Research On The Reform Of My Country's Agricultural Support System Under The New Situation

Chinese government has established an agricultural support system by steps since 2004,which is mainly consisted of market support measure,agricultural subsidies and special programs aiming to ensuring food security,efficient supplies for main agricultural products and protecting producers? interests.After CPC's 18 th National Congress,the central government has been optimizing the agricultural support system,such as marketizing the storage mechanisms of cotton,corn and rapeseed,integrating the grain direct,improved seed and comprehensive subsidy for inputs to the subsidy for agricultural support and protection,and cutting down the minimum purchasing prices(MPPP)of rice and wheat.There remain many challenges and the government need to deal with disputes of market intervention policies from WTO and to weaken the dependence of grain supply on imports.It is a consensus to continue to reform the agricultural support system but there is still a controversy on how to promote the reform.This paper will evaluate impacts of MPPPs,and temporary storage policy(TSP)of cotton,corn and rapeseed on output values and material input costs;identify distinct consequences of the TSP removals of cotton,corn and rapeseed and discuss on the reasonability of purchasing prices;investigate the influence of agricultural direct subsidies on material input expense,family incomes and their mobility among income groups;distinguish the key questions of disputes on the market support policies of China under WTO rules;recognize the preference of farmers about policy options;provide some advices for the reform.Main conclusions are listed as below.(1)Basing on 4-period panel data of Chinese Family Panel Survey,and Difference-in-Difference,it concludes that MPPPs can prevent rice and wheat farmers in policy implemented areas from a reduction in output values comparing to not-implemented areas when the policy is de facto triggered,but weak influence on input fees of seeds,chemical fertilizer and pesticide,which means that the policy don't significantly distort the behaviors of usage of chemical fertilizer and pesticide;TSP had played an important role in stabilizing output values and increasing input fees of seeds,chemical fertilizer and pesticide of corn farmers in Northeast region comparing to the rest of China but the policy mechanism totally failed when maize prices dropped sharply,even though the policy stock sharply raised.(2)Basing on the provincial panel data of agriculture and cost-benefit survey,and panel and discontinuity regressions,it finds that the TSP has stronger impacts on production and chemical fertilizer fees of cotton than corn while the weakest is rapeseed;the cancellation of TSP significantly negatively affects rapeseed production mainly because of poor communication about the reform and lack of substituted support policy;it seems that the TSP prices of rapeseed are less reasonable than cotton and corn owing to that discontinuity effects of cotton and corn are statistically significant in equations of chemical fertilizer fees but it's not for rapeseed.(3)Basing on 3-period panel data of Chinese Family Panel Survey,and quantile panel and ordered logit regressions,it shows that an increase in the governmental direct subsidies might stimulate production of rice,wheat and corn,especially those farmer with bigger scale,and the elasticity of seed,chemical fertilizer and pesticide inputs of rice growers to direct subsidies is smaller than wheat and corn;most of sampling families receive direct payments from government and a rise in direct subsidy and its share in family income may not help farmers flow into higher income groups,and keeping well of the family's decision-maker can promote upgrading.The robustness tests indicate that the negative effect is weaker in Central and West areas than East while nonfarm employments can promote up-flow but may not change the negative impact.(4)Basing on reports submitted to WTO and calculations of market support measure of rice,wheat and corn in China,it indicates that the fixed external reference prices of a crop are diverse among member economies and the selections of the quantity of production eligible to receive the applied administered price are also different;abandoning MPPPs may be the only way to satisfy the calculation submitted by the United States to WTO.(5)Basing the Best-Worst Scaling survey conducted on farmers and the ordered logit models,it displays that the targeting price subsidy and market risk management tools with no payment by farmers are most popular while most of farmers dislike a variety of agricultural insurances with subsidy;farmers who own more nonfarm job opportunity,more optimistic attitude to life or larger plantations prefer to supports for agricultural infrastructures and those with a higher degree of relying on farming income favor monetary direct subsidy.(6)It is difficult to coordinate the contradiction among promoting production,satisfying farmers? preference and WTO rules.This paper suggest that the government should maintain the total amount of current supports and continue to implement MPPP of rice and wheat but more actions need be taken to improve transparency and local adaptability of support policies and to enhance the responsibility of provincial governors who charge “rice bag”;on the other hand,the investment on human capital of rural population should raise sharply,especially enhancing nutrition guarantee for the groups of infants,children and pregnant women,and improving the ability of farmers to use knowledge of production and markets which enables them to operate their farming business like an entrepreneur.