qu and Long, 2018). It is difficult to quantify the property right and operation mode of farmland, however, all those transition changes will have an impact on the input and output of farmland. Therefore, this paper mainly evaluates the recessive FT from the input, output, and function of farmland (Li and Li, 2019). According to the multi-functional theory of farmland, the recessive transition of farmland is divided into social, economic and ecological functions, and further quantitative analysis is performed (Zhang et al., 2018b). 3.2.2. Evaluation model The degree of FT is evaluated by using the multi-index method. The dominant transition index (DTI), social transition index (STI), economic transition index (ETI), ecological transition index (ECTI) and comprehensive transition index (CTI) of farmland are calculated as follows:

DTI =

STI =

ETI =

sepd− sepd+ + sepd−

(1)

seps− + seps + seps−

(2)

sepe− sepe+

ECTI =

+ sepe−

(3)

sepec− sepec+ + sepec−

(4) (5)

CTI = wd × DTI + ws × STI + we × ETI + wec × ECTI

sepd+,

seps+,

sepe+,

sepec+

sepd−,

seps−,

sepe−,

sepec−

where, and and represent, respectively the Euclidean distances of the solutions with the optimal solution and the worst solution, which are obtained by the TOPSIS model. The specific formula refers to Ertuğrul and Karakaşoğlu (2009) and Ma et al., 2019a. The wd, ws, we, wec represent, respectively, the weights of dominant, social, economic, and ecological transition. The higher the values of DTI, STI, ETI, ECTI, and CTI are, the higher the degree of FT is, and the interpretation and characteristics of each indicator are as follows (Table 2): 3.2.3. Quantitative method for dividing FT phases Based on the evaluation index system of FT in Table 1 and the SPSS software analysis platform, K-means clustering is used to divide the phases of FT. The K-means clustering algorithm is a common clustering analysis method, and has the advantage of being able to test the pregiven number of categories to select the most reasonable number of 4

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Table 2 Classification and characteristics of FT. Type

Explanation

Feature

Dominant transition index (DTI) Social transition index (STI)

Used to describe the quantity and structural changes of farmland Used to describe the social function transition of farmland Used to describe the economic function transition of farmland Used to describe the ecological function transition of farmland

The higher the degree of dominant transition, the more the number of farmland increases in this phase; and vice versa. The higher the degree of social transition, the more social function of farmland increases in this phase; and vice versa. The higher the degree of economic transition, the more economic function of farmland increases in this phase; and vice versa. The higher the degree of ecological transition, the stronger the environmental impact of farmland is in this phase, the higher the possibility of polluted and degraded farmland occurs, and the more biodiversity of the farmland ecosystem occurs; and vice versa. The higher the degree of comprehensive transition, the more reasonable and positive the “structure-function” of farmland use is in this phase; and vice versa.

Economic transition index (ETI) Ecological transition index (ECTI)

Comprehensive transition index (CTI)

Used to describe the comprehensive degree of dominant transition and recessive transition of farmland

mainly concentrated in Central China, including Henan, Hunan provinces and some cities of other provinces.

categories (Macqueen, 1965). The main steps are as follows: First, select K objects in the data space as the initial center, where each object represents a cluster center. Second, for the data objects in the sample, according to their Euclidean distance from the cluster centers, they are divided into classes corresponding to the nearest cluster centers (the most similar) according to the nearest distance criterion. Then, update the clustering center by taking the mean of all objects in each category as the clustering center of this class, and calculating the value of the target function. Finally, determine whether the values of the cluster center and the objective function change. If they do not change, output the results; if they change, return to step two.

