Historical Transformation of China's Agriculture: Productivity Changes and Other Key Features

According to an analysis of sampled data from the National Bureau of Statistics for 70,000 peasant households, agricultural labor productivity has been increasing at a faster rate than land productivity since 2003. Labor productivity has, in fact, experienced long†term stagnation. The data also reveals the heterogenization of small farmers, farm machinery replacing manual labor as an agricultural input, the expansion of the scale of land management, the development of the rural land leasing market and the diversification of the agricultural management entities. Review of the historical transformation of agriculture helps to recognize the declining importance of agricultural land, the direction of agricultural technological changes, the path and the disposition of the changes to the agricultural system, and the adjustment of China's rural policies.