We reviewed the actual state of farmers’labor outflow and the class differentiation of farmers in Y district in Chongqing City, an inland farming village in the intermediate area that was neither a suburb nor a frontier in southern China, since the latter half of the 1980s. As regards labor outflow, it was revealed that after initially working away from home alone or with one’s sibling, followed by working away from home with one’s wife or husband or with parent（s） or child（ren）, whole family migration ensued widely in the first half of the 2010s. In such a situation, while accepting the labor outflow and the consequent increase in the provision of farmland use rights, upper-class farms have been expected to continue farming in their respective areas. However, even the largest farms have only as small as about 7,000 ㎡ of farmland per household, depend on a fragile agricultural labor and labor means, and barely manage to thrive with severe underestimation of family labor cost. Needless to say, farms from other classes are dependent on even smaller land and even more fragile agricultural labor and labor means. As a whole, the system of securing people who play a key role in agriculture has not been sufficiently advanced. With this as the background, 37% of the allocated arable land area in the surveyed village had been abandoned and food supply base had been progressively undermined.

本稿では，中国南部内陸・中間地域農村である重慶市Y地区における，1980年代後半以降の農家労働力の流出過程と農民層分解の現状について検討した。初期の単身型・兄弟型出稼ぎから出発し，夫婦型・親子型を経て，2010年代前半には挙家離村型の労働力流出が広範に発生している点が明らかになった。また，このような労働力流出とそれに伴い増加が予測される農地請負権の供給を受け止め，当該地域の農業の担い手となることが期待される上層農家は，最大規模農家でも1 戸あたり70アール程度と零細で，脆弱な農業労働力と労働手段装備に依存し極めて低い水準の自家労働評価を前提に成立しているに過ぎない。また，他の階層もより零細な耕地と，より脆弱な農業労働力・労働手段装備に依存し，総じて農業の担い手の形成は不十分である。このような関係の中で，調査村の配分耕地面積の37％に及ぶ耕地が耕作放棄され，食糧供給基盤の脆弱化が進行している。