| At present, China’s agriculture is in its critical period of labor division and production mode transformation. Due to the constraints from resource endowment and institutional arrangements, agricultural internal conditions, such as the scale of operation can not achieve significant breakthrough in the short term, external conditions, taking agricultural machinery service for example, play an even more important role in supporting and promoting agriculture transformation. In the process of rapid marketization and agriculture transformation, the demand of agricultural manchinery service increases rapidly, although the supply is changing, the problem of unbalanced development is obvious.It is worth noting that, as the policies about labor and land transfer gradually liberalized, traditional and closed peasant economy has continuously entered into a more open and division social system, which leads to agricultural management entities differentiating quickly. Especially, because of the rapid growth of new agricultural management entities, the demand of agricultural machinery service becomes more large-scale and diversification, which make the inadaptability of traditional service mode and related support policies more obviously. Therefore, it is urgent and important to analyze the development of agricultural machinery service from the perspective of supply and demand.This study begins with evolution history of agricultural management entities by using institutional economics theory, agricultural economics theory, and development economics theory, then analyzes the trend of futher differentiation. Secondly, explains why agricultural machinery service grows and its development process in China. In the empirical session, explores the impact of agricultural management entities differentiation on machinery service demand, and factors which can influence the demand behavior and the difference among different types of agricultural management entities by using econometric methods. After that, analyzes the reasons why machinery service shows an unbalanced development path from the supply-side. Finally, estimates the new requirement for the development of machinery service from the macro and micro levels. The main conclusions of this study are as follows:1. Agricultural machinery service is not only the key input factor of agricultural production, but also represents a new mode of agricultural production. Its development is also determined by economic development, institutional arrangements, and policy factors.2. Agricultural management entities differentiation causes complex effects on demand of machinery service. Compared to personal characteristics, the differentiation of operation characteristics have more significant influence on demand behavior of machinery service, which implies machinery service can help alleviate constraints effects caused by age, gender, educational level differentiation to agriculture development. More important, the differentiation of planting scale does not affect the demand behavior of machinery service, which indicates machinery service can help weaken the large-scale requirement by machinery operation.3. Some agricultural management entities have demand willingness for machinery service, but did not purchase it. The influence factors are quite different among different types of agricultural management entities, which indicates machinery service plays different roles for different types of management entities. Specifically, (1) because age and the number of agricultural labor force have significant impact on type one farmers ’demand behavior of machinery service, the main role of service is to make up the shortage of labor force. (2) for the type two farmers, the main role of service is releasing labor force. (3) the role of service to large-scale management entities is not only replacing labor, but also reducing production costs and getting more efficient economics of scale, so the key of large-scale management entities’ decision-making is comparing the transaction costs between outsourcing machinery service and purchasing agricultural machine.4. The contradiction of coexistence of insufficient supply and excess supply is obvious. Futher, the differentiation of agricultural management entities makes such contradiction more complex. The main reasons of the imbalance development between supply and demand of machinery service are as follows: (1) the structure of machinery service provider is unbalanced, expecially among region and planting process; (2) the widespread existence of small-scale and dispersion service providers, and lack of industry quality standards; (3) the indirect and low relevance of agricultural machinery subsidies.5. The overall development trend of service providers is becoming more large-scale and professional. Due to big difference in acquaintance, business scale, operating costs, service radius and targeted market, the relationship among different kinds of service supply mode is not absolute compertitive, on the contrary, also shows complementary feature.6. Economic and social development trend, agricultural transformation, and agricultural management entities differentiation can lead to profound changes in the volume and structure of machinery service demand. Firstly, the rapid growth of new agricultural management entities promotes a higher requirement of service development, such as large-scale, full-range, diversification, high quality. Secondly, long-term esistence of small-scale and part-time farmers makes localization, integration, hosting service have a widely market demand.Based on the above analysis, the main policy recommendations of this study are as follows:(1) adjust the existed agricultural machinery subsidies to agricultural machinery service subsidies; (2) strengthen the support policies of large-scale machinery service providers; (3) support the growth of localization machinery service providers; (4) strengthen the construction of productive rural infrastructure.
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