4.1.2. Spatio-temporal patterns of recessive transition of farmland 4.1.2.1. Social transition of farmland. The spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of the social transition of farmland in different periods were analyzed and found that (Fig. 3): In the first period, the STI of farmland was generally low, and 92.86% of the research units their social transition indices were between 0-3. The regions with relatively high transition index were mainly located in Central China, including Nanyang, Zhoukou, Fuyang, and Liu'an City. During this period, China's urbanization level was still underdeveloped, the transfer of the agricultural labor force was relatively slow, and farmland transfer and large-scale management were in their infancy. Therefore, the social function of farmland during this phase was still dominated by employment and production security, and the degree of transition was relatively small. In the second period, the regions with active social transition of farmland were mainly concentrated in the southeast coastal areas of China, such as Yunnan and Guizhou. Among them, there were 97 prefecture-level cities with an STI between 3–6, accounting for 30.12%; there were 173 prefecture-level cities with an STI between 6-10, accounting for 53.73%; and 45 prefecture-level cities with an STI higher than 10, accounting for 13.98%. The third period was the most active phase of the social transition of farmland. The STI values of farmland in 40.99% of the regions were higher than 10, mainly distributed on both sides of the “Hu Line”, including Hebei, Henan, Shandong, Hunan, Jiangxi, Yunnan, Chongqing, Sichuan, and Xinjiang. Further analysis of the driving factors found that on the one hand, with the socio-economic development and scientific and technological progress, the level of agricultural mechanization improved, which has a substitution effect on the agricultural labor force. On the other hand, with the increase in urban employment, highpaying employment opportunities attract non-agricultural transfer of agricultural labor. During this period, the social function of farmland gradually shifted from agricultural production and employment functions to diversification.

4. Results and analysis 4.1. Spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of FT in China 4.1.1. Spatio-temporal patterns of dominant transition of farmland In the past three decades, the farmland area in China has shown a trend of first rapid decrease followed by a slow increase (Fig. 2). In the first period, there were 144 regions with reduced farmland area, accounting for 45% of the total. In the second period, there were 161 regions with reduced farmland area, accounting for 50.31%, and in the third period, there were 83 regions with reduced farmland area, accounting for 25.94%. During the entire study period (1990–2017), there were 58 regions with a reduced farmland area, accounting for 18.13%, which indicated that the farmland area in most prefecturelevel cities has experienced a process of decreasing first and then increasing slowly. The spatio-temporal evolution characteristics of the dominant farmland transition in different periods were analyzed and it is found that in the first period, the DTI of farmland was generally low, and 86.02% of the research units their transition indices were between 0-2. The regions with relatively high transition index were mainly located in central China, including Henan, Hunan, and other provinces and cities. In the second period, the dominant farmland transition was more active, and the DTI of farmland in the eastern coastal areas and Xinjiang were higher than 4. The central regions along the “Hu Line” were relatively low in transition, and the DTI was between 2–4, accounting for 33.23%, and the farmland area in this type of region decreased significantly. The third period was the most active phase of dominant transition of farmland. The regions with DTI of farmland between 6–10 accounted for 46.89%; and 51.24% regions were higher than 10, mainly distributed along the Yangtze River and northern China, including Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, and Heilongjiang provinces. The farmland area and land reclamation index showed a slow upward trend during this period. In general, the DTI of farmland in China was relatively small during1990-2017, and the farmland area and land reclamation index showed an overall upward trend. The transformation hotspots were

4.1.2.2. Economic transition of farmland. Compared with the social transition of farmland, the economic transition of farmland in China occurs earlier and more significantly (Fig. 4). In the first period, the regions with a high degree of economic transition of farmland were mainly distributed in the eastern coastal areas and Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou provinces and some cities in other provinces. Among them, there were 13 regions with farmland ETI values above 10, accounting for 4.04%, and 189 regions with ETI values between 3–6, accounting for 58.70%. By analyzing the main driving factors, we found that those regions have good resource endowment and the economic benefit of farmland increased rapidly. The second 5

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Fig. 2. Spatio-temporal patterns of dominant transition of farmland in China during 1990–2017.

active. There were 163 research units with an ECTI between 3–6, accounting for 50.62%, mainly distributed in eastern coastal China, including Beijing, Tianjin, Hebei, Shandong, Guangxi, Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shanghai, and some cities in other provinces. There were 124 research units with an ECTI between 6–10, accounting for 38.51%, mainly distributed in Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi, Hubei, Hunan, Sichuan, and Yunnan provinces. During this phase, the increase in fertilizer application significantly impacted the transition of farmland ecological function. Statistical analysis showed that the average fertilizer application in China increased from 0.46 t/ha in 2000 to 0.67 t/ha in 2010. In addition, due to the influence and regulation of the market mechanism, the crop planting structure tended to be more diversified, which also had a certain impact on the transition of farmland ecological function. In the third period, the ecological function of farmland tended to be stable, and the regions with high transition degrees were mainly distributed in Yunnan, Shaanxi, Gansu, Xinjiang, and some cities in other provinces. During this phase, the ecological security function of farmland ecosystem has been gradually taken seriously, the amount of fertilizer utilization and multiple planting index were gradually reduced, and the implementation of the project of returning farmland to forest and grassland has also played a certain role in promoting the ecological function transition.

