CAN INCREASE OF THE RURAL LABOR FORCE PRICE PROMOTE SUSTAINABLE UTILIZATION OF CULTIVATED LAND? — BASED ON PANEL DATA ANALYSIS OF THE COUNTY IN HUBEI PROVINCE

Xuye Liu

ABSTRACT: Chinese agricultural is the small-scale peasant economy.The rising rural labor prices affects farmer production decisions which inevitably affect the cultivated land utilization. To take Hubei Province as a sample region, the BP neural network model was used to measure the level of sustainable utilization of cultivated land , and using the county-level panel data in 2003, 2008 and 2012 to establish the random effect model to investigate the influence of the rural labor force on the sustainable utilization of the cultivated land. The analysis results show that the influence coefficient of rural labor price on sustainable utilization of cultivated land is -0.1852. The increase of labor price does not promote sustainable utilization of cultivated land, in contrast,does restrict. the fundamental reason is that the complete marketation of labor and capital and the nonmarketation of the land transfer results in unreasonable and unfull use of the resources.

Keywords: Labor price, Cultivated land, Sustainable utilization, Hubei province