A Study On Transfer Of Pig Production Layout Constrained By Environmental Issues

The comparative advantages of the pig production can be reflected in natural conditions, technical conditions, can also be reflected in the socio-economic conditions. With the changes in regional comparative advantage, China’s pig production layout has been changing. Previous studies suggest that the market supply and demand, transportation, processing and trade and other socio-economic factors have become the main constraints of the layout changes compared to natural, climatic and other factors in the last three decades. From the1990s, Chinese pig production layout changes have driven by economical factors rather than natural ones.Since2000, pollution caused by pig production attracted more and more attentions, environmental issue became another important factor to influent pig production layout. Walter&Ugelow (1979) proposed the "pollution haven hypothesis (the pollution haven hypothesis, PHH), that is pollution-intensive firms tend to migrate from areas with strict environmental regulations to areas with loose environmental regulations, so that the latter become a "pollution haven". As obvious gap in environmental regulations exists in China, to explain the changes in the layout of pig production from an environmental perspective will become a critical supplement for pig layout transfer. Pig production layout changes are caused by changes of the production decisions of many farms. When facing strict environmental regulations, pig farms have to pay compensation for environmental factors by taking pollution treatment and environmental protection measures; while pig farms in areas with loose environmental regulation can reduce the costs of environmental protection. Driven by profit, the farms tend to shift from the strict regulatory regions to loose regions which shown as farms number and yield drop in strict regions and soar in loose regions. To meet the region’s relatively stable demand for pork, this trend will lead to inter-regional pork liquidity increased, in particular in the region the existing differences in environmental regulations. Based on the above logic, this essay verifies the effect of environmental regulations on pig production layout from the two aspects of the production and consumption. It tests whether "pollution haven effect" exists in Chinese pig production layout so as to provide a new explanation for the pig production layout changes. The same time, by farms surveys from Jiangsu Yancheng and Yangzhou, the paper observes the influence of environmental regulation on farms decision-making in micro-level.Studies have shown that:after2000, the number of scale pig farms and yield further experience up in North and down in south, while the production in middle and western origin continued the trend of widening. Number of environmental policies in the region shows a high degree of correlation with pig production layout, performance in reducing pig production in regions with strict environmental policy and increasing pig production in regions with loose environmental regulations. Based on improve the HOV model, the results show, the number of large-scale farms and slaughter capacity will decline in the region with strict environmental regulation, and decrease in the number of farms is greater than the decrease of slaughter. Environmental regulations have a negative impact on number of small and medium-sized farms and slaughter, but its extent is less than the large-scale farms. This shows that the main role of the object of the policy is large-scale farms. Based on the expansion of the gravitational model, analysis results show that, under the influence of environmental regulations, Region with pork net inflows showing the significant inflow rising trend. Regions with net outflow has the outflow rise in the trend; differences in environmental regulations play significant role in promoting the volume of trade between regions. By microscopic evidence from the farm-survey, the huge cost pressure is an important reason for the city and county levels-scale farms do not want to take environmental protection measures, in this case, located in lax environmental regulation (including inadequate supervision and ineffective punishment) region has become the most economical option.The estimation and judgement on water carrying capacity of the regions are the basis of rational planning of pig layout. Based on the theories and methods of water footprint, combined with the characteristics of live pigs and agricultural production, this paper estimates the water footprint of pig production and water surplus in producing areas and takes water surplus as indicators to measure the water resources carrying capacity. The calculation results show that:Anhui, Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei, Guangdong and Yunnan are large water-consuming r provinces, relatively speaking, pig production in these areas is of the larger pressure on water resources. Except Jiangsu, most of the provinces in the southern agricultural areas are of water surplus and could conditionally expand pig production scale. In the northern agricultural areas, the three northeastern provinces and Anhui are water surplus while Hebei, Henan and Shandong have been in the state of water deficit. When only considering the water resources carrying capacity, the pig layout should adjust from the water deficit areas to water surplus areas. Calculations on pig production environmental aggregated comparative advantage show that the pig production layout adjustments in the future should be directed towards the south-western provinces and Heilongjiang Province, some of the traditional pig production areas such as Henan, Hunan, Hubei and Shandong Province should pay close attention to the changes of water surplus and appropriately control the scale of pig production speed.The conclusions of this paper verify the impact of environmental regulation on pig production layout, the "pollution haven" effect leads pig farming transferred to the regions with relatively relaxed environmental regulations, and promote inter-regional pork circulation. Production layout changes show impact on water resources carrying capacity of the region. Water resources carrying capacity and aggregated environmental comparative advantage could provide the guide on layout change. Accordingly, the proposed policy recommendations include:1, regions, especially the less developed emerging pig-producing areas, should be under the guidance of the concept of sustainable development, to develop and improve the environmental policies and regulationsand strengthen the supervision;2, scale pig farms should not rely on lax environmental regulation to reduce the cost of environmental protection, but should focus on environmental technology innovation to form long-term comparative advantage;3, emphasizing the inter-regional collaboration;4, the region should adjust and optimize the pig production layout combined with the use of water resources status, so as to avoid the ecological threshold.