Abstract: Large-scale agricultural operation is an effective way to improve production efficiency and resource utilization rate, which can promote the development of agricultural mechanization, reduce production costs and increase farmers' income. Most of the studies have focused on the estimation and calculation of the moderate agricultural scale, which is not consistent with the reality of the coexistence of multiple agricultural scales in China. This paper attempts to estimate the distribution function of cultivated land transfer operation scale based on the historical statistical data, simulate the number of farm households with different scale of operation development and analyze the distribution of the scale under different operation models. The research results show that: (1) By 2025, the number of farm households with cultivated land operation area over 6.67 hm² will reach 3.57 million, the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 20 hm² will reach 1.09 million, the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 33.33 hm² will reach 597 500, and the number of farmer households with cultivated land operation area over 66.66 hm² will reach 223 300 in China. (2) Family farms will become the mainstream of the scale operation entities. Family operation farms will reach 11.46 million, operating the largest area of cultivated land which account for 39% of the total cultivated area. The number of cooperatives is few, accounting for only 0.22% of the total number of farm households. However, due to the relatively large average operation scale, the cultivated land area managed by the cooperatives accounts for 27% of the total cultivated land area. Large-scale operation has become the main way of agricultural operation, with the large-scale operation of total cultivated land reaching 70%.

Key words: agriculture, cultivated land, scale of operation, prediction, cultivated land transfer