Study On The Influence Of Agricultural Machinery Service On Farmers’ Differentiation And Grain Management Scale

For a long time,promoting the moderate scale management of agriculture is the trend of China’s agricultural development,and it is also one of the key directions of China’s agricultural economic system reform.Most researchers and politicians have advocated promoting the moderate scale management of China’s agriculture by promoting the transfer of agricultural land.However,the truth is the actual process of rural land transfer in China is far lower than expected,and agricultural production is in a dilemma of ‘involution’ development.Therefore,in the current and a long-term period,the small-scale peasant family management based on the household contract responsibility system will still be the main mode of China’s agricultural management.In that way,it is particularly important to deal with the relationship between small-scale peasant family management and moderate-scale agricultural management.At present,the agricultural socialization service represented by agricultural machinery services is not only an important bridge connecting small-scale peasant families and modern agriculture,but also an effective way to develop moderate scale management of agriculture.In 2018,the No.1Document of the Central Committee emphasized that it is necessary to develop various forms of moderate scale management.Then,in 2019,the No.1 Document of Central Committee also proposed to accelerate the cultivation of various socialized service organizations,and requested further implementation of connection between small-scale peasant families and modern agriculture.Both of the Documents showed that it’s government policy bias to replace or compensate for the lag of ‘land scale’ with ‘service scale’,which is also in line with the internal and external constraints currently faced by China’s agriculture.It is feasible at the practical and theoretical levels to promote China’s agricultural moderate scale management through developing agricultural machinery services.On the practical level,agricultural machinery services can reduce the excessive dependence of agricultural production on land scale,and peasants will have greater freedom in agricultural production,which can achieve a lower level of production balance and conditions for expanding the management scale,so as to realize the coexistence of small peasant economy and scale management.On the theoretical level,the introduction of agricultural machinery services has realized the ‘service scale ’,which has the same scale effect as ‘land scale’.Both of them essentially meet the core requirements of scale economy theory and realize the scale on factor level.They both have the effect of improving the efficiency of agricultural production.In short,agricultural machinery services provide new development ideas for promoting the moderate scale management of agriculture in China.Based on what’s elaborated before,if peasants use agricultural machinery services as a new production factor,what impact will it have on the scale of peasant family management? How do peasants use agricultural machinery services to improve the constraints of agricultural production? How will it change the balance of peasant family management? Especially under the current situation of the general peasants differentiation,and the differences of the constraints and objective functions among different types of peasants in agricultural production,what is the relationship between agricultural machinery services and peasants differentiation? If the agricultural machinery services break the original equilibrium,can the new reformed equilibrium achieve Pareto improvement? On the micro level,can agricultural machinery services increase farmers’ income? On the macro level,is it helpful to promote food production? Can the goals at the micro level and macro level be consistent? And what kind of policy implications does it contain? These questions will gradually appear with the development and improvement of agricultural machinery services.Although some papers have talked about this,most of them are qualitative analysis,lacking of comprehensive and systematic review,and no relatively consistent research conclusions have been given.The discussion and answer to the above questions constitute the core of this study.Based on the theory of rational small-scale peasant families,the scale economy theory and the labor division theory,this paper makes use of the econometric model to systematically examine the impact of agricultural machinery services on the moderate scale management of peasant families from both theoretical and empirical levels.The main contents and related conclusions of this paper are as follows:1.Study on the impact of agricultural machinery services on peasants’ differentiationBased on the fact of Chin’s peasants differentiation tend,this paper uses the micro-survey data of peasants to explore the impact of agricultural machinery services on peasants’ differentiation from the perspective of peasants’ differentiation willingness and peasants’ income differentiation.The empirical results show that:(1)With the continuous transfer of rural labor to the outside,the agricultural labor force shows obvious characteristics of aging and feminization.With the introduction of agricultural machinery services to the peasants,they can improve their labor endowment,thus improving the actual operation ability.On the one hand,it can enhance the willingness of small-scale peasant families to stay in agriculture;and on the other hand,it can promote their willingness to be large households.