Smallholders and the ‘Household Responsibility System’: Adapting to Institutional Change in Chinese Agriculture
Smallholders and the ‘Household Responsibility System’: Adapting to Institutional Change in Chinese Agriculture
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DOI：
10.1007/s10745-007-9127-4
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发表时间：
2008-04
期刊：
影响因子：
2
通讯作者：
B. Tilt
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
B. Tilt
在过去的四分之一个世纪里，中国的农业部门在所谓的“家庭联产承包责任制”下经历了从集体生产到私人生产的巨大转变。这一旨在提高产量的激励制度将公共土地重新分配给农户，使数亿小农在土地使用决策和作物选择方面拥有相对自主权。本文基于最近的民族志研究，讨论了中国西南人口稠密省份四川的一个混合民族社区的小农耕作系统，该系统为维持生计和市场交换而集约耕种小块土地。本文从动植物物种的生物多样性、作物的市场分布、复种制度以及劳动力和技术投入等方面描述了小农系统的特征。本文还介绍了小农如何调整其农业实践和决策以适应不断变化的市场条件和农业政策。值得注意的是，这些适应性策略的重点是转向生产各种经济作物，包括甜瓜和芒果。还讨论了对中国小农的长期生存能力的影响，特别是在生态和经济边缘地区。
During the last quarter century, China’s agricultural sector has undergone a dramatic transformation from collective to private production under the so-called “Household Responsibility System.” This incentive system, designed to increase yields, reallocated communal land to peasant households, creating hundreds of millions of smallholders with relative autonomy over land use decisions and crop selection. Based on recent ethnographic research, this paper discusses the smallholder farming system of a mixed-ethnic community that intensively cultivates small land plots for subsistence and market exchange in China’s populous southwestern province of Sichuan. The paper characterizes the smallholder system in terms of biodiversity of plant and animal species, market distribution of crops, multiple cropping systems, and labor and technology inputs. The paper also describes how smallholders adapt their agricultural practices and decisions to changing market conditions and agricultural policies. Significantly, these adaptive strategies focus on shifting to the production of various cash crops, including melons and mangoes. Implications for the long-term viability of China’s smallholders, particularly in ecologically and economically marginal areas, are also discussed.