Mechanization And Division Of Labor In Chinese Agricultural Production

Since the loosing of Hukou system in the late of last century, thousands of rural labors flock into cities in search of non-farm work, especially in the2004it began to show that there is a shortage of labor in the agricultural production. However, over the past decade, China’s grain production has continued to increase, what’s the reason beyond this phenomenon? From the production point of view of traditional economics theory, labor can only be replaced by agricultural machinery, but many scholars believe that the agricultural production of Southeast Asian countries, due to the implementation of fragmentation, small-scale land operation mode can not promote agricultural machinery, and must implement a land size in order to promote the future of agricultural machinery. In the past decade, China’s land did not realize the scale of operations, then does China’s agricultural mechanization process get the promotion? And is there no substitute of labor?This paper focuses on the above issues, and will analysis them from the macro and micro point of view. Our conclusion shows that:while using the national province date, we find that the stock of agricultural machinery in the past30years have no significant impact on China’s grain output; however, when using the household date from the Ministry of Agriculture, we find the fee of machinery usage has very robust and positive impacts on household’s grain output. This means that China’s grain production has been able to achieve "Eleventh even close" since2002in the background of declining agricultural labor force, its key point is not the increasing of the stock of China’s agricultural machinery, but because the way of using agricultural machinery has changed,-the model of cross-operating, which makes the China’s agricultural machinery can be used more efficiently, and which also gave birth to the emergence of China’s rural agricultural mechanization service market. In this case, a single small-scale farmer do not have to buy their own large-scale agricultural machinery for their own grain production, they just need to outsource the garin’s production process to those special farmers who purchased a large agricultural machinery and provided professional agricultural mechanization services in the countryside.To learn more about why China emerges this agricultural mechanization service market emerge in China countryside, we analysis it from mechanization service’s supply and demand two sides:In trems of supply side, our research conclusion shows that:if individual farmers purchase large agricultural machinery and use only for their own grain production, its cost will be very high. But China has vast territory and there is big climatic difference among various regions, from the south to the north grain’s harvesting time can from a long time gradient, so those farmers who purchase large agricultural machinery can across-harvest for seven monthes in more than ten provinces in China. This across-harvest model can lower the cost of machinery of one unit, with increasing number of areas of harvesting, they can get more profits. So it forms a unique rural China Agricultural Mechanization services market.In terms of demand side, our research conclusion shows that:With the acceleration of Chinese industrialization, increasing of non-farm employment opportunities and labor wages, it broke the Chian’s traditional grain production patterns of "mutual help". And the high wage of rural worker also forces small farmers outsourcing their grain production process to those professional farmers who provide the mechanization service. Only in this way, small farmers can realize the minimization of their production cost. So the current China’s "outsource" production model has been become a Pareto optimal choice.From the comprehensive points of supply and demand sides, we can see that it’s just because the Chinese regional climate difference and labor shortage triggered by industrialization, mechanization service market is induced to emerge in China countryside, which safeguarding the continued increase of Chinese grain output, but also realize the division of labor in agricultural production.Traditional agricultural economics believe that intensive labor pattern is more conducive to the grain production, so in the last part of our paper we use household date from the Ministry of Agriculture to explain whether mechanization service will bring a negative impact on China’s grain production efficiency. Using the method of PSM, our research conclusion shows that there is no significant impact of mechanization service on grain production efficiency.This outsourcing of production process can bring the economics of scale, and also enable the grain production can realize the mechanization in the back of small-scale land management system. It breaks the traditional view that, in the agricultural production, only concentration of land can realize economics of scale and use of machinery.By outsourcing the labor intensive process like harvesting, individual farmers only need to complete the process which asks very little physical labour like planting and management, which realize the division of labor and break the traditional view that agricultural production can’t achieve the division of labor.