(2)Agricultural machinery services will increase the proportion of agricultural income of peasants.Even after controlling the endogeneity between agricultural machinery services and peasants’ differentiation,the promotion effect of agricultural machinery services on peasants’ income is still stable.In summary,agricultural machinery services can be perfectly matched with the existing rural labor force.It can optimize the allocation of family labor resources and promote the internal division of labor force.And it can provide guarantee for the peasants to expand their management scale by improving their cultivation ability of labor.2.Perspective of peasants’ income growth: the impact of agricultural machinery service input on peasants’ moderate scale management This section will focus on whether the introduction of agricultural machinery services can promote peasants’ income.In addition,this paper also attempts to clarify the relationship among agricultural machinery services,peasant family management scale and peasant family income.(1)On the micro level,this paper takes food as an example to study the impact of agricultural machinery services(machine-farming services,machine-casting services and machine-collecting services)on labor productivity and cost-benefit ratio of agricultural labor and labor productivity(including agricultural and non-agricultural labor)of labor.The results show that the impact of agricultural machinery services on agricultural labor productivity is positive,and the impact on cost-benefit ratio is negative.That is to say the impact of agricultural machinery services on peasants’ agricultural production efficiency is uncertain,but they have a significant improvement impact on the production efficiency of peasant families,which shows that the agricultural machinery services have a significant improvement effect on the production efficiency of peasants families.(2)On the macro level,this paper uses the provincial panel data and panel vector auto-regressive model to show the dynamic impact relationship among agricultural machinery services,rural labor transfer and peasants’ income growth.The results show that increasing the input of agricultural machinery services can promote the transfer of rural labor so as to achieve the increase of peasants’ income.(3)This paper takes advantage of the mediation effect model to explore the relationship among agricultural machinery services,peasant management scale and peasant income,and analyzes the impact of agricultural machinery services on the peasant family management scale.The results show that agricultural machinery services can indirectly affect peasant income by approving peasant management scale,and after eliminating the endogenous relationship between agricultural machinery services and the peasant family management scale,agricultural machinery services can still positively affect the peasant family management scale.3.Perspective of food security: the impact of agricultural machinery services input on the moderate scale management of peasant familiesThe research objectives of this part mainly include two points:(1)Using provincial panel data to test the impact of agricultural machinery services on the efficiency of food production technology,and taking wheat as an example to conduct a robustness test.The results show that agricultural machinery services can promote the efficiency of production technology of food and wheat,and optimize the allocation of agricultural production factors.(2)Under the condition of food security,this paper focuses on analyzing the impact of agricultural machinery services on the peasant family management scale on the basis of studying the impact of agricultural machinery services on grain yield,planting area and total output.The results show that agricultural machinery services can replace the labor force well and alleviate the negative impact of labor shortage on food production.Agricultural machinery services can increase the average scale peasant family management,and have a positive effect on agricultural production.The results also show how the agricultural machinery services influence the peasant family management scale in every phase.At present,the process of land scale in China is hindered and the scale of service is developing rapidly.The empirical research results of this paper also show that developing service scale will be a new agricultural scale management mode after land scale,but we cannot rely entirely on service scale to replace land scale.Although the dependence of agricultural machinery services on the scale of land management is far less than that of the traditional agricultural mechanization,agricultural machinery services still need to match an appropriate land management scale,which shows that ‘service scale’ and ‘land scale’ are complementary and ‘service scale’ also depends on the development of ‘land scale’ while it replaces ‘land scale’.From this point of view,while actively developing agricultural machinery services,we must not neglect the necessity of implementing moderate land scale management.We should pay attention to the synchronization,coordination and interactive development of land scale and service scale management,especially to enhance the adaptability of agricultural machinery services and the development of moderate scale operation of agriculture.In short,this paper expands the connotation and application scope of scale economy theory,explains moderate scale management from a broader level,offers an important reference for the development of various forms of moderate scale management,and also provides a broader development perspective for promoting China’s agricultural machinery development.It has important reference significance for relevant research in the future.