Differentiation of resources allocative efficiency in farmland conversion in China

The purpose of the paper is to study the resources allocative efficiency and dynamic variation characteristics of farmland conversion for nonagricultural use in China from 2000 to 2008, and analyze regional differences in resources utilization efficiency, in order to provide references for optimizing land resources allocation. Methods of DEA model and Malmquist TFP index were employed. The results indicate that: from 2000 to 2008, the comprehensive efficiency of farmland conversion of eastern and northeast China has decreased, while that of central and western China has increased, with significant rise in western regions; the rise of China´s comprehensive efficiency of farmland conversion is mainly due to the contribution of pure technical efficiency, and the improvement of production efficiency benefits from technological progress. The study found that: although the comprehensive efficiency of farmland conversion in central and western regions has increased significantly, whether it could be used as the evidence for increasing farmland conversion quota is still under debate; at present the main task should be to further improve land use efficiency.