A Quantitative Analysis of the Farmland Conversion Problem in Taiwan

Past studies have pointed out that small farmers tend to continue farming for the purpose of keeping the proprietary rights to the farmland as assets, which is one of the reasons holding back the improvement of the agricultural structure in Taiwan. This paper examined farmland regulation in Taiwan and calculated the total revenue by farmland conversion in Taiwan. Then, the determinants of farmland price are estimated by the hedonic approach. From these analyses, it was shown that the total revenue of farmland conversion from 1992 to 2003 in Taiwan was 0.5-1.5 times the revenue from crop production. Furthermore, the analysis of the farmland price in the two years after May 2008 by hedonic approach shows that not only the quality of farmland, which raises the agricultural profit, but also such factors related to farmland conversion as the degree of population density and zoning regulations influence the farmland price.