Economic theories tells us that competitive markets are efficiency, and resources misallocation is often caused by government‘s intervention, for its policies pursuing equity. However, misallocation of agricultural resources consequences both inequity and inefficiency on grain production. Resources bring maximum benefit from its utilization are considered efficiently allocated, but equity considerations, concern the distribution of net benefits among affected farmers and their desirability. In essential, farmland resources, are also taken as an ecosystem providing provisioning and supporting services, are originally inequity allocated for the heterogeneity of soil fertility and landscape. Then is there still misallocation in agriculture after the original inequity factors of farmland resources removed? If there is, how does this allocation happen? For illustrative purposes, our research explores the misallocation in agriculture by considering the nature inequity of farmland distribution and pursuing both the goal of ecological and economic efficiency. Specifically, our research is conducted at county-level in the Yellow River basin. Gini-coefficient of farmland resources, which measures the equity of resources distribution, is primarily calculated to categorize the samples. Meta-frontier analysis is applied to estimate the efficiency of grain production and the misallocation in agriculture in the target of maximum ecological and economic benefit.

farmland resources,equity-efficiency tradeoffs,resources misallocation,ecological and economic benefit,the Yellow River Basin