Spatiotemporal Interaction of Diverse Agricultural Business Entities and Arable Land Transfer: An Empirical Study of 30 Provinces in China During 2012–2020

To investigate the heterogeneous interactions between various agricultural business entities (abbreviated as ABEs, including farmers, cooperatives and enterprises) and agricultural land transfer (abbreviated as ALT) in China, this study constructs a spatial simultaneous equation model based on the GS3SLS method and applied to data from 30 provinces in 2012–2020. The results show the following: (1) ABEs and ALT demonstrate significant bidirectional positive correlations at the intra-regional level, especially among farmers, while cooperatives and enterprises exhibit more pronounced spatial spillover effects. (2) Despite overall positive correlations, negative interactions emerge in specific entities of some regions (e.g., central China’s ALT among farmers vs. central China’s ABEs among farmers, and eastern China’s ABEs among enterprises vs. neighboring ABEs among enterprises). Conversely, cooperatives maintain universally positive ABE-ALT interactions, peaking in central/western regions. (3) The co-development of ABEs and ALT exhibits temporal heterogeneity: the growth in the number of farmer ABEs lags behind their agricultural land transfer (ALT), whereas for cooperatives and agricultural enterprises, ALT lags behind their growth in numbers. This indicates that the relationship between agricultural operators (“human”) and land transfer (“land”) needs to be reconfigured. The heterogeneous interactive relationships revealed in this study provide a solid theoretical basis for formulating differentiated and precise policies on the transfer of agricultural land and the coordination of various operating entities, so as to efficiently promote agricultural modernization.