The impact of farmland property rights stability on China’s food production resilience: evidence from the new round of land ownership clarification reform

Strengthening the stability of farmland property rights to enhance the resilience of grain production is a crucial measure for safeguarding national food security and mitigating risks in the global food system. Taking China’s recent round of farmland tenure confirmation reform as a quasi-natural experiment, this study employs panel data from 30 provinces between 2010 and 2023 and applies a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to empirically examine the impact and mechanisms of farmland property rights stability on grain production resilience. The results show that farmland property rights stability significantly enhances grain production resilience, primarily through optimizing farmland resource allocation, promoting large-scale farmland operations, and facilitating the transfer of labor to non-agricultural sectors. Heterogeneity analysis further reveals that the resilience-enhancing effect of property rights stability is more pronounced in major grain-producing areas, regions with flat terrain, and central China. The findings suggest that agricultural institutional reforms aimed at stabilizing farmland property rights and clarifying tenure boundaries are compatible with the strategic objective of improving national grain production resilience. It is evident that China’s policy of continuously advancing the reform of farmland property rights to enhance the stability of land property rights holds significant policy implications for consolidating the country’s resilience in food production and strengthening the resilience of the global food system.