Study On Performance Of Grain Subsidy Policies From The Perspective Of Farmers' Producing Behavior

Agriculture is the basis of the country; food is the first necessity of the people. As for a big country with population of 1.3 billion, stabilize and increase grain production has always been the basis of china's economic development, social stability and national self-reliance. Since the year 2004, the central government has implemented a series of policies including grain direct subsidy, coprehensive direct subsidy, seeds subsidy and farm-machinery purchase subsidy. Government increases the subsidies every year to protect the benefits of farmers and increase grain production and family income. Therefore, to what extent that grain subsidy policies affect farmrs' grain production behavior? what effects of the existing subsidy policies on raising grain production and farmer income? What farmers'expectations and requirements on the subsidy policies? Especially in the context that the world is facing tough times of food security and experiencing large-scale food crisis, objectively evaluating the performance of grain subsidy policies and further proposing some policy suggestions on improving the grain subsidy policies, Which has very important academic research value and fundamentally application.Based on the theory of farmers'behavior and relevant researches of domestic and foreign studies, this dissertation constructs theoretical model of farmers'behavior in production decision-making with grain subsidy policies embedded in, using the household survey data in Anhui province, empirically studies the impact of grain subsidy policies on farmers'producing behavior. On this basis, this research constructs a programming model of farmers' producing behavior and simulates the effects of grain subsidy policies on farmers'grain output and family income under the scenarios of changing intensity of grain subsidies, prices of labor and agricultural input factors, prices of agricultural outputs and the scale of land management. Accordingly, this study objectively evaluates the performance of grain subsidy policies as well as further proposes some policy suggestions on improving the policy system. The main research contents are as the follow:The first part is the literature review. To begin with, this part summarizes foreign relevant research about agricultural subsidies; Secondly, it comments on domestic relevant research literature about grain subsidy policies. Then it points out the shortcomings of present research and puts forward the tas?the focus and methods of this study.The second part is the reform of grain subsidy policies and the status. The paper retrospects historical changes of china's grain subsidy policies since the reform and opening-up, Then it analyses the background, objectives, system and problems of the existing grain policies during the policy implementation.The third part is the microeconomic analysis of grain subsidy policies. Based on the farmers'behavior theories, this study constructs theoretical model of farmers' behavior in production decision-making with grain subsidy policies, analyzes the impact of grain subsidy policies on the farmers'production, through household survey data in Anhui province and constructs econometric models to empirically study the impacts of grain subsidy policies on farmers' decisions-making about plantation, investment and labor time allocation.The fourth part is the simulation of the subsidy performance. In line with the impact of grain subsidy policies on farmers' producing behavior, the research uses mathematical programming method and constructs programming model of farmers' producing behavior to simulate the effects of grain subsidy policies on farmers' grain production and family income under different scenarios. Accordingly, Objectively evaluate the performance of grain subsidy policies from grain production and family income.The last part is the summary of this dissertation, as well as proposals on further improvement of the grain subsidy policies.The results show that: grain subsidy policies have significantly incentive effects on stimulating farmers to increase grain areas and material capital investment, the more land resource endowed by farmers, the stronger motives for them to increase agricultural inputs. Additionally, using grain subsidies on direct consumption does not significantly affect the level of inputs for grain production. Therefore, it can not judge even suspect the performance of grain subsidy policies from the surfacial phenomenon of using the subsidies. The simulation and optimization results show that: compared with the basic scenario, the low growth of subsidy standards has no obvious effects on grain production and family income. The effects of grain subsidy on increasing production and income are significant if there are the raises of land management scale, agricultural product prices and subsidy standards. The promotional effects of grain subsidy policies are weakened significantly if the prices of agricultural input factors rises. Farmers who have large scale of land management and high proportion of growing grain are more sensitive to the change of grain subsidy policies, and the policies'impact on grain production and family income is greater. Generally, farmers satisfied with current grain subsidy policies, but disidentify the way of payment, most farmers expect to distribute subsidies interms of the grain actual planting acreage and further raise the standards of grain subsidies to a large degree.The main progresses of this dissertation are the follows:Based on theoretical and empirical analysis of the grain subsidy policies impacts on farmers' producing behavior, this study constructs a programming model of farmers'producing behavior to simulate the performance of grain subsidy policies under different scenarios. It breakes through current evaluation on the policy performance directly from farmers' income or grain production. Take full account of the policy impacts on farmers' agricultural producing behavior and deeply analysis the impacts of grain subsidy policies on farmers'factor inputs behavior especially on non-agricultural labor practices, and the indirect impacts on increasing family income,which expand the research perspective that current research mostly concerned with the effects of grain subsidies on grain production and farming income. Design different policy scenarios including intensity of grain subsidies, prices of labor and agricultural input factors, prices of agricultural outputs and the scale of land management based on the reality of survey area, and simulates the performance of grain subsidy policies under different scenarios,which enriches the current research scenario that mainly focus on changing intensity of grain subsidies.