property and the retention of communist era collective farms. Co-author Scott Rozelle, an agricultural economist at the University of California Davis, says rural families are allocated extremely small plots of land.

"Think about about a football field and the distance from zero to the 12 yard line, it's like a garden," he says. "And there are six of them for the number of people per household. So people are basically farming on a soccer field. So they are very small farms. But what we've seen in the past ten years is this real movement towards a rental market."

The rental markets, says Mr. Rozelle, are most common in coastal areas where farm output is greatest.

Mr. Rozelle adds China has become increasingly competitive in specialized, labor-intensive crops like fruits and vegetables.WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Monday ordered the Trump administration and states challenging Obamacare to respond by Friday to an appeal filed by defenders of the health care law.

Such a highly abbreviated timeline — the rules normally allow a month for filing a response — gives the court the option to take up the case during its current term, which would mean a ruling on a contentious issue this spring, just as the presidential campaign heats up.

Nineteen blue states, led by California, asked the Supreme Court last week for a quick decision on whether to take the case. They're appealing last month's ruling by a federal appeals court that said Obamacare's individual mandate is unconstitutional and that the rest of the law cannot survive without it.

The states