period is the most active stage of the economic transition of farmland. There were 190 prefecture-level cities with an ETI between 6–10, accounting for 59.01%, mainly distributed in the southeastern part of China. One hundred and nine prefecture-level cities with a farmland ETI higher than 10, account for 33.85%, mainly distributed in the prefecture-level cities on both sides of the “Hu Line”, including Heilongjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shanxi, Shaanxi, Hubei and Yunnan provinces. During this period, China's socio-economic development was rapid, the industrial structure transition was obvious, and under the influence of economic globalization and international trade, the economic function of farmland was gradually transformed from simple food supply to multiple forms of economic production functions, including the production of grain, economic crops planting, and flower and seedling management. The third period was a stable development period after the economic function transition of farmland in China. The ETI was generally low, and the regions with an ETI of less than 3 accounted for 97.20%. In this period, other derivative functions of farmland have received more attention. In the whole phase, the economic transition of farmland was not obvious, but the structure and connotation of the economic function of farmland have undergone an essential transition. 4.1.2.3. Ecological transition of farmland. The frequency of the transition of the ecological function of farmland was consistent, showing a trend characteristic of slow to rapid transition (Fig. 5). The higher the ECTI of farmland, the greater the impact on the farmland ecosystem. In the first period, due to the relatively small amount of chemical fertilizer applied, the crop planting structure was relatively simple, and the trend of farmland ecological transition was relatively low. In the second period, the ecological transition of farmland was relatively

4.1.3. Spatio-temporal evolution of comprehensive transition of farmland In general, the comprehensive transition of China's farmland has experienced several periods from a slow transition to a rapid transition, and to gradual stabilization (Fig. 6). In the first period, the CTI of farmland was relatively low. There were 277 research units with a CTI between 0-3, accounting for 86.02%, and only 15 prefecture-level cities had a CTI of farmland higher than 10, mainly distributed in Henan Province. During this 6

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Fig. 3. Spatio-temporal patterns of the social transition of farmland in China during 1990–2017.

component analysis with the K-means clustering method to divide the phases of FT. Based on 11 secondary indicators in Table1, principal component analysis was used for factor analysis. When the three common factors were extracted, KMO = 0.716 > 0.70, indicating that the factor analysis was effective. Table 3 shows that the eigenvalues of the first three principal components are greater than 1, and their cumulative contribution rate is 91.898%. That is, the three common factors integrate the information of the original 11 variable indicators, and the total variance of 91.898% can be explained by three potential factors. As shown in Table 4, we can find that the common variance of most variables are above 0.7, and most of them exceed 0.9, indicating that the three common factors have good explanatory power and can reflect the information of the original variables well. When the factor loading is greater than 0.5, it indicates that the common factor has a good explanatory power for the corresponding index. The first common factor (Fac-1) mainly corresponds to five indices, X1, X3, X5, X6, and X9. The second common factor (Fac-2) mainly corresponds to one index of X11. The third common factor (Fac-3) mainly corresponds to X7. According to the values of the three common factors mentioned above, the score values of the common factors are calculated. After testing, the score values of the three common factors are completely linearly independent, that is, the information represented does not overlap. Therefore, K-means clustering analysis can be performed based on the scores of these three common factors over the years, and the phases of China's FT from 1978 to 2017 are divided. Through the comprehensive comparison test of different phase divisions, we found that the fourphase classification can ensure that the three common factor indicators pass the F-test, and their statistics are 202.466, 58.268, and 9.821, for Fac.1, Fac.2, and Fac.3, respectively. All the significance levels were 0 and passed the significance level test (Table 5).

