Coupling Relationship between Integrated Land Consolidation and Farmland Scale Management in Villages over Coal Resources: A Case Study of Zezhou County in Shanxi Province

Yaying WU

Shenzhen Graduate School, Peking University, Shenzhen 518055, China

Abstract Through field sampling survey of 18 villages over coal resources in 3 townships and towns in Zezhou County, Jincheng City, Shanxi Province, this paper analyzed the favorable conditions and obstacles for villages over coal resources to carry out farmland scale management. On this basis, combined with the integrated land consolidation measures in villages over coal resources and their effectiveness, and using the principles of system dynamics, it studied the coupling relationship between integrated land consolidation in villages over coal resources and farmland scale management and built a coupling model. It found that the integrated land consolidation system of villages over coal resources has a coupling relationship with the external and internal conditions of the farmland scale management system at the regional and project scales. The two systems interact with and influence each other through the "bridge" of "agricultural modernization condition". The study indicates that at the same time of integrated land consolidation of villages over coal resources caring about the improvement of internal conditions, it is also necessary to improve the external conditions of farmland scale management through regional scale measures such as laws and policies, to support the implementation of land consolidation projects, and realize farmland scale management.

Key words Villages over coal resources, Integrated land consolidation, Farmland scale management, Coupling model, Zezhou Couty in Shanxi Province

1 Introduction

According to statistics, 11 of China’s 14 coal bases with coal reserve of 100 million t are located in areas with dense population and good agricultural production conditions in the north, and the problem that coal resources are under villages is common. Under such villages, there are rich coal resources which have huge economic value. In order to increase coal mining rate and increase economic benefits, local governments and coal enterprises in some major coal-producing provinces have carried out large-scale land consolidation practices centered on the relocation of villages over coal resources, and they have undertaken some preliminary work on urbanization layout, new village construction, land consolidation,etc. combined with the "increase and decrease coupling"[1]of urban and rural construction land. In a certain region, in accordance with the goals and uses determined by the overall land use planning, they adopt administrative, economic, legal, and engineering techniques to implement integrated consolidation of farmland, water, roads, forests, and villages[2-3]. However, the land consolidation of villages over coal resources in northern coal bases lacks integration with agricultural scale management, and fails to consider the coordinated use of coal-land-water. Land consolidation projects with the relocation of villages over coal resources as the core are mainly to "make room" for mining enterprises. The consolidation of damaged farmland is passive, and cannot meet the requirements of large-scale management of modern agriculture and characteristic agriculture. In terms of improving agricultural production conditions, optimizing resource allocation, improving land productivity, capital productivity and labor productivity[4-6], the effectiveness is weak, the participation of the masses is low, and the benefits of land consolidation are low, leading to increasingly fierce conflicts between coal enterprises. How to solve the problems of "production, life, ecology" in the coal bases to achieve the three major land needs of food production, urbanization and ecological protection has become the major concern of governments at all levels, coal enterprises and local farmers.

The term coupling, originating from physics, refers to the state and process of two or more systems with similar properties interacting, influencing and merging with each other to form a new higher-level "structure-function" unity[7]. According to the connotation of the coupling concept, we considered the integrated land consolidation in villages over coal resources and farmland scale management as two systems. Then, taking the relevant data of 18 villages over coal resources in Zezhou County, Shanxi Province as an example, we studied the coupling relationship between the two at the regional and project scales and built a coupling relationship model, to provide a basis and reference for improving the comprehensive benefits of land consolidation in villages over coal resources.

