Impact of land circulation on household farmland multiple cropping index

Major changes have taken place in agricultural production and operation with the continuous increase in the scale and intensification of rural land transfer. The original farming depends mainly on these impacts of land circulation. However, few studies focused on land transfer to explore the changes in farming systems. It is necessary to figure out the cropping behavior of farmland under the land transfer. The purpose of this research is to investigate the restrictive factors for the multiple cropping index of arable land. Taking the field survey data of farmers in Hubei in 2018, propensity score matching (PSM) and generalized propensity score matching (GPSM) were used to analyze the impact of land transfer on the multiple cropping index of farmers. The results showed that: 1) There were positive impacts of land transfer on the farmland multiple cropping index, according to PSM estimation. The land transfer, paddy field transfer, and dry land transfer significantly increased the farmland multiple crop index by 0.244, 0.299, and 0.204, respectively. 2) There was a significant positive impact of the arable land and the area transferred from dry land on the farmland multiple cropping index, according to the estimation from GPSM. There was an increasing return to scale effect in three simultaneous transfers. Specifically, the increase in the multiple crop index of arable land was greater than that of the circulation area and the paddy field. There was a more obvious effect of increasing returns to scale. Land transfer helped to increase the index of multiple cropping in cultivated land. The effect of paddy fields was more obvious, meaning that the highly intensive use of cultivated land for better food security. 3) In mechanism, the land transfer increased the degree of multiple cropping in farmland via the counter-effect path of average transfer cost per mu and the promotion path of factor intensive. The average transfer cost per mu played a regulating role, and the factor intensive rate played an intermediary role. The size of the effect was 8.9%. In proper scale operation of agriculture, priority was given to the concentration of paddy fields in agricultural enterprises, specialized farmer cooperatives, big business operators, and planting experts, in order to enhance the effect of increasing returns to scale of land transfer, further to promote multiple cropping and intensive management of cultivated land. A potential market of land transfer needed to be established for the allocation of land resources. Intermediary service organizations, information disclosure, and asset evaluation can contribute to the news release and policy consulting for the better resolution of land transfer disputes in the dispute mediation and arbitration system. The finding can provide a theoretical and empirical basis for the intensive use of land.