An exploration of sustainable scaled-up operations for smallholder farms in China: drawing on international experience

China’s persistent smallholder farming structure presents a major challenge for agricultural modernisation. This study adopts a farm management perspective, using smallholder farmers as the main micro-level analytical unit, to explore viable paths for achieving sustainable agricultural structural transformation in China. The core contradiction facing China’s agricultural development—the ‘Smallholder Dilemma’—is conceptualised as four interrelated structural constraints: insufficient cropland per household unit, fragmentation of land holdings leading to a significant increase in production costs, acceleration of land de-agriculture, and systematic failure of land mobility policies. International comparative analyses suggest that major advances in agricultural modernisation have often occurred alongside improvements in land governance, market institutions, agricultural service systems, and the organisation of production; however, the country cases do not establish a universal causal sequence or a directly transferable quantitative benchmark. Based on these findings, this study proposes a three-stage institutional framework tailored to China’s context. The framework emphasises improving land transfer and service-market mechanisms in the short term, establishing a rights-protective and voluntary push–pull mechanism to support agricultural transition in the medium term, and promoting diversified agricultural production entities and organisational innovation in the long term.