Wheat Farmers And The Determinants Of Varietal Diversity In China

Few studies have explored the economic reasons behind genetic diversity in crop production, though many have described it. Genetic diversity can be analyzed at national, regional and household levels. But the study on crop diversity at the household level is rarely found in the literature. Considering wheat holds an important position in crop production, the objective of this paper is to use rigorous economic analysis to examine the impact of various factors on wheat diversity at the household level.To attain this goal, we select the provinces of Shandong, Shanxi and Gansu as the sample bases, which represent winter wheat of Huang-huai-hai agro-ecology, winter wheat agro-ecology in north of China, and winter and spring wheat agro-ecology in northwest of China, respectively. Use of stratified sampling method, two counties with one poorer and the other richer one are selected in each province, and in each county five villages are chosen randomly. In all we randomly sampled 238 households for interviews.After examining the genetic diversity at the household level measured in three alternatives: richness(number of varieties), abundance(Berger-Parker index), and evenness(Shannon index), and the factors that associate with the variation of wheat genetic diversity among households, the determinants of wheat genetic diversity areestimated econometrically.The results show that the rising farmer's ability to avoid income or consumption risks, favorable land environment, and increasing opportunity cost have lowered crop diversity whereas increasing market supply of varieties, wheat consumption and commercialization are more likely to increase genetic diversification. These results are both significant and helpful towards gaining a better understanding of the diversity that is observed in the farm fields, and towards better informing the government as it carries out relevant policy actions, and towards offering the important reference in connected to genetic diversity study in other crop production at the household level.Several implications are derived from the above findings. First, as fanners' income rises and diversifying their income from non-crops and non-farm activities, the households are dependent less on diversification of crop varieties to decrease income and consumption risk. Second, with China's WTO accession and trade liberalization, conservation of genetic diversity in farm fields will face more challenges. Thirdly, the advances of Land Conservation Program and land consolidation are is adverse to the efforts dedicated to encourage farmer' in situ conservation of crop genetic diversity. In every case the trend shows there will be a challenge to enhance the crop genetic diversity at the household level.Based on the results above, it is necessary to give the preferential condition in light of supply of seed for fanners to participate in the action of in situ conservation of genetic diversity by means of increasing market supply of varieties. It is also suggested that national plant breeding program may consider to incorporate crop genetic diversity as one of the major breeding objectives, and the fanners who conserve higher crop diversity in farmer fields should be assisted or compensated.