phase, the economic transition of farmland was active, and the transition of the social and ecological functions of farmland was not obvious. In the second period, affected by the international trade environment and rapid urbanization, the comprehensive transition of farmland was relatively active. There were 72 prefecture-level cities with a CTI between 3–6, accounting for 22.36%, mainly distributed in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu and other relatively developed provinces and cities. There were 226 regions with a CTI between 6–10, accounting for 70.19%. The CTI values of farmland in some regions in Guangxi and Shaanxi were higher than 10. During this period, the “structure-function” of China's farmland has undergone a relatively intense transition. From 2010 to 2017, there were 36 regions with a CTI of higher than 10, accounting for 11.18%, mainly distributed in Guizhou, Chongqing, Henan, and some cities in other provinces. There were 265 prefecture-level cities with a CTI between 6–10, accounting for 82.30%. During this period, with the change in policy orientation and people's demand for farmland, the function of farmland utilization gradually shifted to multifunctional, among which the most obvious transitions were the social and ecological farmland functions. 4.2. The phases and characteristics of the FT in China 4.2.1. Phase division of FT in China from the perspective of "structurefunction" In this paper, K-means clustering is used to divide the phases of FT. The cluster analysis itself cannot remove the correlation between the indicators, while principal component analysis is a good supplement, and the principal component scores are consistent in size and there is no correlation, that can be directly used as the input for cluster analysis (Wang et al., 2019). Therefore, this paper combines principal 7

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Fig. 4. Spatio-temporal patterns of economic transition of farmland in China during 1990–2017.

Fig. 5. Spatio-temporal patterns of ecological transition of farmland in China during 1990–2017. 8

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Fig. 6. Spatio-temporal patterns of the comprehensive transition of farmland in China during 1990–2017.

4.2.2. Evolution characteristics of FT phases in China Based on the quantitative division of China's FT phase, combined with the relevant policies and systems of rural land use and internal and external environmental changes since the reform and opening up, this paper summarizes the regular characteristics, leading functions and the impacts on rural development of each phase of FT (Fig. 7).

The four decades from 1978 to 2017 were divided into four clusters in Table 6. In general, the four types of cluster classifications in each year have obvious and continuous clustering attribution. Considering the continuity and proximity of farmland in each phase, the cluster types of some clustering classification years with discrete characteristics were merged into the neighboring years before or after them. For example, the cluster of 2010 belongs to cluster four, but the neighboring years all belong to cluster two, thus 2010 is merged into the phase of cluster two. Finally, four phases of China's FT in the past four decades were obtained: the first phase (1978–1984), the second phase (1985–1995), the third phase (1996–2002), and the fourth phase (2003–2017).

4.2.2.1. Preliminary exploration phase (1978–1984). In the early 1980s, China began to implement the household contract responsibility system, which separated rural land into collective ownership and household contractual management rights. This realized the great innovation in China's rural land system, solved the problem of farmers' food and clothing in a short period of time, and improved the agricultural production efficiency. However, due to the introduction

Table 3 Common factor variance. Component

X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11

Initial eigenvalue

Extract the sum of squares of loads

Sum of squares of rotating loads

Total

Percentage of variance

Cumulative percentage

Total

Percentage of variance

Cumulative percentage

Total

Percentage of variance

Cumulative percentage

6.515 2.556 1.039 0.729 0.071 0.04 0.028 0.013 0.006 0.002 0.001

59.224 23.232 9.442 6.625 0.649 0.361 0.255 0.12 0.057 0.023 0.013

59.224 82.456 91.898 98.522 99.172 99.533 99.787 99.908 99.965 99.987 100

6.515 2.556 1.039

59.224 23.232 9.442

59.224 82.456 91.898

6.221 2.67 1.217

56.559 24.271 11.067

56.559 80.83 91.898

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Table 4 The rotated factor loading matrix. Index

Variable

Land reclamation index Change rate of farmland Total power of agricultural machinery per unit area Per capita farmland area Labor transfer index Farmland productivity farmland grain productivity Agricultural output contribution Agricultural environmental impact index Multiple cropping index Farmland ecosystem diversity index

