1. Introduction
The urbanization rate will reach 60% by 2030 and 67.2% by 2050 [
1]. Rapid urbanization has led to a reduction in the area of cultivated land, and it will result in a 1.8–2.4% loss of farmland worldwide, and 80% of farmland losses will occur in developing countries in Asia and Africa by 2030 [
2]. For example, in the rapid urbanization in South Korea from 1986 to 1996, the expansion of residential land caused a large amount of farmland loss [
3]. In India, urbanization has rapidly transformed agricultural lands into non-agricultural ones [
4]. Generally, the reduction of cultivated land caused by urbanization has two direct reasons. First, urban boundary expansion encroaches on the farmland around the city. Second, the transfer of rural labor to the city results in the abandonment of farmland.
This phenomenon has aroused people’s high attention to cultivated land protection. Governments or organizations in different countries are actively seeking effective ways to protect cultivated land areas from reduction. Economic compensation is an effective incentive that governments usually use to promote farmers’ cultivated land protection behavior. The Conservation Reserve Program in the United States and the Agri-environmental Schemes (AESs) in the European Union (EU) alleviate the rapid loss of cultivated land by transferring public assets to farmers for economic compensation [
5,
6,
7]. In the 1980s, 20% of the total agricultural area was compensated by the AESs implemented in the EU [
8]. The proportion of abandoned land to the total agricultural area was proven not to change after the implementation of AESs, although a significant improvement was observed in grassland management and fertilizer and pesticide use [
8]. Moreover, AESs contributed to the promotion of crop diversity because it promoted crop rotation on a small scale [
9]. Studying the influence of the implementation of AESs in southern France on the use of herbicides by grape growers indicated that the number of herbicides used by policy participants in 2011 was 38–53% lower than that used by grape growers who did not participate in the policy, and was between 42 and 50% in 2012 [
10]. Therefore, the economic compensation of farmers in developed countries aims to protect farmland ecological environment and biodiversity and has achieved good results.
The protection of cultivated land in developing countries aims to maintain the quantity and quality of cultivated lands to meet the growing demand for food [
1]. At present, although China only has 9% of the world’s cultivated land, it feeds approximately 20% of the world’s population [
11]. Hence, the contradiction between population and cultivated land has always been one of the main problems that plague China’s sustainable development. Since 1978, China’s urbanization level has increased dramatically from 17.9% in 1978 to 56.1% in 2015 [
1]. China’s urbanization level has been estimated to reach 60.34, 68.38, and 81.63% by 2020, 2030, and 2050, respectively [
12]. During the period of 2001–2013, China’s rapid urbanization consumed about 33,080 km
2 of farmland, which had already threatened the country’s food security [
13]. Furthermore, with the transfer of rural labor to cities, nearly 85% of rural households in China have at least one family member working in the non-agricultural sector [
14]. Between 1993 and 2015, approximately 5.62, 5.70, and 4.00% of the cultivated land was reported to be uncultivated in eastern, central, and western China, respectively [
15]. The quantity and quality of cultivated land is closely related to food security; thus, the Chinese government is committed to maintaining these aspects free from loss. Since 2008, many local governments have begun to explore how they can motivate farmers to cultivate land through economic compensation. The cultivated land protection fund (CLPF), implemented in Chengdu in 2008, is the first economic compensation mode in China for the protection of cultivated land areas from decreasing. This mode requires farmers who are financially compensated to ensure that the cultivated lands cannot be abandoned or destroyed; otherwise, the subsidy will be stopped, and economic penalties will be implemented. In 2010, the government in Suzhou implemented economic compensation for farmers in rice-growing areas to encourage them to continue to grow rice. Since then, Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Fujian Provinces have made economic compensation for farmland farmers at the provincial level in 2012 and 2016. Particularly, the CLPF in Chengdu was first implemented in China, and its influence on farmers’ enthusiasm in protecting cultivated lands has been a concern. Some scholars believe that it was a failure for effectively increasing the enthusiasm of farmers to participate in farmland protection [
16,
17,
18,
19]. Therefore, although economic compensation for enhancing farmers’ enthusiasm for farming has been applied in many regions in China, the mode is usually experimental and exploratory, and its effect on cultivated land protection has yet to be fully verified.
