Encountering the articulation of the strongness of local authorities and market forces in China’s development, attention has been paid to the changing central state which recentralised the regulation capability of localities which has more discretional power on resources utilisation, land for example, in the post-reform era. Yet it is still not clear-cut what drives the state rescaling in terms of land governance and by what ways. After dissecting the evolving policies and practices of construction land supply in China with the focus on the roles of state, we draw two main conclusions.

Recent decades have seen a progressive degradation of soils owing to an intensification of farming practices (weeding and high trafficking), increasing use of pesticides and fertilizers, mainly nitrogen, resulting in a steady decline in soil organic matter, a key component to maintain soil fertility. The work has coupled the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) of wheat cultivation in Central Italy to soil properties where the wheat was grown to identify the properties linked to within-field variability in productivity.