Abstract
An agent-based computer model is developed to explore the effects of different subsidy policies and resilience of rural development in the PLR. The model represents land-use and livelihood decision making of farmer households in three types of villages that have poor, average, and rich farmland. Household agents allocate their labor between nonfarm and agricultural work, and make rice cropping choices. They also exchange farmland in a land rental market. Three policy scenarios are examined: subsidies to rice growers, subsidies to large farms, and subsidies to households that rent out their farmland for the long term. The model experiments are not intended to make quantitative predictions but to aid our understanding about (1) the nature and potential effects of these policies across different villages at different stages of development, and (2) how rural development may be affected by economic and environmental shocks. I discuss how policy may need to differentiate across locations and adapt in the near future to effectively promote rural development amid social and environmental changes.
Part of the material from this chapter was published in Agricultural Systems (Tian et al. 2016).
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Tian, Q. (2017). Exploring Future Rural Development in the Poyang Lake Region. In: Rural Sustainability. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52685-0_5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-52685-0_5
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