Reform and Opening of China's Agriculture, 2nd Jan., 2011.

Lee Travers has an article in The China Quarterly, titled "Post-1978 Rural Economic Policy and Peasant Income in China."

A second group of policy changes, first implemented in 1979, raised agricultural purchase prices and lowered purchase quotas. The base procurement price increase in 1979 averaged 20 per cent for grain and 17 per cent over all crops. The above-quota price bonus of 50 per cent for grain and edible oil standardized that rate at two-thirds again the previous level, and a uniform bonus of 30 per cent of the base price was established for cotton. Further price adjustments in 1980 and 1981 increased the overall level of base prices by 3.5 per cent and 2.4 per cent, respectively. [5] At the Third Plenum requisition quotas were fixed for a five-year period at the 1971-75 level, though some reductions were made in 1980 and 1981. [6] With good harvests, by 1981 only about 40 per cent of grain was purchased at the base price; 60 per cent was at above-quota and negotiated prices, compared to less than 1 per cent in 1977. [7] [ . . . ]

Specialization in collective production was facilitated by an increase in rural commodity grain from the 1978 level of 1-8 mmt to over 5 mmt in 1981. [8] In 1979 communes were granted some autonomy in planting decisions, but delivery quotas and direct regulation have blocked profit maximizing cropping patterns.

In 1978 Sichuan and Anhui provinces began experimenting with a system in which small work groups or, in a few cases, households or individuals, took responsibility for a piece of land and were paid on the basis of net output. A theoretical debate over the socialist nature of the household and individual responsibility systems was resolved in 1980, when they were publicly approved. [10] By the end of 1982, 78 per cent of all teams were using some version of the household responsibility system. In most cases the household retains all output after delivering their pro-rated share of the team delivery quota and making a specified payment to the team. Teams continue to own the land, assign its use, and assign quotas. Small farm tools are owned by households, large tools may be collectively or privately owned.