Common variance

0.991 0.600 0.974 0.985 0.986 0.940 0.815 0.958 0.980 0.982 0.896

X1 X2 X3 X4 X5 X6 X7 X8 X9 X10 X11

Factor loading Fac-1

Fac-2

Fac-3

0.916 0.107 0.950 0.313 0.977 0.918 −0.55 −0.973 0.934 −0.861 −0.033

−0.378 −0.463 0.229 −0.886 0.151 0.267 −0.223 −0.105 0.309 0.490 0.933

0.096 −0.612 0.140 0.319 0.091 0.160 0.680 0.021 −0.112 −0.014 0.154

Note: The extraction method is the principal component analysis; the rotation method is Kaiser standardized maximum variance method; the rotation converges after six iterations.

the supply of grain. The ecological security function of farmland ecosystem gradually received more attention. In 1986, Central Document No. 1 proposed the establishment of a rural reform pilot zone, which attempted to undertake moderate-scale land management in rural areas and large urban suburbs in developed areas, and to a certain extent, improved the level, scale and production efficiency of agricultural specialization. During this phase, the employment and production security functions of farmland were slightly weakened, economic function rose in waves rises with time, and the ecological functions such as the purification ability of farmland ecosystems and landscape ecological effects were steadily increasing.

Table 5 Analysis of variance. Common factor

Clustering

Fac-1 Fac-2 Fac-3

Mean square error

df

0.761 0.799 0.266

3 3 3

F

Significance

202.466 58.268 9.821

0 0 0

of the concept of “market”, a large amount of farmland in rural areas has been converted into construction land and production land such as forest land, orchards, and fisheries. From 1981 to 1985, the annual average reduction of farmland area reached 4.87 × 105 hm2. In 1985, the reduction of farmland area was as high as 1 × 106 hm2 (Xia et al., 2018). During this phase, the household contract responsibility system was gradually established, which greatly stimulated the enthusiasm of farmers' production, and the economic and employment security functions of farmland gradually began to appear. However, due to farmland irrational use, the contradiction between population and land began to appear.

4.2.2.3. Deepened reform phase (1996–2002). With the acceleration of urbanization and the advancement of science and technology, new opportunities and challenges have been brought to the use of farmland. On the one hand, with the rapid development of the secondary and tertiary industries in cities, a large quantity of urban jobs has been created. In addition, the state encourages the transfer of the rural labor force, and the rural surplus labor flows to cities, China's “migrant labor tide” has begun to emerge (Song and Wu, 2013). On the other hand, China has adjusted the development strategy of industry and agriculture, and strengthened the back-feeding of the industry for agriculture. The industrialization of agriculture has been deepened, and the degree of specialization, scale, and efficiency of the agricultural planting industry have been greatly improved, which further promotes the transfer of farmland and moderate scale management (Wang et al., 2019). In addition, since China joined the WTO in 2001, agriculture has suffered a large impact. The contribution of agriculture to the GDP has declined, the contribution of agricultural output has declined from

4.2.2.2. Steady promotion phase (1985–1995). Since 1985, with the adjustment of agricultural planting structure and the steady development of the rural economy, rural household food consumption has changed from basic self-sufficiency to the combination of selfsufficiency and market security. In the same year, agricultural green production began to move toward legalization, relevant departments paid more attention to quality and safety while also paying attention to Table 6 Four clusters of year distribution. Year

Clustering

Distance

Year

Clustering

Distance

Year

Clustering

Distance

1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991

1 1 1 1 1 1 1 3 3 3 3 3 3 3

0.199 0.195 0.116 0.025 0.101 0.166 0.231 0.224 0.168 0.128 0.108 0.062 0.091 0.070

1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005

3 3 3 3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 2 2

0.112 0.145 0.161 0.174 0.547 0.123 0.102 0.086 0.076 0.087 0.223 0.264 0.230 0.236

2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017

2 2 2 2 4 2 2 2 2 2 2 2

0.229 0.205 0.206 0.231 0.237 0.290 0.255 0.283 0.238 0.204 0.171 0.172

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Fig. 7. Phase division of FT in China from 1978 to 2017.

