Differentiating ownership, contract and use rights over collective farmland is key to boosting urbanisation and professionalising agriculture. Policymakers are targeting a clear legal definition of collective economic organisations, and individual households’ stake in them, to bring them up to speed with modern corporate governance. Legally clarifying peasant households’ right to contract out land to professional operators would, they hope, give greater legal guarantees to both, smoothing peasants’ migration to cities and opening up corporate farming.