Pergamon PII: S0264-8377(97)00010-0 Land Use Policy, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 175-186, 1997 © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved Printed in Great Britain 0264-8377/97 $17.00 + 0.00 Household land tenure reform in China: its impact on farming land use and agro- environment Wei Hu Post-Mao rural reform has stimulated farmers' incentives for agricultural pro- duction. Yet, the short period of 15 years' land tenure, coupled with the ambiguous land property rights between collectives and individual households has also encouraged short-sighted deci- sione and the irresponsible use of land resources. Capital investment in farmland, and maintenance of irrigation facilities have been neglected. Farmers are "digging" soil and land resources for short and Immediate benefit. In addition, low profit to grain production has the disadvantage of protecting arable land from being used for another purpose, also over-fragmented land with in- creased ridges and ditches has hampered--the function of irrigation and drainage and aggravated the impact of natural disaster. As a consequence, all this has led to the degradation of China's agro-ecological environment. The situation is deteriorating. This paper describes the links between reformed land tenure systems and irresponsible farming as well as degraded agro- environment, some policy remedies are suggested. © 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd. Keywords: rural China, land tenure reform, impact, farming landuse, overall degradation, agro-environment. Wei Hu is with the Department of Geo- graphy, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. The Household Responsibility System has been a major issue in the study of post-reform rural China (Hinton, 1990; Leeming, 1985; Powell, 1992), the environmental degradation in the country has also drawn great atten- tion in recent years (Croll, 1994; Edmonds, 1994; Pannell and Salter, 1985; Smil, 1984). However, very little serious research is being carried out in the areas of land ownership patterns (Zhu, 1991) and on the impact of reformed land tenure systems in China's agro-environmental sustainability. As a result, positive impacts of the reformed land tenure on the agricul- tural growth have been over-addressed and the negative impacts on the agricultural environment have been overlooked. This is because the shift from the collective farming system to individual family farms has been greeted with international acclaim, and the government has been optimistic about the achieved agricultural growth under the reformed land tenure systems. More importantly, since land and capital ownership rights have always been a controversial area (private ownership in particular) in ideology, theory and politics, researchers in China have tended not to get involved with this issue. Previous studies and current surveys conducted in both rich and poor rural areas in the country have exposed the author to the critical conflict between agricultural growth and environmental sustainability, especially the irresponsible use of the land resource leading to a fast and overall environmental degradation since the land tenure reform (individual house- hold land tenure) was carried out in 1980. This paper attempts to identify the link between current land policies and the agro-ecological environ- mental degradation, and to suggest policy solutions based on a holistic perspective. Background to policy context and land use The rural reform since 1978 has formulated a system of individual house- hold land tenure. Farmland was allocated to each peasant household on 175