2 Overview of the study area

Zezhou County is located in the southeast of Shanxi Province. The terrain is high in the surroundings, low in the middle. It is surrounded by mountains, and mainly concave. The landforms are mainly hills and mountains, and the county has rich mineral resources. Under its administration, there are 14 towns, 3 townships, and 633 administrative villages. In 2013, the total population of Zezhou County was 488 208, and the land area was 2 022 km2. Among 17 townships under its jurisdiction, 14 are involved with coal, making Zezhou County become one of the 100 key coal-producing counties in China. In 2014, Zezhou County had 30 coal mines, involving 50 villages. The economic structure of Zezhou County is dominated by the secondary industry. In 2013, the GDP of Zezhou County reached 21.72 billion yuan, of which the contribution rates of the primary, secondary, and tertiary industries were 5.01%, 69.34% and 25.66%, respectively. The regional GDP per capita was 44 578 yuan. At the end of 2013, the number of employees in the mining industry of Zezhou County accounted for 35.32% of the total number of employees in the county, and now the coal industry still accounts for a large part of the national economy.

We selected Chuandi Village, Dongshan Village, Shagou Village, Shangliu Village, Wanghushan Village, Gounan Village, Xialu Village, Yuanzhuang Village of Chuandi Township, Zezhou County; Changpo Village, Queneng Village, Changpo Village, Yuneng Village, Hepo Village, Lingtou Village, Liuhe Village, Pingtou Village, Qiqian Village, and Xinbi Village in Dadonggou Town, and Lishan Village and Shi Village in Xiacun Town as main sampling areas. The samples are located in the mountainous and hilly areas from the west to the northwest of Zezhou County, and the area is dominated by the coal economy.

Table 1 Distribution of questionnaires in townships (towns)

We adopted participatory rural assessment (PRA) to interview farmers, and the average interview time for each household was about 30 min. The PRA methods used include questionnaire survey and interviews with insiders. We distributed a total 250 copies of questionnaire, received 249 copies, 233 of them were valid copies, the valid response rate was 93.57%, so the questionnaire data were valid.

3 Characteristics of samples

3.1 Number of family members of households in the study areaThe total number of households surveyed in the sample was 233 households, which roughly presents a normal distribution graphical distribution. In the survey area, there were 64 households with 4 family members, accounting for 27.47% of the total number of interviewed households. The next was the two-family-member households, a total of 42 households, accounting for 18.03% of the total number of surveyed households, mainly the elderly couples left behind for farming. The number of households with 5 and 3 family members was 41 and 39 households, accounting for 17.6% and 16.74%, respectively. In the survey data, 1/10 of the households had 6 family members, belonging to the relatively complete family members, with old parents and young children. Such type of household was mainly supported by the salary income of the couple, so the life pressure is tremendous.

3.2 Proportion of agricultural income to household income in the study areaIn Zezhou County, the majority of household income was dominated by non-agricultural income, of which households with less than 20% of agricultural income account for 43.69% of the total number of households surveyed. The income of this part of the household mainly came from doing business and farming[8], and some family members had a certain expertise or skill. The number of households with 80%-90% income from coming from agricultural income was 39, accounting for 17.57% of the total. The labor force of such households is generally old, with low professional quality and strong land dependence. The remaining households are part-time working and part-time farming. The agricultural income accountd for 20%-60% of household income. They do faming work in busy farming season, and do other work when in farm slack season.

Table 2 Distribution of farming income of households in the study area

3.3 Number of farmland parcels of households in the study areaThe farmland area in the survey sample area is generally small, and the fragmentation of farmland is large, scattered, which is related to the hilly terrain of the area. The average farmland area of 47% of households was 600-1 300 m2; 28% of the farmland parcel was less than 600 m2; 19% of the farmland parcel was 1 300-1 900 m2; the farmland parcel with area greater than 1 900 m2did not exceed 5%.

3.4 Annual farmland input of householdsFarmland input includes the cost of buying seedlings, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, irrigation, and machinery input. The one-time input cost of households’ purchase of seedlings and fertilizers in the study area accounted for more than half of the annual input, and the input cost for professional agricultural machinery was relatively small. According to the survey data, the majority of households had annual average input of 4 500-7 500 yuan for 1 ha land, a total of 66 households; 52 households with average input less than 15 000 yuan; the number of households with an average input more than 7 500 yuan decreased with increase of input; 12 households with average input of 7 500-15 000 yuan; only 2 households input more than 15 000 yuan for 1 ha of farmland.