In summary, the Chinese government must urgently design and apply a national economic compensation mode for farmers to protect the quantity and quality of cultivated lands effectively. Farmers are not only the recipients of economic compensation for cultivated land protection, but also the executors of cultivated land protection. Only when farmers are satisfied with the economic compensation policy for cultivated land protection are farmers willing to protect cultivated lands. Therefore, a scientific method that measures farmers’ satisfaction with the policy should be proposed after the implementation of economic compensation for cultivated land protection. In addition, factors that may affect farmers’ satisfaction must be studied, which will not only help promote the sustainable development of relevant policies, but also play an important role in promoting China’s national economic compensation for cultivated land protection. Meanwhile, it is conducive to provide reference for other countries or regions to effectively mobilize farmers’ enthusiasm for protecting cultivated land. By focusing on the aforementioned problems, the present work aims to: (1) Comprehensively analyze farmers’ satisfaction with the cultivated land protection fund (CLPF), taking Chengdu, China as an example; (2) identify the influencing factors of peasant households’ satisfaction with the CLPF based on the characteristics of farmers and the policy; and (3) promote some suggestions on the construction of the economic compensation mechanism for cultivated land protection.
4. Discussion
In terms of the overall satisfaction, nearly 80% of the surveyed households from 296 samples were satisfied (contains the two levels of “satisfied” and “strongly satisfied”) with the implementation of the CLPF. Among them, some farmers believed that farming was their job and they were willing to plant land, even if the country did not compensate them. Meanwhile, other farmers believed that the CLPF was considered “additional wealth”, which was a welfare subsidy of the government for farmers. Evidently, these two ideas were not the real reasons for the implementation of the CLPF, but they were still conducive in the increased enthusiasm of the farmers. However, only 18.2% of the farmers surveyed were generally “very satisfied” with the CLPF. This result indicates that the policy failed to fully meet the psychological needs of farmers and that optimization can still be pursued.
Farmers can obtain money free of charge but only if they ensure that the cultivated land is not abandoned or destroyed. Therefore, farmers were satisfied with the current compensation standards. Nevertheless, accompanied by the improvement of consumption level, the money had little effect on improving the economic level of farmer households with the current compensation standards. In particular, the economic incentive effect of the CLPF in underdeveloped areas was significantly lower than that in developed regions [
16]. Therefore, we propose the following two suggestions to improve the CLPF: (1) We argue that the current compensation of the CLPF with reference to the basic farmland and general cultivated land is relatively simple. Thus, the compensation standard is unfair to farmers who have the same quality of cultivated land but are paid different compensation funds. We agree that the cultivated land would be classified into superior (1st to 4th), advanced (5th to 8th), medium (9th to12th), and low (13th to 15th) grades on the basis of the national standards for cultivated land quality (the quality of cultivated land in China is assessed as 15 grades, 1st grade cultivated land has the best quality and 15th grade is the worst). Thereafter, differentiated compensation would be implemented in accordance with the preceding criteria. (2) In combination with the level of regional economic development, compensated regions should be divided into high-, medium-, and low-developing areas to divide the high-, medium-, and low-compensation areas for cultivated land compensation.
Only a few farmers were strongly satisfied with the funding use requirement of the CLPF. The main reason was that the diversification of households’ livelihoods had led to differences in farmers’ demand, and not just for the pension insurance. We reiterate that the CLPF should take diversified measures to realize the diversification of capital use requirement to satisfy the differentiated demands of farmers. Examples of these measures are providing cash subsidy to impoverished households, implementing in-kind subsidies (e.g., crop seeds, pesticides, fertilizers) for farmers who depend on cultivated land for their livelihood, or offering technical subsidies (providing consultation and training on agricultural production, management, services, etc.) [
27,
40] for large-scale grain-production households or agricultural cooperatives. Moreover, a farmer’s evening school and other agricultural planting training organizations may also be established, in combination with local conditions, to provide specialized training for farmers to develop new peasants.
Farmers’ participation in the protection of cultivated land will only have a positive impact when they trust the government [
41]. Such a trust can also effectively reduce the cost of the supervision management transparency of the government [
42,
43]. However, our research shows very low farmers’ satisfaction with the government’s supervision management. We found that some farmers received more compensation from the government even though they had poor quality cultivated land. Moreover, some village cadres were dishonest in counting farmers’ information on cultivated land, which had caused losses to the interests of farmers. Consequently, farmers had already lost trust in the government, which had affected their satisfaction with the government’ supervision management. Our results are consistent with that of Cai and Yu [
18]. In our study, a five-tiered supervision system was proposed with “government supervision–village collective supervision–villager supervision–society supervision–technology supervision” (
Figure 9). In this system, the government can encourage the responsible persons to fulfill their responsibility of effectively protecting cultivated land by establishing incentive and accountability mechanisms. Given that village cadres are the primary management and accepting subjects of the CLPF, they can effectively track the implementation of this program. Therefore, the village collective supervision system mainly relies on the village cadres to establish tracking and feedback mechanisms to relay the relevant issues to the higher government in time. Meanwhile, the peasant households are the main recipients of the CLPF and concrete implementers of cultivated land protection. Thus, the government can establish an effective reporting mechanism to facilitate peasant households to report and expose violations of relevant provisions of the CLPF in a timely manner. In addition, media and social organizations are the main body of social supervision system, which can ensure the sunshine operation of the CLPF through public opinion supervision. With the development of remote sensing and GIS technology, a “one map” management database of the CLPF should be established to unify the farmers’ household situation (e.g., population information, economic level, cultivated land management status, rights, and responsibilities) and the characteristics of the CLPF. Doing so will realize the dynamic inspection and information change of cultivated land protection.
