The Impact and Mechanism of Large-Scale Farming on Farmers' HealthEvidence from Micro Data of Farmers in Xinjiang

The large-scale agricultural operation has accelerated the reconstruction of agricultural resource elements and the transformation of farmers' lifestyles, which is a realistic guarantee for enhancing farmers' material wealth and improving their health status. Based on the panel data of Xinjiang farmers in the national rural fixed observation points between 2010 and 2020, this research theoretically expounds and empirically examines the impact of large-scale agricultural operation on farmers' health from the perspectives of scale economy effect and labor intensity effect. The results show that large-scale agricultural operation can significantly improve the health status of farm households. To overcome the endogeneity problem, this paper selects “village farmland scale” as an instrumental variable and conducts a regression using the conditional mixed process estimation method (CMP method), and the conclusions obtained are still robust. The mechanism test results reveal that the large-scale agricultural operation mainly improves the health of farm households by increasing their household income and reducing the agricultural labor intensity. Further research shows that the effect of the large-scale agricultural operation on the health of farm households is more pronounced in the scenario of centralized and continuous farmland, and that the effect of the farmland scale operation on the health of farm households is more obvious in younger households and those with higher education level. Accordingly, it is recommended to moderately promote the large-scale agricultural operation, implement differentiated agricultural land management mode, and en the market mechanism in the land transfer market, in order to provide useful reference for promoting the development of the agricultural economy and making "Healthy China" benefit the rural revitalization.