Fig.1 Distribution of annual farmland input of households in the study area

3.5 Education level of family members of households in the study areaThe education level of the family members of households in the study area was mainly middle school, followed by the primary school or below, and the least were those with bachelor degree or above, indicating that the cultural quality of the rural family in the study area belong to the middle level. The main agricultural labor force is mainly low-educated personnel, and the number is small and the aging problem is serious. Most of them are over 45 years old.

Table 3 Distribution of education level of family members of households in study area

4 Farmland scale management conditions in the study area

4.1 Favorable conditions for scale management of villages over coal resourcesLong-term coal mining has caused problems such as collapse, rupture, heavy metal pollution and other land resource damages in the villages over coal resources. It is true that the mining improves local scale management environment to a certain extent, such as promoting local economic development, transferring rural surplus labor, improving the quality of local workers, changing the closed state of local rural areas, promoting local infrastructure construction, promoting the development of local transportation and service industries, and accelerating the connection between rural and market economy[9]. All of these provide favorable external conditions for the implementation of scale management in the villages over coal resources, and play a good role in promoting the realization of scale management.

According to the statistics of theJinchengStatisticalYearbookofShanxiProvince(2014) , from 2005 to 2013, the proportion of employees in the secondary and tertiary industries in Jincheng continued to increase, and the proportion of employees in the primary industry declined significantly. This is mainly because Jincheng City is located at the southern end of the "Qinshui Coal Field"; the coal-bearing area of Jincheng City is 5 350 km2, accounting for 56.4% of the total area, and the total reserves are 80.8 billion t; the coal mining industry provides sufficient jobs and economic benefits for the local area; Jincheng is one of the birthplaces of Chinese civilization, a large number of places of interest and natural heritage in the area give the region an inherent advantage in developing the tertiary industry.

Fig.2 Composition of employees in three major industries in Jincheng City

4.2 Factors hindering the scale management of villages over coal resources

4.2.1Internal resource factors. (i) Damage of land structure and decline of farmland quality. In the villages over coal resources, there are problems such as slope land, water accumulation, unevenness, and cracks due to subsidence on the farmland[10]. Under the combined action of mining subsidence and rain, wind and other natural forces, soil erosion phenomena such as destruction, migration and sedimentation of farmland soil will accelerate the loss of surface water and soil, consequently leading to the degradation and quality decline of farmland soil. (ii) Environmental pollution and high content of heavy metals. A large amount of fly ash, gangue, surrounding rock and acid mine wastewater are generated during coal mining and after the mine is closed. Changes in the external physical and chemical environment, combined with the joint effects of human activities, weathering, and leaching, the heavy metals contained therein diffuse outward, enter the atmosphere and water cycles, and gradually accumulate, pollute the ecological environment of surrounding villages[11-12]. (iii) Damage of surface buildings and a series of social problems resulted from the village relocation. Coal mining leads to surface subsidence, which further causes village building to tilt, house cracks, roads, various lines, pipelines and other public facilities to be damaged. Some villages were damaged to a large extent, seriously affecting the safety of villagers’ residence. Thus, villages have to be relocated. However, there are many problems in the current village relocation, such as high costs, difficult to determine area for relocation, and complaints of farmers. This makes the relocation process more obstructive and the relocation efficiency is low. In actual work, in order to prevent the second relocation, the relocation distance is often large, generally 4-5 km and even 10 km or longer[10], the farming distance of households increases, they are forced to change their living habits, thus they are unwilling to relocate, accordingly leading to social problem.

4.2.2External environmental obstacles from the perspective of farmers. Through field interviews, it was found that the main obstacles to the farmland scale management in villages over coal resources include inadequate infrastructure, high production costs, shortage of funds, limited sales channels for products, lack of market information, difficulty in land circulation, and insufficient policy subsidies. We divided the difficulty of each obstacle into three levels: difficult, partially difficult, and not difficult, and conducted a questionnaire survey on farmers. The results indicate that more than half of the farmers said that the four problems "infrastructure is not perfect, the production cost is high, the shortage of funds, the difficulty of land circulation, and the lack of policy subsidies" are difficult. Among them, the problems of infrastructure and funds are generally difficult.

