On The Influence Of Rural Labor Transfer Upon Agricultural Production In Southwestern China

Throughout the development over the 30 years reform, the industrial structure of primary industry, secondary industry and tertiary industry has been keeping adjusting and a large quantity of rural labor surge into the secondary and tertiary industries. People generally believe that the moderate transfer of rural labor would increase the productive efficiency of agriculture. However, the fact proves that rural labors out-migrating for work is the "double edged sword" for agricultural production. On one hand, appropriate scale of out-migrating for work could improve the efficiency of rural labor utilization, accelerate the adjustment of labors among the layout of different industries, increase income for farmers and enhance the resource endowment of peasant households; on the other hand, when the quantity out-migrating for work exceeds a certain limit, rural labor force investment would be insufficient, which would generate negative influences on the agriculture. Overseas research has already demonstrated such a viewpoint, including traditional population flow theory, such as Lewis Model and Todaro Model and son on, which believes that when the labor force is transferred to a certain level and when the marginal productivity of agricultural labor is larger than that of urban labor, excessive flow of labor force for the sake of relatively high remuneration in urban departments would generate negative influences on the agricultural production and agricultural society. Domestic researches also analyzed the influences of outgoing rural worker on Chinese agricultural production from qualitative and quantitative perspectives, holding that the excessive transfer of rural labor in many agricultural areas affects agricultural development to certain extent, weakens the reserved strength for agricultural production and makes the successors of agricultural production be in shortage.Therefore, on the basis of the objective fact of large quantity of people out-migrating for work and diversified working types, the in-depth recognition of the huge social and economic benefit generated by the migrant workers from rural areas and the debate on the advantages and disadvantages for the development of agricultural production, this paper firstly analyzed the basic status of the quantity and demographic statistics features of people out-migrating for work and marginal productivity in the southwest regions from the perspective of macro data. The paper believes that the out-migrating for work scale in southwest region in 2004 was the turning point, which indicates that the change of rural labor force quantity continuously affects the agricultural output and there is the problem of appropriate out-migrating for work scale for the rural labor force. On the basis of it, the paper expanded the research perspective to put the influences of out-migrating for work in the micro analysis framework of household agricultural production, made detailed analysis from four important dimensions of the relationship between the characteristic agricultural production system structure and function, i.e., agricultural productivity, production structure, land operation scale and agricultural technology usage, and deeply mines the comprehensive influences of the changes of agricultural labor force from four dimensions.In the aspect of agricultural productivity, it mainly analyzed the influences of out-migrating for work on the technical efficiency of household agricultural production. The household food (rice) production served as the perspective for analysis, the method of estimated food production function and the flexible change of analysis factors were used to investigate the influences of out-migrating for work on household agricultural productivity. The paper firstly made analysis of descriptive statistics on the phenomenon that the agricultural productivity changes as the status of labor force, found out the differences between the status with and without members out-migrating for work in terms of the agricultural production output of two teams of household. After that, it studied the relationship among the agricultural labor force out-migrating for work with agricultural productivity and production risk. The investigation statistics showed that the average output of rice of households without members out-migrating for work and with members out-migrating for work are 513 kg/mu (1 mu= 0.067hectare) and 487 km respectively. The research estimated a random frontier production function, involves the agricultural production technology efficiency and production risk into the function, and found that households with members out-migrating for work have higher factor input flexibility than those without members out-migrating for work. Meanwhile, out-migrating for work could provide an effective channel for the redistribution of the labor force in peasant households and thus improve the agricultural productivity. In terms of the agricultural production risk, peasant households with members out-migrating for work and those without members out-migrating for work have different output effects of agricultural production input factors, with the former facing higher agricultural output risk.In terms of the agricultural production structure, the paper analyzes the influences of out-migrating for work on the planting production structure of peasant households from perspectives of peasant households'planting participation ratio, planting area and planting ratio of food crop and cash crop. It found out that there are significant differences among households with members out-migrating for work, households without members out-migrating for work and households with members out-migrating for work at different levels in terms of the food crop planting ratio and the cash crop planting ratio. As for the cash crop production, the labor input and capital input for cash crop per mu in households with migrant workers are 5.3 men/mu and 1237.14RMB/mu respectively:the labor input and capital input for cash crop per mu in households without migrant workers are 3.9 men/mu and 1306.02 RMB/mu respectively. The research showed that the influences of out-migrating for work level on the cash crop production are negative, which is in contrary with the food crop production. That is, the higher the out-migrating for work level of the peasant household family it is, the more it would incline to the food crop production while the less it would incline to the cash crop planting. As the ratio of out-migrating for work of family members increase, the constraint from labor force is becoming more magnificent. Peasant households would tend to reduce the planting area of cash crop while increase the planting area of food crop. According to the research, households with few migrant workers generate little remittance and small agricultural production scale; households with more migrant workers feature more labor force outflow and its agricultural production scale is still relatively small. Therefore, the changes of labor force and capital endowment brought by out-migrating