19.60% in 1995 to 12.30% in 2003, and the grain output per unit area of farmland has declined from 4.89 tons/ha in 1995 to 3.49 tons/ha in 2003. Furthermore, coordinating the development of man and nature has become a national strategy. The quality and safety of agricultural products and the governance of rural human settlements have gradually received attention. Agricultural subsidies and ecological compensation policies have been introduced one after another, which provided policy guarantees for the rational use of farmland. During this phase, the economic function of farmland gradually declined, and the social, ecological, and employment security functions gradually increased.

comprehensive transition indices have steadily increased, and ecological functions have increased in volatility. In addition, with the diversification and high quality of people's material needs, many farmland functions have been gradually exploited or manifested, and the cultural leisure and entertainment functions of farmland have become increasingly prominent (Zhang et al., 2018a). During this phase, the use of farmland tends to be high-quality transformation and innovation, and the functions of farmland tend to be diversified and coordinated.

4.2.2.4. Transition and innovation phase (2003–2017). Recently, the urban-rural dual pattern has been gradually broken in China, and the land fragmentation and the pattern of small-scale farmers' production and management under the family contracted production pattern have increasingly become prominent obstacles restricting the development of agricultural modernization and the continuous increase in farmers' income. To alleviate the contradiction between population and land, and improve farmland efficiency, the Chinese government has proposed a series of policy systems. Central Document No. 1 both in 2013 and 2014, proposed to encourage the development of various forms of moderate scale operations. In 2015, in order to improve the efficiency of the agricultural supply system, promote the structural adjustment of agriculture and the transformation and upgrade of the crop industry, the Central Rural Work Conference proposed strengthening the structural reform of the agricultural supply side. In 2016, the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on improving the measures for the division of rural land ownership contracting rights and management rights”, which advances the reform of the rural land property right system to promote the separation of collective ownership, farmer's contractual rights and management rights. The reform of the property rights system is of great significance for the liberation of "people" and "land" and to meet the development requirements of a moderate scale (Huang et al., 2019; Zhong et al., 2018). After a series of institutional reforms and innovations, the function of farmland has also changed, and the social, economic, and

5.1. What are the key factors contributing to FT?

5. Discussion and implications

China's land use structure is closely related to economic development, and there are obvious regional differences (Zhao and Lv, 2019). Therefore, not all regions will experience the same phase of FT, and some regions may stay in a phase for a long time, while others may move rapidly between different phases depending on the combined effects of many complex factors. On the one hand, with the development of social economy, people's demand for products changes, thus stimulating the transformation of the farmland supply; on the other hand, the negative ecological environment changes caused by human activities will also have an impact on farmland use (Lambin and Meyfroidt, 2010). The key factors affecting FT can be divided into two categories. First, the differences in physical conditions and geographic locations. For instance, the transformation of farmland use in suburbs of large cities is faster and deeper, while the transformation of farmland use in remote and backward rural areas is even slower (Long and Qu, 2018). Due to the differences in resource endowment, topography and geographical location conditions often affect the crop planting structure, farmland operation scale, and the degree of farmland utilization, thereby making differences in the speed and depth of FT. Second, the impact of socio-economic development on rural population, industry and economy. Economic globalization and agricultural policy affect the transformation of farmland use at a macro level. With most agricultural frontiers now closed or closing around the world, one 11

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5.2.2. Strengthening zoning planning and farmland governance and exerting the comparative advantages China has a vast territory, with significant regional differences including the resource endowment of farmland in different areas. By judging the new opportunities and challenges faced by farmland use in different regions, designing the scientific path of farmland development management is vital from the aspects of institutional reform, policy implementation and planning (Zhao, 2013; Tu et al., 2018). For the regions with appropriate resource endowments, such as plain farming areas. First, the government can improve the efficiency of farmland use by encouraging the circulation of agricultural land and its large-scale management, and properly disposing the farmland that is temporarily unsuitable for large-scale operations. Second, paying more attention to the environmental effects in the process of utilizing farmland. On the one hand, it is necessary to guide farmers to use chemical fertilizers and pesticides scientifically; on the other hand, through the establishment and improvement of the farmland quality monitoring platform and evaluation mechanism, the quality of farmland, the level of agricultural ecological environment pollution and the stability of regional agricultural systems are measured, so as to realize the ecological protection and dynamic monitoring of farmland resources. For the regions with relatively harsh resource endowments, such as plateau, hilly and mountainous areas dominated by the ecological conservation function of farmland, the protection and inheritance of traditional agricultural civilization and national culture should be focused on. In addition, based on the resource and environmental carrying capacity, moderately developing modern agriculture with local characteristics, while further improving the level of agricultural mechanization and modernization, are effective measures for relieving the social pressure of modern agricultural scale management (Liu et al., 2014). As for the abandoned farmland, we can incorporate it into the management system of farmland use, to promote the rehabilitation and fertility of inferior farmland.