Table 5 Difficulties and difficulty level statistics of large-scale farmland management %

In summary, the factors hindering the farmland scale management in villages over coal resources can be divided into two categories: external factors and internal factors.

(i) Land circulation factor. First, the circulation procedures are not standardized. More than 85% of the respondents said that the way of signing the circulation contract is an oral agreement, and the rights and responsibilities in the circulation mainly rely on ethics and traditional customs[13]. In this situation, to avoid disputes, farmers will prefer to choose the villagers with better relationship as the circulation object, but ignoring the planting capacity of the transferred party, leading to low circulation efficiency and weak attraction of farmland scale management. Second, the circulation market mechanism is imperfect, there are few circulation cases, and the circulation information is not open[14]. Farmers do not know "where there is land and who wants land", and the circulation channels are few and narrow. Third, the age of the circulation subject is aging, knowledge aging, decision-making focusing on self-interest[15], and the willingness to participate in the circulation is low. (ii) Two-way role of the current financial subsidy model. The long-term coal mining activities of villages over coal resources have contributed to the accumulation of regional economic strength and the increased attention of the state to the "three rural issues". The social welfare of rural villages such as villages over coal resources in the study area has high popularity. The gradual improvement of the social security system is enough to weaken the farmer’s love for land to a certain extent, but the current rural farmland subsidy system improves the farmers’ lives and at the same time helps the farmers’ tendency to "possess" the land. Some long-term business farmers prefer to let the farmland get idle, but reluctant to give up land possession right. (iii) High agricultural production costs. The constant rising of price of land circulation and the expansion of the management scale means the demand for more means of production such as labor, water, fertilizer, and agricultural machinery. The direct costs of agricultural production increase, combined with backward agricultural skills, the income gap between traditional agricultural income and the secondary and tertiary industries continues to expand, the opportunity cost of agricultural production increases, and farmers generally doing part-time work. (iv) Small-scale decentralized management and land fragmentation[16]. Under the fragmented property rights system, the farmer households are operating in a fragmented manner, the land ownership is scattered, the villages over coal resources have land collapse, loss, and land rupture due to coal mining activities. The internal conditions of the farmland are poor, and the terrain of the hilly area is uneven. The distribution distance of farmland is long, leading to difficult scale management. (v) Imperfect agricultural infrastructure. The agricultural irrigation methods in the study area are backward. Except for individual farmers who use local sprinkler irrigation to irrigate, they all rely on rainfall to meet the water demand of crop growth. During the drought period, the crop yield can barely meet the farmers’ own consumption. Agricultural infrastructure cannot support the expansion of scale management. (vi) Problems left over from coal mining activities. Coal mining has played a key role in the economic construction of villages over coal resources, but it has also left serious damage to the villages, mainly including collapse of fields, cracks, damage to road networks, inability to live in inclined residential areas, and weathering and leaching of coal waste cause some pollution to surrounding water and soil. The internal environment of the villages over coal resources has been damaged, the land quality has been greatly reduced, social contradictions have been prominent, and the cost of large-scale management and construction has been high. The farmland production efficiency of villages over coal resources is low, and the demand and motivation for integrated land consolidation are increasing.

5 Building of coupling model for integrated land consolidation and farmland scale management of villages over coal resources

5.1 Coupling model structureThere are a series of problems in the internal resource conditions and the external environment of the villages over coal resources. It is necessary to improve the farmland scale management environment through measures such as engineering technology, economic investment, and policies. At the level of scale, the integrated land consolidation project mainly relies on the integrated land consolidation project of villages over coal resources as a platform to rectify the internal environment of these village through special capital investment and a series of engineering and technical measures; at the regional scale level, the integrated land consolidation project mainly makes target design and regulation, to form a policy orientation to improve the regional political and economic environment[17]. It can be seen that there is a coupling relationship between the integrated land consolidation project of villages over coal resources and the internal and external conditions of the farmland scale management at the regional scale. According to the connotation of coupling, we take the integrated land consolidation and the farmland scale management in villages over coal resources as two major systems. The two systems are connected through agricultural modernization conditions, and the subsystems in the system interact with each other to promote land consolidation in villages over coal resources and the realization of farmland scale management.