for work urge peasant households to adopt the strategy of substituting the labor with capital and such a substitution effect is more obvious in the cash crop production.In terms of the land operation scale, the research presented that the out-migrating for work makes the family do not have sufficient labor force to carry out the land agricultural production operation to certain extent and thus reduce the possibility of renting land to maintain current scale, to the extent of rent out land. Families featuring the willingness to rent land are generally peasant families who have relatively high level of out-migrating for work and the high non-agricultural income. The more members out-migrating for work in the family and the higher level the out-migrating for work the peasant household it is. the less possibility it would be for them to rent land. The current land area presents correlation with land rent in area. According to the research,1% increase of non-agricultural income would result in 1.13 mu increase of rent-in land area; one more agricultural labor force would make the peasant household rent in 1.23 mu land more; 1 mu increase of the contracting land area results in the 0.31 mu decrease of the rent in land area. Besides, labor force out-migrating for work does not cause the decrease of land operation scale completely and peasant households would not abandon the land operation right completely due to the decrease of labor force. On the contrary, income resulted from migrant work enable some households have capital o rent land. Peasant households with different resource endowments are different in terms of the changes of land renting activities resulted from migrant work. In terms of the agricultural technology utilization, the paper analyzed the current status of peasant households in utilizing agricultural technologies from the perspective of agricultural labor force changes and studies the influences of labor force out-migrating for work on the agricultural technology utilization of peasant households. The data show that among peasant households with temporal migrant workers, they adopt relatively few new rice varieties; "long-term migrant worker" type takes the highest ratio among peasant households adopting new rice varieties. During the analysis process, it tested whether the mutual influences between the peasant households adopting the new seed variety technology with whether households featuring migrant workers and working types, believing that migrant workers of peasant households would generate influences on whether peasant households would adopt high-out rice varieties, which depends on the working types participated by family members. Specifically speaking, different migrant working types (temporal, short term, long term migrant working activities in terms of the working period) result in endowment changes of working income and human resource capital variance, which would generate comprehensive influences on the agricultural technology of peasant households.On the basis of the in-depth analysis on four dimensions of agricultural productivity, production structure, land scale and technology utilization, the paper showed the mechanism, channel and effect of four dimensions on agricultural production, summarizes various generated influences, judges various factors constraining agricultural production and proposes problem solving channels and countermeasures based on theoretical analysis. The paper held that sound agricultural factor market, high organized peasant household coordination, continuously improved peasant household human resource capital level, effective agricultural technology promotion and regulated land circulation would strengthen the inductive effect generated by the labor force transfer, which would thus promote the benign interaction between agricultural labor force out-migrating for work with agricultural production. The produced solving channels resulted from analysis and research countermeasures lay the foundation for the design of policy. The paper proposed suggestions on countermeasures from policy perspective:The paper held that government shall focus more on the "development bonus" brought by urbanization construction, promote the specific urbanization and accelerate the urban-rural integration; shall further optimize rural factor market and optimize resource allocation; shall realize the fundamental change of transfer model on the basis of promoting the orderly flow of labor force and regulate the labor force market system development; shall make great efforts to foster new-type agriculture operation subject and strengthen the farmer employment training force; shall strengthen the input force of rural infrastructure development and provide agricultural production with more social service; shall intensify the innovation-driven agricultural technology and make the agricultural technology innovation serve as important support for the agricultural "supply side" reform and strengthen the important content of public service.Innovative points of the paper:Firstly, in terms of the theoretical framework, the paper works on the features of agricultural production and economic society in the southwest region, especially in the less developed area, constructs the framework analyzing the linkage mechanism between labor force changes constraint by multi-dimensional factors with the agricultural production of peasant households, mainly studies the reaction mechanism between the changes of households'resource endowment and production willingness brought by the labor force out-migrating for work with the agricultural production activity of peasant households, which serves as the theoretical reference for the sustainable development path of agriculture and upgrading the competitiveness of agricultural production; secondly, in terms of the research viewpoint, the paper focuses on the debate on the advantages and disadvantages of labor force out-migrating for work in terms of the development of agricultural production. It gives highlights to the deep comprehensive influences of labor force change on agricultural production. On the basis of the new economic theory of labor force transfer related to the assumptions on households' labor force transfer decision on the short-term output and long-term investment function of households, as well as the labor force distribution theory concerned the households' decision mechanism of non-agricultural employment, agricultural production and employment work, the paper deeply explores the influences of labor force out-migrating for work on the agricultural productivity of households; thirdly, in terms of the research method, the paper combines static economics model and dynamic production system simulated model, considers uncertain factors of production and analyzes and forecasts the long term function of labor force out-migrating for work for the agricultural production system. Besides, the paper analyzes the input-output relation from the micro-level of peasant households, makes in-depth analysis on the research issues and detects problem solving channels which could provide references for the policy resolutions.