Degradation in farmland quality owing to overuse emphasizes the current need for the adoption of protective technologies to ensure food security and sustainable resource utilization. This study employs plot survey data from Heilongjiang, Henan, Zhejiang, and Sichuan provinces in China to investigate how the spatial attributes of transferred plots influence the current adoption of farmland protection methods, such as deep tillage and straw-returning. Findings reveal that larger or interconnected transferred plots significantly increase the likelihood of farmers adopting conservation tillage technologies. However, the influence of the plot’s location on technology adoption varies among different plots. As the farmland transfer market expands, the spatial features of these plots emerge as critical determinants in the use of protective technologies. This underscores the pressing need for an integrated farmland transfer trading system and strengthened policy measures promoting land consolidation to foster widespread adoption of these conservation strategies.

(1) Background: The tense relationship between man and land makes transferring farmland rights in the market critical for improving agricultural production efficiency and promoting large-scale agricultural management. (2) Methods: This study considers the impact of the spatial characteristics of farmland plots on the economies of scale of farmers in terms of farmland use and heterogeneity. The effect of plots’ area and location on the directional flow of plots in the farmland transfer market from the perspective of matching supply and demand is also investigated. An empirical test is conducted on farmer actions and plot characteristics data based on surveys from 2015 and 2018 in the Chinese provinces of Heilongjiang, Henan, Zhejiang, and Sichuan. (3) Results: The plots’ area and location affect economies of scale for different potential transfer plots. This leads to large plots and adjacent plots in the market transferring to large-scale households, while scattered small plots mainly transfer to ordinary households. (4) Conclusions: The fixed spatial characteristics of the plots determine the scattered circulation of farmland in the transfer market, hindering the centralized utilization of farmland and restricting efficiency in farmland transfer market allocation. The findings from the context of China are similar to what has been found elsewhere. This suggests the need for a unified trading platform for farmland transfer and strengthening the mutual transformation of land and agricultural machinery.

Background: This study examines the effect of rural social pension policies on elderly people’s health from the perspective of collectivist household decision-making. It aims to explain the heterogeneous outcomes that rural social pension policies have for elderly people in different households, arguing that there is a conflict between the individualism of China’s rural pension scheme design and the collectivism of farmers’ decision-making. Methods: To uncover the mechanism causing pension policies’ disparate effects, we conducted an empirical test using survey data from China Family Panel Studies. More specifically, we compared the impact of family structure and family members’ pension payments on elderly pensioner’s health. Results: The results showed that younger family members’ pension payments offset the income effect of elderly family members’ pension payouts, undermining younger family members’ ability to economically support their aging parents. This weakens the health-promoting effect of pension payouts. Conclusions: Thus, China’s wide-reaching rural social pension policy has heterogeneous effects on elderly people’s health due to differing household family structures. This insight can help to improve pension policy design and evaluation, providing the foundation for more equitable and long-term social pension systems.

This study discusses the mechanism of social trust and legal institutions and their impact on farmers’ contract selection in the farmland transfer market from the perspective of contract governance. Using data from a survey of 128 villages in Heilongjiang, Henan, Zhejiang, and Sichuan provinces, this study empirically tests the impact of social trust and legal institutions on the binding force of contracts, and the proportions of paper and long-term contracts in the farmland transfer market. The results showcase, first, that improvement in social trust and legal institutions can strengthen the binding force of farmland contracts. The strength of legal institutions, as embodied in regulation files and execution, and of social trust, as embodied in village neighborhood relations and loan relations, have significant positive impacts on the binding force of contracts in the farmland transfer market. Second, the binding force of contracts positively impacts both paper and long-term contracts in the farmland transfer market. Whether contract execution or dispute resolution rates are selected as the proxy variables for the binding force of contracts, the stronger the contract binding force, the higher the proportion of both paper and long-term contracts in the farmland transfer market. Therefore, improving formal and informal social systems to enhance contractual binding force is of great importance in standardizing contracts and improving the efficiency of market resource allocation.