Impacts Of Rural Labor Migration And Price Rising On Cropping Structure

Since the reform and opening up,China's rural labor force,as a productive factor with significant changes in characteristics,has different mobility characteristics in different regions,and the differences between regions are giant large.However,the basic national conditions of large-scale country and small-scale farmers have determined that small-scale households will continue to be the main mode of agricultural operations in China,and labor resources are still an important agricultural productive factor.Meanwhile,the crop planting structure in China has also undergone tremendous changes in the past few decades.Among factors that affect the changes in crop planting structure,rural labor and its price rising are important factors that cannot be ignored in the changes in crop planting structure.This study first analyzed the phased trend of rural labor transferring and labor price,and the characteristics of crop planting structure.After through in-depth theoretical and empirical analysis,the study analyzes the following: 1).the impact of rural labor transfer and prices on the overall level of crop planting structure,and its effect on the provincial differences;2).Based on macro provincial data,regional impact analysis of rural labor transfer and price increasing on crop planting structure from the perspective of regional differentiation of rural labor transferring;3).Interactive effect and mechanism of rural labor transfer and price rising on regional crop planting structure change.4).Using the micro-farm household survey data,evaluated the impacts and differentiations of agricultural labor force and rural labor price on crop planting structure in different regions based on the perspective of rural labor floating categories.The main findings are:First,the spatial-temporal changes in crop planting structure have shown the following characteristics: The production center of gravity of all crops shows fluctuating characteristics,and yet the spatial concentration has increased.The regional division of labor and specialization of crop production are further improved,and the level of regional division of labor and specialization are further enhanced.There was significant spatial heterogeneity and spatial autocorrelation for most crops' planting structure changes,with significant agglomeration characteristics.The average Moran's indexes increased markedly for corn and vegetables,and the same index was stable for wheat,and declined lightly for rice and soybean.For food crops the index increased in fluctuation.Food crop production present high-high associations in the Northeast China and North China.Vegetable production is concentrated in the eastern China.Northeast region is the dominant soybean production area in China.Meanwhile,rice producing area were in the Central China and South China,while the strong dominance area of wheat and corn were in Huang Huai-Hai Plain and in the northeast region,respectively.Secondly,(1)rural labor transferring in China presents significant periodic characteristics.The trend of labor force migration is basically consistent with the characteristics of macroeconomic trends and fluctuations.Such trends can be divided into: local labor force migration in the pre-industrial period from 1978 to 1989,off-site rural labor transferring in the early industrial period from 1990 to 1999,then in an equitable and orderly manner in the middle industrial period from 2000 to 2010,and in the late industrial period from 2011.(2)since the reform and opening up,the wages of both off-farm agricultural labor and agricultural hired worker showed a rising trend.(a)The wage of migrant workers keeps rising,showing a trend of widening wage gap between different industries and of narrowing gap between regions.The proportion of wage income in the total income of rural households keeps increasing.(b)The employment price of main crops in the central region is higher than that of eastern region,and the western region remains the lowest.In terms of different types of crops,the labor price of rice,soybean and cotton with concentrated working time and labor intensity are higher than that of vegetables and oil crops with long working cycle but less average intensity.Thirdly,the effects of rural labor migration and price rising on crop planting structure vary provinces.The migration of rural labor will make farmers transfer their cropping structure to the grains which need less agricultural labor input and the labor needed can be substituted by agri-machines.However,the adjustment of crop planting structure of the farmers faces some certain constraints,such as the difficulty of labor-machinery substitution and whether there is more market space for product adjustment.In the face of rising rural labor costs,it's a rational behavior for producers using high-input and high-output products instead of low-input and low-output products,and balancing the rise in production costs by selling relatively high prices and incomes from high value-added products.In addition,industrialization agricultural mechanization,per capita cultivated area,agricultural subsidy,fertilizer and disaster all had considerable impacts on crop planting structure,with various effects both in impact directions and levels.Fourthly,based on the three labor floating categories,this chapter examined different regional impacts of rural labor migration and price rising on crop planting structure.Results show that as to the three labor floating categories,different impacts of rural labor migration and price rising on crops area had been observed.The rapid increasing of labor price imposed the following influences: positive impacts on the proportion of vegetable areas,negative impacts on the proportion of grain areas in those three classified regions and on the proportion of rice area in migration-in and migration-out regions,and positive impacts in inactive regions which had a smaller floating population.Simultaneously,agricultural labor migration imposed significantly positive impacts on vegetable,oil-bearing crops and wheat in all regions and some negative impacts on corn areas.With respect to rice,labor migration had some negative impacts in migration-out and in inactive regions and some positive impacts in migration-in regions.Fifthly,the interactive effect of rural labor transferring and price rising on crop planting structure is discussed based on the three labor floating categories.It's found that the contribution intensity and level of the interaction effects between rural labor transferring and price rising on crop planting structure are vary significantly.With rural labor migration and price rising,migration-in regions tend to expand the cropping area with high added value and reduce the cropping area with huge labor input.Rural labor price rising is not conducive to the increase of the proportion of traditional grains and cotton,and rural labor migration is beneficial to increase the proportion of corn and wheat areas with less labor input,furthermore unfavorable to increase the proportion of rice areas that consumes labor and time in the migration-out regions.Rural labor price rising is positive to the proportion of cash crops areas but negative to the proportion of traditional grain crops and cotton,and rural labor transferring is beneficial to the increase of the proportion of wheat areas with labor-saving type and inhibits the increase of the proportion of vegetable areas with time-consuming type.Sixthly,this chapter analyzes the impact of household's agricultural labor and its price on the farmers crop planting structure at household level based on the three labor floating categories.Results revealed that the impacts of household's agricultural labor and its price on crop planting structure vary across regions,and the contribution direction of the factors was consistent with the macroscopic conclusions in the corresponding areas.Meanwhile,the crop planting structure of farmers in the three subregions are also affected by factors such as individual heterogeneity characteristics(age,gender,education level,etc.),crop mechanization level,landform categories,and crops' net profit.Based on the above findings,all the observation of the study recommended that the regional division of crop planting structure should be deepened according to local conditions;rural human capital should be enhanced and the quality of workers engaged in agriculture should be improved.the research and development and innovation of the agricultural machinery should be pushed to realize the transformation of modern agricultural production mode.Then put forward relevant specific policy recommendations.