Pastoralists have probably been raising livestock for 4000 years in the Sanjiangyuan region, northeast of the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau. It is an area of traditional transhumant herding (Blench, 2001; Kreutzmann, 2013), where the grassland is divided into winter-spring pasture (winter pasture) and summer-autumn pasture1 (summer pasture). Herders use the summer-autumn pasture for nomadic grazing from June to October while living in tents, and the
1 Pasture is a more likely general terminology for grassland for livestock grazing, but in this paper, we use
“grassland” for general grassland in the Sanjiangyuan region, and “pasture” for specific grassland of every household.
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winter-spring pasture from November to the following May for grazing while living in permanent homesteads. The institutional framework of livestock husbandry on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau has undergone fundamental changes in the past half century, from feudalism, through a collective period, to privatized livestock ownership in common accessed grassland, and finally to privatized livestock ownership with privatized exclusive access grassland use rights.
2.2.1 Before 1949
Before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China, a feudalism-based social system was in place in the Sanjiangyuan region with land controlled by monasteries (including incarnate lamas), aristocracy, and government officials (including tribal leaders). These groups of leaders are sometimes referred to as the feudal landlords. Livestock, pastoral production materials and rangeland were controlled by the feudal lords. As rulers, the monasteries controlled most of the rangeland and livestock, with peasants hereditarily bound to grassland.
For the government controlled grassland, pastoralists had to rent livestock and rangeland for their livelihood while the government levied taxies on them (Ma, 2007; Fan, 2008; Ma, 2012;
Li, 2012). During that time, natural features like mountain ridges and streams marked boundaries. There was no "common" pasture open to all and the gain or loss of pasture was dependent on the force of the landlords (Miller, 2006).
2.2.2 1949 - 1978
Since 1949, the state has introduced profound changes in land tenure and the social organization of pastoral communities. In the 1950s, when land reform was being implemented throughout China, pasture was nationalized and ownership was transferred from the feudal lords to the collective or the state. However, during the early 1950s, the Sanjiangyuan region state government was too remote to act in its new ownership role so in practice, county governments took responsibility for allocating grassland use rights, which meant that formal changes in ownership did not seriously affect actual grassland use. When people’s communes were established in the late 1950s and 1960s, the Sanjiangyuan region underwent political and economic reform. The people’s commune time was described in Chinese as “chi da guo fan”, literally “eat from the same wok”, meaning that all pastoral households shared production materials, livestock, and grassland: They worked together and they ate together. Food and benefits were distributed evenly according to the number of people, no matter what their
contribution was (Foggin and Torrance-Foggin, 2011; Ma, 2012; Li, 2012). The system resulted in decreased work incentives for herders and reduced the productivity of China’s grasslands (Guo and Ma, 2005; Li and Huntsinger, 2011).
2.2.3 Post 1978
With the introduction of the HRS in the Chinese agriculture sector, the household was re-established as the basic unit of production and decision-making in the early 1980s. The HRS model was copied from cropland to grassland in the Sanjiangyuan region in 1984 with the promulgation of China’s Grassland Law in 1985 (Ma, 2007; Foggin and Torrance-Foggin, 2011; Li and Huntsinger, 2011). State or collectively owned livestock was divided into equal parts for each household or collective, according to the household or collective population size. Herders managed their own livestock with their own decisions, and households were entitled to residual income after meeting certain quotas and tax obligations (Banks, 2003;
Banks et al., 2003). This was a form of household livestock privatization that still maintained state ownership of grassland. All livestock was privatized and could be grazed on state or collectively owned grassland. This was proposed to stimulate the herders to work hard and increase the livestock husbandry productivity in China. Unfortunately, the special case of livestock privatization in the Sanjiangyuan region led to a scenario of a grassland “tragedy of the commons” (Hardin, 1968; Foggin, 2000; Ma, 2007; Ma, 2012).
2.2.4 Since 1994
Starting in 1994, the second round of promulgation of the grassland HRS included regulations to contract grassland use rights to households. The grassland was inventoried and classified after the evaluation of the forage quality of different pasture. It was then divided and contracted to each household based on the household size and the number of livestock in each household. The grassland use rights allocation took a long time to accomplish, in contrast to the cropland HRS which was essentially accomplished overnight. The contractual duration of grassland use rights for state or collective owned grassland leased to households could be as long as 30 years, and in some special circumstances even 50 years. To accomplish the grassland use rights privatization procedure, households were required to fence the pasture and construct shelters for livestock and homes for nomads in their winter pasture site (in Chinese, “si pei tao”). These activities were undertaken on a large scale, with substantial government and donor investment in almost all pastoral areas in China (Miller, 2006; Foggin,
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2008; Cencetti, 2010). In our dataset, more than 60% of households have fenced pastures, livestock shelters, and plots for hay and forage production in the corrals.
2.2.5 Currently
There has been no institutional change in grassland property and livestock privatization rights since 1994. However, after the HRS was implemented on the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau, and especially after the promulgation of the Law of the Rural Contracted Land in China in 2003, two new forms of pastoral management evolved within the private grassland use rights mechanism. Both of these cases were founded voluntarily and their members are usually relatives or friends. The first form was household cooperative groups. These groups use their summer-autumn grasslands collectively and fence them as a whole. Herders move livestock between pastures as a group, and young families or men in the group take care of their supervision, while others help each other to prepare yak hair and cut autumn hay. The second form is grassland use rights turnover or leasing. Some households rent grassland use rights by oral or written contract and the negotiated price is based on contract duration and grassland quality. Households are not required to report the grassland use rights leasing to the local government (Banks, 2003; Banks, et al. 2003; Richard et al., 2006; Li and Huntsinger, 2011;
Li, 2012). As shown by the data analysis in this paper, about 22.3% of householders rent-in grassland in the sample regions.
In this paper, we focus on grassland property rights using the variable of whether grassland is rented-in from other households and how the renting of grassland impacts technical efficiency. We expect the impact of renting-in grassland on technical efficiency to be positive, because we believe herders would choose the optimal beneficial production behavior given the permission of grassland use rights lease or turnover.