Beware of Land Brokers Misleading Farmland Transfers

“Land brokers” do not profit by providing land transfer information; instead, they exploit their financial advantage and information asymmetry to rent and enclose land ahead of others, then sublet it to other organizations or individuals who genuinely need to farm. This behavior disrupts the order of the rural land transfer market, drives up land rents, increases the cost and risk of land transfers, and harms the long-term development of land transfers. It must be corrected and stopped

Recently, the media have exposed several bizarre phenomena involving “land brokers” in farmland transfers: some “have money to acquire land but no interest in farming,” ultimately breaking contracts and abandoning cultivation; some seize good, long-cultivated land and drive up rents on the spot, forcing those who genuinely farm to bear high rents or even leaving them with no land to farm; and some engage in land-grabbing enclosures aimed at attracting outside capital, and once investment hopes fail, the farmland is left abandoned and the farming season is missed. Although these bizarre phenomena account for only a small proportion of current rural land transfers, they distort the correct direction of land transfers and can easily mislead and cause misjudgments regarding the purpose, goals, and returns of land transfers. They must be corrected and stopped in a timely manner.

⟦NL> “Land brokers” are not ordinary transaction intermediaries. They do not profit by providing land transfer information; instead, they exploit their financial advantage and information asymmetry to rent and enclose land ahead of others, then sublet it to other organizations or individuals who genuinely need to farm. This kind of brokerage behavior increases the risk of converting farmland to non-agricultural use. They do not aim to farm the land, and many lack the conditions and ability to farm; they merely use land hoarding as a tactic, subletting to individuals or companies through so-called operations of cornering the market and selling at a premium. In the second- and even third-hand subletting and subcontracting by “land brokers,” farmers or village committees can hardly exercise their supervisory rights over land use; even if they do supervise, they encounter significant legal troubles, objectively enlarging the space and opportunities for farmland to be diverted from grain production and converted to non-agricultural use. Moreover, when “land brokers” cannot sublet the land in time, it often results in farmland lying waste.

“Land brokers” disrupt the order of the rural land transfer market, causing land that should mainly circulate among “new farmers” to be carved up by members with different motives, squeezing out growing and potential new-type operating entities such as family farms, specialized large-scale farmers, and farmers' professional cooperatives. Since “land brokers” are mostly professional “briefcase” businesspeople, they can often seize good, long-cultivated land ahead of others. Some newly emerging large-scale farmers can only obtain land by subcontracting or subletting from them, which increases farming costs, adds operating pressure, and constrains the space and speed of their growth and expansion. Some existing large-scale farmers are even forced to abandon their leases because of the intervention of “land brokers.”

“Land brokers” also drive up land rents, increasing the cost and risk of land transfers and harming the long-term development of land transfers. “Land brokers” aim to increase rental income; not only do “new farmers” have to pay higher rents to obtain land from them, but some “land brokers” even bid up prices against each other, pushing land rents above actual returns. On the surface, higher rents allow original rural contract-holding households to obtain better transfer returns, but the output returns of farmland are relatively fixed. After rents rise, large-scale farmers or companies find no profit to be made, or their interests are severely squeezed. Apart from terminating leases and fleeing, they can only plant less, stop growing grain, and switch to other cash crops with better returns, ultimately harming food security, the agricultural use of farmland, and farmland transfers.

Land is the lifeblood of farmers and the vital gate for food security and agricultural product supply; it must not be harmed or damaged. Against the current backdrop of accelerating rural land transfers, to ensure that land transfers advance in the correct direction of safeguarding food security, ensuring the bottom line of cultivated land, and not harming farmers' interests, it is necessary to promptly correct and stop the behavior of “land brokers.” At present, what is urgent is to strengthen the recognition of land-leasing qualifications, to recognize and supervise the lessee's operating capacity and the purpose of the leased land, and to strictly prevent “land brokers” who do not aim to farm from fishing in troubled waters and misleading land transfers.