A significant correlation exists between farmers’ satisfaction with compensation standard and farmers’ education level, as well as the satisfaction with the supervision management of the government. That is, the higher the education level of the farmers, the higher their satisfaction in these two aspects. We infer that the higher the level of education, the more profound the farmers’ perceptions of the policy. This result is also consistent with that of Zhu et al. [
19]. However, it is generally low of the current education level of rural labor in China, with an average education period of approximately 8.37 years [
44]. We assert the benefits of building a new generation of literate peasants in China to enable farmers to realize the importance of ideologically protecting cultivated land. The government could improve the peasants’ cultural level through farmers’ night schools and agricultural science and technology training, while fully promoting compulsory education.
Previous studies have confirmed that the more cultivated land farmers own, the higher their satisfaction with the CLPF. At present, the “three rights separation system”, which has been promoted in the rural areas of China, is a new land reform [
45]. Under this system, farmers can transfer their cultivated land to others while they continue receiving compensation. Thus, the scale of the farmland operated by a peasant increases. Therefore, we recommend that China should implement differentiated compensation standards for different types of farmers to balance their interests. We conclude that all compensation funds should be owed to the peasants, only if they do not transfer their farmlands to others. If a farmer rents large cultivated land from other farmers, then the government should increase the funds for the farmer who is the actual user, without reducing the funds for farmers who originally owned the land. If the scale of the land transferred between the two farmers is small, then the ownership of the compensation funds should be negotiated by the two farmers.
Among the three aspects of policy characteristics studied in this research, farmers’ satisfaction with the government’s supervision management was most affected by the total annual agriculture income based on the path analysis. That is, the higher the total annual income of agriculture, the more satisfied farmers are with the government’s supervision management work. This result may be caused by the fact that the service system provided by the government satisfies the farmers’ demand for large-scale farmland management and is conducive to raising agricultural income. However, household income from agriculture is lower than that from other sources (i.e., working part-time and doing business) in rural China. Our results also indicate that 80.41% of the farmer households interviewed had a generally low total annual agricultural income, which was below 10,000 yuan. Therefore, we hold that raising agricultural income is conducive to raising farmers’ satisfaction with the three aspects of policy characteristics of the CLPF.
Farmers’ knowledge of the policy significantly affected their satisfaction with the CLPF. Hence, strengthening farmers’ knowledge of the CLPF is conducive to promoting their interpretation of the policy, which is instrumental in enhancing farmers’ enthusiasm for participating in farmland protection [
29]. In this view, suggestions for strengthening farmers’ knowledge of the CLPF have been proposed in three aspects: (1) Focus part of the financial effort toward publicity courses of the CLPF to increase farmers’ comprehensive understanding of this policy [
46]. This educational effort should aim to deepen farmers’ understanding of the purpose, meaning, and program of the CLPF, as well as their obligations and responsibilities. (2) Encourage farmers to participate in local planning and land management. Effective engagement between farmers and the government can facilitate the development of interest, responsibility, and a social norm, thereby enhancing their deep understanding of policies [
46,
47]. (3) Strengthen local tradition and culture aiming to make policies considerably acceptable to farmers [
46]. The socio-cultural identity of farmers has an important influence on their values and policy awareness. Thus, the manager should exert immense effort to eliminate the potential long-standing antipathy existing among farmers toward the CLPF [
48].
Although the majority of farmers no longer rely solely on agricultural income to maintain their lives, strengthening their awareness of the value of cultivated land conservation is conducive to their long-term consideration for the sustainable development of future generations [
49]. Our research also confirms this point. That is, farmers’ awareness of the value of the CLPF significantly affected their satisfaction with the policy.
Compared with non-agricultural income, the economic benefits of farmland are relatively low, which has led low-income farmers to be unwilling to participate in farmland protection [
50]. Among the influencing factors selected in this study, the farmers’ perception of changes in the family’s economy was the only factor that had a strong positive and direct impact on the satisfaction of farmers. Thus, the economic effect of the CLPF was the decisive factor in improving the farmers’ satisfaction.