The Production Effects Of Rural Households' Agricultural Machinery Use

With the agricultural labor cost continuously increasing,it is rational choices that farmers choose agricultural machinery to substitute the labor,and China's agriculture stepped in a transition period.China government released the agricultural mechanization law and constructed the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy program.Afterwards,the development of agricultural mechanization took off,however,there also exist that imbalanced structure,unbalanced development and low adoption rates.The rapid development of agricultural mechanization has profoundly affected the agricultural inputs and outputs.How to accurately summarize the successful experiences and shortcomings in the development process of agricultural mechanization after 1978? The answer to this question is crucial to the transformation of China's agriculture development in the new era.In practice,agricultural mechanization is important content and means of realization of agricultural modernization.In theory,agricultural mechanization is the best research object to observe the changing trend of agricultural production.Based on the induced technology progress theory and Barnum-Squire household model,this study analyses the rural households' agricultural mechanization behaviors and its production effects,using normative analysis and econometrics model framework.The main contents include the analysis of the historical characteristics of agricultural mechanization development,the adoption behaviors of rural households,and the impacts of agricultural machinery use on agricultural production.In particular,first,based on the national statistics,we systematically analyze the historical characteristics and stylized facts regarding agricultural mechanization development,including the stage characteristics analyses and the comparative analyses the trends of agricultural mechanization,agricultural inputs and outputs.Second,to find the micro-foundation of agricultural mechanization development,we empirically analyze the factors that affect rural household choices among no-mechanized,semi-mechanized and full-mechanized farming practices.The factors affecting the choice of different source of agricultural machinery are also analyzed by using multinomial logit model and CLDS 2016 survey data.Third,to explore the relationship between agricultural mechanization and agricultural labor inputs,we employ the provincial level panel data and recursive mixedprocess model to evaluate the impacts of agricultural machinery on farm labor inputs by taking into account the reverse causality relationship.Fourth,to examine the conservation effects of agricultural machinery use on pesticides inputs,this study estimated the unbiased effects of agricultural machinery use on pesticides inputs by using the endogenous switching regression model and cross-sectional data.Fifth,from the perspective of food security,we examine the potential heterogeneous effects of agricultural machinery use on maize yields,using an unconditional quantile regression model and survey data from China.The two-stage control function approach is employed to address the selection bias issue of agricultural machinery use.Sixth,to explore the comprehensive impacts of agricultural machinery use on agricultural outputs,we evaluated the different effects of three mechanized farming practices on crops' land productivity,employing the multinomial endogenous switching regression model accounting for the self-selection bias.The results show that,first,China's agricultural mechanization development stepped into the quality-oriented and structure adjustment stage.Second,purchasing agricultural machinery service and agricultural machinery are two primary sources used by rural households.Moreover,the farmers' choices of agricultural machinery use are affected by many factors,in which farm size and land certificate significantly impact the choice behavior.Third,agricultural machinery use significantly save farm labor and pesticides inputs.Fourth,agricultural machinery use improves maize yields heterogeneously,and the low-yielding farmers benefit more from using machines.Enlarging farm size helps to improve the yields-effects of agricultural machinery use.Fifth,using agricultural machinery helps to improve land productivity,and with the increase in agricultural mechanization level,land productivity has increased.Compared with the existing literature,this study has the following characteristics.First,we theoretically analyze the impact of agricultural machinery use on farm production and its' mechanism,basing on the theory of induced-technology progress and Barnum-Squire household model.Second,we put the development of agricultural mechanization in a space-time perspective to comprehensively explore the internal structure.From the perspective of micro-farmers,the agricultural machinery use and its' impacts in the production process including pesticides spraying,land cultivating and crop production process are investigated.Third,to control the self-selection bias stemming from both the observed and unobserved factors,we investigated the impacts of agricultural machinery use on agricultural production,employing the advanced econometrics models including recursive mixed-process model,two-stage control function method and endogenous switching regression model.Our findings of this study do have important policy implication.First,the policymakers should make efforts to optimize agricultural machinery structure and integrate machinery and agronomy;Second,governments should develop agricultural machinery service markets,ease the smallholders' constraints and promote the agricultural technology progress;Third,the policies should increase the investment in agricultural infrastructure development,promote the land transfer and scale-appropriate farming and improve the working environment of agricultural machinery;Fourth,the government should construct the agricultural extension system and foster the machinery services,improve the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy to facilitate the use of agricultural machinery by farmers.