Land consolidation, rice production, and agricultural transformation: Evidence from household panel data for Vietnam

Land consolidation is important to increase the economies of scale in farming, and understanding its determinants and effects is useful for policy-makers to support rural transformation. In this paper, we examine the factors determining the voluntary participation of farm households in land consolidation and investigate its impacts on crop production costs, rural poverty, and rural transformation. Our results show that land consolidation is driven by farming efficiency. It significantly decreases land preparation and harvest costs, increases farm income, and reduces poverty. We conclude that land consolidation should be promoted to facilitate the redistribution of farm land from farmers who want to leave agriculture to those who continue to work in agriculture. The redistribution of farmland promotes agricultural transformation by reallocating labor from farm to non-farm sectors.