of our most significant challenges is to manage land for multiple goals and the needs of different groups (Radel et al., 2019). In order to cope with the challenges brought by globalization, the government has introduced relevant agricultural policies to achieve the purpose of adjusting the agricultural industrial structure and highlighting the comparative advantages of agricultural products in the competition, thus facilitating the recessive transformation of farmland utilization. Urbanization and population migration affect the transformation of farmland use at a micro level. Due to geographical inequality in wealth and in the cost of living, people tend to migrate to areas where living is more comfortable. Migration may have a greater impact on national and local economies and land use (Amigues and Moreaux, 2019; Radel et al., 2019). In terms of receiving land systems, due to the sharp increase in population, people's demand for residential and commercial space increases, which drives the transformation of farmland to construction land and public service facility land, and the cost of grain production increases with the increase in land rent, so the agricultural production function of this type of region is gradually degraded. In terms of sending land systems, migration can lead to a contraction of farming activities and associated forest expansion. In addition, the increase in population during the process of urbanization and industrial structure changes are also important factors that contribute to the FT, which are mainly manifested by excessive plundering of resources, increasing pressure on existing agricultural land, and threatening the ecological environment of farmland (Enaruvbe et al., 2019).

5.2. Policy suggestions and enlightenment on sustainable use of farmland 5.2.1. Promoting coordinated development of farmland space and its functional morphology From a phase characterized by overemphasized development scale and economic growth, today's China has entered into a new one with green and eco-friendly development is appreciated and encouraged. In the new era, the aims of comprehensive land consolidation in China are to enhance land use efficiency and benefit, ensure the sustainable use of land resources, and improve the ecological landscape environment. A series of measures, such as consolidation, exploitation, reclamation, remediation and protection, are taken to improve human living and production conditions, conserve ecological space, and ultimately promote the harmonious development of man and nature (Long et al., 2019; Xia et al., 2018). Land consolidation takes the moderate scale of ecological land as the premise, and ensures the reasonable quantity structure and spatial allocation between ecological land and farmland, which is an important foundation for realizing the protection of farmland in the new era, also an important means to promote the construction of ecological civilization. Regional land use should be based on the sustainable carrying capacity of resources and environment. By calculating the minimum farmland scale, the optimal ecological land scale and the maximum construction land scale of each region, the coordinated development of agricultural production space, ecological protection space and construction land development space can be guaranteed (Chuai et al., 2016; Zhong et al., 2018). In the future, the utilization of farmland and the optimization of territorial space should be combined to optimize and adjust land use structure. Through land consolidation, increasing farmland area, improving farmland quantity and quality, repairing the ecological environment, and improving the field infrastructure to increase land productivity (Tan, 2017) can be realized. Meanwhile, the multi-functions of farmland in food production, landscape shaping, biodiversity protection, ecological security, leisure, and tourism should be enhanced relying on the favorable landscape conditions created by land consolidation, which are also helpful for improving the competitiveness of rural development (Berchin et al., 2019).

