Studies On The Reform Of Agricultural Extension System In China

Agriculture plays a vital role in China's national economy. China has enjoyed rapid and overall growth since the reform, which is ranked as one of the nation's great achievements. Agricultural extension, agricultural research, agricultural education, plus the support of favorable policies and mobilization of investment, contribute enormously to the development of agriculture and rural economy. As the major carrier and means of applying agriculture innovation to production, the foundation and basic strcucture of agricultural extension, agricultural extension system is an important component of government's support and protection of agriculture. The completion of bottom up agriculture system in China will substantially boost the agricultural technology and agriculture production. With the passing Millennium, fundamental changes are underway in China's agriculture while the current agricultural extension system remains it was in the planed economy 20 years ago. Within it, the increasing evidence of barriers between different departments or regions, inefficiency, overstaffing make a thorough reform of the current agricultural extension systems an imperative task: the existing agriculture system and its management and operation which shaped and function well in planed and scarce economy can no longer serve in growing market economy, therefore impeding the fast development of agriculture and rural economy. Theoretically and practically, the dissertation examines the existing agriculture system, investigates its background identifies the emerging and critical problems facing it, and last but not least, provides policy solutions. Based on the redefinition of agricultural extension, the dissertation employs the adoptation and diffusion theory of technology innovation, the theory of farmer behavior change, and the theory of agricultural information system to the research of the three sub-systems of agricultural technology (the research, extension and adaptation of technology) through case-study and the comparison between agricultural extension systems in different countries. Aiming at finding out the inherent laws of its reform and policy recommendation for it, the dissertation discusses and analyses the entities of agricultural extension system in socialist market economy which consists of government's agricultural extension departments, agriculture research institutions, farmer households, and rural professional technology associations. Systematic thinking, comparison, exemplification and induction, integrating theory with practice, the combination of historic and realistic perspective are featured in the dissertation. Although the evolution of foreign countries'agricultural extension system is tuned in their own conditions, there are some applicable expertise we can share and benefit from: Strengthen the function of government as a director and bolster in agricultural extension; intensify efforts to enact and perfect laws and regulation pertain to agricultural extension; diversify investment modes, attract and increase investment in agricultural extension; promote the close collaboration between research, education, and extension departments; fully utilize market entities such as farmer associations and enterprises; expand vocational education in rural areas to improve the quality of farmers. The government's extension system is the backbone of the entire agricultural extension system, covering crop, forestry, livestock, fishery, agriculture machinery, water conservancy, and management from national level to local level. But now its decentralized organization and mismanagement, expenditure and talent shortage are exposed in the booming new economy: it is lag behind and its operation fails to satisfy the need of market economy. Beside, rural professional technology association, an essential chain of agricultural extension, develops slugglishly: their smallness, weakness inadequate management mechanism and uncertain legitimate identity, these unsolved issues, are up against the incipient rural professional technology associations. The implementation of responsibility system of contact for output makes farmers the micro unites of agriculture production and management. Agricultural technology is received and executed by them and ultimately meets their demands. But there are series of factors that curb their effective demands for agricultural technology: slow income growth and fund shortage; small farming; ignorant of science and technology; shrink from the risk of application of new technology; lack of loan; have little access to facilities of promulgating science and technology in rural areas. Agriculture research is the spring of agricultural technology's development, the principal push of agriculture production growth and farmer's income growth. The organizational structure, operation and function of it have a direct impact on the development of agricultural extension. The drawbacks in current organizational system of agriculture research keep its technology innovation capacity from measuring up to agriculture development, which becomes the bottleneck of agricultural extension. The disadvantages are becoming increasingly obvious: overstaff and overburden; limited research field, inappropriate discipline division; human resource shortage and uneven distribution; inadequate laws and regulations for encouraging investment and declining input; divergence between research and agricultural extension, agriculture production; lack of necessary interest-driven mechanism. The dissertation provides respective policy recommendations drew from the previous analysis of above problems for government, farmer, research system, and rural professional technology association. For government: accelerate thefunctional reform of agricultural extension system; strengthen the extension station's function as a multiple service provider; expedite the structural reform on county and township levels, and the construction on grassroots'level; guarantee the implementation of agricultural technology extension; build up strong teams of agricultural extension and provide training programs for them. For farmer: arouse their science and technology awareness to utilize technology; resort to technology to increase farmer's income; set up precaution mechanism to reduce the risk of technology application; by setting up technology exemplary zones, introduce new technology to the farmers; make new technology foolproof. For research system: optimize organizational structure, in other words, identify their respective responsibilities and tasks; rectify and readjust investment mechanism; launch interest-driven mechanism and check-and-balance mechanism. In addition, it is impossible extent agricultural technology without sound macro regulation and control. A favorable legal environment for the implementation of agriculture reform necessitates the strengthening and completing of relevant legislations.