Study On The Effect Of Agricultural Subsidies On The Production Behavior Of Large-Scale Rice Farmers

Agricultural subsidy is an important policy for countries to support agriculture.China has implemented the "Three Agricultural Subsidy" policies(Direct Subsidy for Grain,Comprehensive Subsidy for Agricultural Inputs,Subsidy for Improved Varieties)and Minimum Grain Purchase Price Policy since 2014 and these policies have achieved positive outcomes.However,with the development of China's economy,especially the transformation and upgrading of traditional industries,the output of these agricultural subsidy policies start decreasing.In order to ensure food security in a new environment,Chinese government has incorporated "Three Agricultural Subsidy" into one comprehensive subsidy in 2016.The policy objective is to protect cultivated land productivity,support moderate scale operation,and stimulate the development of agricultural business entities.At the same time,from the perspective of supply-side structural reform,lowering the minimum purchase price of grain has become the main focus of grain price system reform.How is the effect of the implementation of above policies? Whether the production behavior of large-scale rice farmers accord with the expected goal of the policy? These questions are worthy of theoretical and practical study.Based on the theory of farmers' behavior and existed research outcome,this paper constructs a theoretical analysis framework of subsidy policy and farmers behavior and agricultural production,discusses the conditions where farmers engage in agricultural production under different types of agricultural subsidies,and empirically analyses the effect of agricultural subsidies on large-scale rice farmers production behavior using the micro-survey data of 419 large rice producers in six grain-producing counties of Hunan Province.First,this paper constructs an analytical framework of policy cognition based on rice farmers' perception of the agricultural comprehensive subsidy,and empirically analyses the impact of policy awareness on policy satisfaction by using order probit model.Second,from the perspective of rice farmers' production behavior,this paper takes the comprehensive subsidy as the core explanation variable and analyzes the effect of this subsidy on the production behavior of large-scale rice farmers.Quantile regression model and instrumentalvariable method were used to analyze the impact of the subsidy policy on large-scale rice farmers in different quantities.Finally,we construct a discrete selection model to study the implementation effect of current price subsidy policy reform.Specifically,we study the rice farmers' adjustment behavior when the minimum purchase price decreases.To sum up,this paper constructs a relatively complete analysis framework,and synthetically uses macro and micro data to reveal the reform effect of the new agricultural subsidy policy from the perspective of farmers.This could help governments improve current agricultural policy system.The results show that no matter what kind of grain subsidy the government implements,it has an impact on the production behavior of large-scale rice farmers.From the output perspective,the effect of price subsidy is greater than the comprehensive subsidy's.From the subsidy perception and satisfaction perspective,rice farmers have a higher awareness of the current implementation of comprehensive subsidy,but they are lack of the awareness towards the subsidy policy's objectives and they see the unfairness in the process of policy implementation.In terms of the effect of direct subsidy policy,the agricultural comprehensive subsidy has a significant impact on the increase of agricultural input.The large rice farmers with different resource endowments have various preference.The price subsidy policy analysis shows that the larger the proportion of grain planting,the more sensitive the large rice farmers are to grain subsidy.And the impact of price subsidy is greater than that of agricultural comprehensive subsidy.Although the adjustment of the minimum purchase price of grain has a negative impact on the income of large-scale rice farmers,the reason why they still choose not to change their planting structure is that the "underpinning" of agricultural subsidies.Therefore,improving the policy space for the minimum purchase price of grain,exploring the "combined" macro policy system,appropriately raising the grain subsidy standards,and constructing a new agricultural support protection policy system will help to stabilize and mobilize the grain farmers' production enthusiasm.The main innovations of this paper are:(1)Based on the theory of division of labor,the theoretical model of the production behavior of large-scale rice farmers under different types of agricultural subsidy standards is constructed,where we consider the agricultural comprehensive subsidy and the minimum purchase price of grain comprehensively.Our study fills the gap of the schizophrenic research on the agriculturalsubsidy policy to a large extent.(2)Based on the perspective of farmers' production decision-making,the performance of different types of agricultural subsidy policies is reflected in the farmers' response to subsidy policies.Again,our study enriches the existing research on the performance evaluation of grain subsidy policies only from the perspective of farmers' income or the quantity of grain output.(3)Combining with the changing direction of the current agricultural and rural situation,this paper focuses on the large-scale rice farmers(over 30 mu),and identifies the cognitive and implementation effect of moderate-scale operators on the current grain subsidy policy,which has certain theoretical significance and practical application value.