5.2.3. Enhancing the awareness of farmland protection and promoting the construction of ecological civilization Agricultural production can lead to land degradation, water quality degradation and loss of ecosystem function and biodiversity in surrounding watersheds (Beardmore et al., 2019). In the past four decades, China's chemical fertilizer application has increased by nearly six fold, and while the fertilizer utilization rate is only 32%, far below the world average of 55%, it has led to serious environmental pollution issues. Meanwhile, problems such as low efficiency of agricultural water use and outdated facilities have become shortcomings that constrain China's agricultural production. In response to the above questions, this paper advances policy recommendations for improvement. First, encouraging innovation and research and development of related technologies, so as to improve the utilization rate of fertilizers and agricultural infrastructure conditions, and reduce the damage of agricultural production to the ecological environment. Second, the government should play a macro-control role in the economic and industrial structure, and guide farmers to undertake agricultural production through scientific methods and technical means, such as through the adjustment of crop planting structure and other policy measures to promote structural changes of agricultural production and enhance the technical efficiency of farmland use (Cao et al., 2018; Ma et al., 2019b). In addition, strengthening the publicity and education of resource protection, so as to enhance the public awareness of the rational development and effective use of farmland resource is important (Wu et al., 2017). 5.3. Uncertainties and further research The results are helpful for the further improvement of the theoretical research of FT, identifyingcharacteristics of FT in the new period, guiding the effective management and optimal regulation of land 12

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resources in China. This study also has some limitations. For instance, due to the availability of data, this paper only studied 322 cities in China, and the research area did not cover all prefecture-level cities in China. In addition, there are no available principles or guidelines for selecting the most representative evaluation index for the characterization of FT (Zhang et al., 2019). A transition in farmland use is not a fixed pattern. The function of farmland will transform with changes in socio-economic development, human demand, and policy instruments. Therefore, in the future, we should focus on the transformation of farmland utilization caused by the change in human demand and new policy instruments, as well as the impact of farmland transformation on farmers' livelihoods, ecological environment and agricultural structure change around the world.

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6. Conclusions Presently, China's land use structure is closely related to economic development, and there are obvious regional differences. First of all, the farmland use in China has experienced several phases from slow transition, rapid transition to steady transition and innovation transition. Second, the dominant transition phase, the social transition and ecological transition of farmland, mainly occurred during 2000–2010 while the economic transition of farmland occurred earlier, from 1990 to 2000. Spatially, the economic transition of farmland gradually shifted from the southeast coastal area to the inland. Third, from 1978 to 2017, China's FT can be divided into four phases: the preliminary exploration and development phase (1978–1984), the steady development and promotion phase (1985–1995), the market-oriented reform and deepening phase (1996–2002), and the reform, innovation and transition phase (2003–2017). Finally, with the diversification and high quality of people's physical requirements, the cultural leisure and entertainment functions of farmland have become increasingly prominent. In the new era, the use of farmland tends to be high-quality transformation and innovation, and the functions of farmland tend to be more diversified and coordinated. In view of the current challenges of farmland, this paper puts forward a series of policy recommendations, which include deepening the reform of the land system, combining the utilization of farmland with the optimization of land use space, promoting land consolidation, strengthening the zoning planning and governance of farmland, and promoting the construction of ecological civilization. Acknowledgments This work was supported by the Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41731286, 41971216 and 41901207), the Postdoctoral Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 2018M630197), the Bagui Scholars Program of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Program of Science and Technology Plan of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (Grant No. AD19110158). References Amigues, J., Moreaux, M., 2019. Competing land uses and fossil fuel, and optimal energy conversion rates during the transition toward a green economy under a pollution stock constraint. J. Environ. Econ. Manage. 97, 92–115. Beardmore, L., Heagney, E., Sullivan, C.A., 2019. Complementary land use in the Richmond River catchment: evaluating economic and environmental benefits. Land Use Policy 87, 104070. Bettinger, P., Merry, K., 2019. Land cover transitions in the United States South: 2007–2013. Appl. Geogr. 105, 102–110. Berchin, I.I., Nunes, N.A., de Amorim, W.S., Zimmer, A., G.A, D.S., F.R, F., V.H, S., M, de A.G., J.B.S.O, 2019. The contributions of public policies for strengthening family farming and increasing food security: the case of Brazil. Land Use Policy 82, 573–584. Bertoni, D., Aletti, G., Ferrandi, G., Micheletti, A., Cavicchioli, D., Pretolani, R., 2018. Farmland use transitions after the CAP greening: a preliminary analysis using markov chains approach. Land Use Policy 79, 789–800. Cao, Y., Dallimer, M., Stringer, L.C., Bai, Z., Siu, Y.L., 2018. Land expropriation compensation among multiple stakeholders in a mining area: explaining “skeleton house”

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