Research On Production Efficiency Of Cultivated Land In Shaanxi Province

Cultivated land is the essence of land resources, and it's the primary condition for human's surviving. Nearly 90% of our food comes from cultivated land. Therefore, its dynamical change and utilization efficiency are the key points of the regional sustainable development and food safety. By the end of 2008, the population in Shaanxi province has reached 37.62 million, but its per-capita cultivated land merely covers 0.0757hm2, which is not only lower than the national average (0.09hm2) , but also far lower than the world average of 0.37hm2. This critical condition in the shortage of reserve resources of cultivated land can hardly be relieved in the short term. Meanwhile, with the fast pace of industrialization and urbanization, more and more cultivated lands will be inevitably taken up, the contradiction between human being and the lands will become increasingly intense. And the question of how to give the maximum protection and utilization to the present cultivated lands, together with how to raise its production efficiency has become one of the hottest issues of our theorists and government. Thus researches on the production efficiency of cultivated land in Shaanxi are extremely important in theory and in practice.Based on theories of production function, efficiency and productivity, the thesis starts from an analysis on the present condition and problems of cultivated land utilization in Shaanxi, adopts Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist Productivity Index, measures and evaluates the cultivated land production efficiency in Shaanxi from the perspective of space and time. At the end of the thesis, the diversity of regional land production efficiency and its regularity of changes are pointed out. And with a further analysis, using Tobit regression module, the affecting direction and degree of different factors on production efficiency are revealed, while some related policy recommendations are made specifically to the problem.The thesis'research conclusions are as follows:(1) The current condition of cultivated land resource utilization in Shaanxi is far from being satisfactory. Through analysis, it has been found out that the utilization still remains in a rough stage, while the agriculture yields is lower than expectation. Among the lost lands, most are fertile arable lands which lie on the edge of the cities and along railways and highways. In the mean time, due to the strategy differences in different developing areas in the province, the speed of land loss in each area is different. The loss of the land in the center and northern areas of Shaanxi is more serious.(2) There is a sharp distinction between the production efficiency of cultivated land among 11 cities is Shaanxi. The areas which are with high producing efficiency are the major producing areas of agricultural products, or the areas with better production conditions, and areas that are supported with favorable policies by the central government. Through a comparison of the technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency in different areas, it is obvious to note that a low pure technical efficiency leads to a technical efficiency in DEA ineffective areas. After projection analysis about six areas in Shaanxi Province where the production efficiency of cultivated land is not effective according to DEA, details of redundant investment and insufficient production in each area have been found out, which provides rational consultations for these areas formulating further investment plan according with their own actual situation.(3) Cultivated land Malmquist total factor productivity index changes either from the perspective of the overall or regional differences. First of all, on the whole, from 1990 to 2008, cultivated land Malmquist total factor productivity grew quickly in whole province. But the growth rate from the"Eighth Five-Year"Period to the"Tenth Five-Year"Period had declined. In The"Eleventh Five-Year"period, the growth rate increased in the first three years. Cultivated Land Malmquist total factor productivity index growth rate remained at 4% average annual. Secondly, from view of the structure of the growth, in most of the years from 1990 to 2008, the growth of cultivated land Malmquist total factor productivity index was considerably caused by technological progress, rather than the growth of technical efficiency. Thirdly, from the view of regional differences,cultivated land Malmquist total factor productivity growth in different areas is totally diverse. At last, from analysis on the aspect of astringency, there is not onlyσconvergence existing in Shaanxi Cultivated Land Malmquist total factor productivity index, but also absoluteβconvergence and conditionalβconvergence. Cultivated Land Malmquist total factor productivity index in each area will maintaining at the same level with time going by.(4) The cultivated land production efficiency in Shaanxi is affected by various factors. From multianalysis, it has been discovered that unit of cultivated land of agricultural machinery power, the proportion of the affected area in total sown area and financial support for agriculture and financial expenditure have significant negative impact on the technical efficiency of cultivated land more. Effective irrigation rate, per-capita GDP and the policy dummy variable have significant positive impact on the technical efficiency of cultivated land. In the analysis of farming scale influence, the results have the same conclusion in analysis of influencing factors of the technical efficiency of land.Innovations of this research: By introducing Data Envelopment Analysis and Malmquist total factor productivity index method, this paper, respectively from the spatial and time dimensions, not only conducted a comprehensive analysis on cultivated land technical efficiency, pure technical efficiency, scale efficiency and total factor productivity, but also analyzed how the factors affect the production efficiency of cultivated land by using Tobit model. So to some extent, this paper amends previous research methods which only focus on the efficiency of the calculation, but ignore the use of quantitative methods to analyze the factors which affect the efficiency.