Analysis On China Culitvated Land Use Efficiency Based On DEA-Tobit Two-stage Method

Research on cultivated land use efficiency has been widely carried out in recent years and becomes one of the hot topics gaining universal attention in academic domain. The cultivated land is the distillate of land resource. Along with the economical development and the acceleration of urbanization, part of the cultivated land is inevitably used form on-agriculture. The research on evaluation of cultivated land utilization efficiency has vital significance to improve the use efficiency, increase grain output and alleviate the contradiction between eating and construction.Through the data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach, this study first constructs the index of total-factor cultivated land efficiency (TFCLE) by taking the ratio of actual cultivated land input to target cultivated land input in. Next, we examine the determinants of inefficiency on cultivated land use, especially considering the importance of weather conditions and technological progress. Finally, a set of policies which help to improve cultivated land use efficiency have been suggested. Based on a province-level panel data over 1997-2006, the empirical estimates indicate that TFCLE is moderate and fluctuates during the sample period, ranging from 0.601 to 0.713, appearing L line, and suggesting room,28.5%-30.9%, for efficiency improvement in Chinese farmland use. The average national TFCLE is 0.649 that as same as 2006's. In terms of geographical distribution, the uppermost category includes Beijing, Hainan, Xinjiang, and Qinghai is the lowest one; the TFCLE of coastland is higher than Hinterland's. The second-stage regression results show that natural and artificial disasters, flood, drought, and pollution are the main causes of inefficiency. On the other hand, innovative activity and FDI are evidenced to have a significantly positive relation with TFCLE in Chinese agriculture. We also find positive TFCLE-enhancing effects of production diversification and import competition. According above analysis, there are many ways to improve the cultivated land use efficiencies, which can be lined as follows, controlling the shrunk of cultivated land, bettering the cultivated land quality, the capacity of preventing natural disaster in agriculture, scientifically and moderately adjusting input factors, and improving the ecological environment around cultivated land.