Abstract:

The paper researched the impacts of fragmentation on the scale benefit and technical efficiency of cultivated land production to provide basis for agricultural policy.This research analyzed the effects of fragmentation on agricultural productivity from mesoscale,considering the area,shape and distribution factors synthetically,used landscape indices to quantify the level of cultivated land fragmentation,and added fragmentation variables into CD production function to study the effects of fragmentation to scale benefit.The SFA method was applied to measure the technical efficiency,and then used multiple linear regressions to study the effects of fragmentation on technical efficiency of cultivated land production.The results indicated that the correlation coefficients between the first principal component and the average land area,land density,area weighted shape index and area weighted fractal dimension were all more than 88%.The second principal component and the edge density index were more than 91%.All the units had scale elasticity of cultivated land productivity,which decreased after adding fragmentation variables into CD production function.The influence coefficient between the first and the second principal component to the technical efficiency of cultivated land productivity were -0077 and -0011,respectively.It is concluded that the landscape fragmentation had significant negative impacts on scale benefit and technical efficiency of cultivated land productivity,and agricultural land market and agricultural land consolidation were two main methods to reduce the level of the cultivated land fragmentation