Fig. 3 Structure of coupling model for integrated land consolidation and farmland scale management of villages over coal resources

5.2 Connotation of coupling modelAt present, the land consolidation projects in villages over coal resources are as follows. (i) Managing the land in the area of reclamation responsibility and developing suitable arable reserve resources, increasing the farmland area and improving the efficiency of the use of regional land resources, and improving the farmland quality, improving agricultural production conditions, and improving the land ecosystem through land leveling projects, farmland water conservancy projects, field road projects, rational slope transformation projects and other farmland protection projects. (ii) Promoting land circulation in the process of land consolidation, improving traditional agricultural production models, selecting farmland management models according to local conditions, promoting agricultural efficiency, increasing farmers’ income, and increasing the attraction of rural areas. (iii) Improving rural construction land, improving the intensity of land use and improving the appearance of villages through the consolidation of rural settlements. (iv) Improving the participation and democracy of the masses, and improving the scientificity, acceptability and operability of land consolidation planning through the process of project site selection, demonstration, consolidation planning and design, implementation and land ownership adjustment[18-20]. Consolidation measures at the regional scale: (i) improving the construction of the legal system, standardizing rectification actions, and protecting the rights and interests of stakeholders; (ii) developing regional secondary and tertiary industry economies, increasing regional economic strength, and promoting the transfer of surplus agricultural labor; (iii) improve the social security system, alleviating the pressure of farmers’ pension and employment, and weakening the land dependence; (iv) improving the regional financial system and expanding financing channels. The integrated land consolidation in villages over coal resources should take corresponding measures at the project and regional scales to give full play to the effectiveness of the consolidation, while satisfying the internal and external conditions of farmland scale management, and fully realizing farmland scale management.

6 Conclusions and recommendations

6.1 ConclusionsThe farmland scale management in villages over coal resources involves men and land, and between men and men. It is necessary to have both the natural resources of the land and a good farmland scale management environment. The integrated land consolidation effect and the needs of the farmland scale management should be matched to influence each other, so as to jointly realize agricultural modernization. However, the integrated land consolidation activities in villages over coal resources take "increase and decrease coupling" as the guide and take project as the platform. Many of these projects stress the quantity but belittle the quality, attach great importance to the results but pay little attention to the process. In addition, the short-term feature and independence of the consolidation projects are in contrast to the long-term and inherited renewal of the political system. The lack of supporting policies for the consolidation projects has extended the consolidation project cycle and reduced the consolidation benefits.

6.2 Recommendations(i) Land consolidation should take the farmers as the core, improve the public participation mechanism, consider the subject position of farmers in land consolidation work[21], and protect farmers’ rights from the project and regional scale. (ii) It is recommended to strengthen propaganda of land knowledge and related policies, raise farmers’ awareness of land protection, and guide and correct farmers’ wrong ideas of "private land"[19]. (iii) It is recommended to encourage the surplus labor force to go out and introduce high-quality talents to improve the scientific nature of agricultural production, and to inject fresh blood into rural development. (iv) In the process of land consolidation, it is encouraged to supplement the agriculture with work while combining with the adjustment of the internal structure of agriculture. Besides, it is recommended to encourage enterprises to participate in scale management, make innovation upon the business model and focus on the adjustment of the internal structure of agriculture, change ordinary field crops to high-quality crops, and improve the competitiveness of agricultural products in the market from seed and seedling work, to meet the society’s demand for high-quality agricultural products[16]. (v) It is recommended to establish the project resistance feedback mechanism, feedback and summarize the macro resistance encountered during the implementation of the project, provide an example basis for updating the policy and legal system, formulate relevant policies and systems according to local conditions, and serve the long-term development of villages over coal resources.

Fig. 4 Coupling model for integrated land consolidation and farmland scale management of villages over coal resources