An Investigation Of The Optimal Rural Household Farming Size For Flue-Cured Tobacco Planting In The Chongqing Mountain Areas

It is an important direction and the inevitable choice for the development of modern tobacco production, and it is an important task for modern tobacco agriculture to identify optimal farm size of tobacco planting in order to achieve economies of scale. Though Chongqing is one of the most important tobacco producing areas, the tobacco production in Wulong and Qianjiang maintain areas still stays in their traditional mode of small-scale, backward technology, multi-links in the production chain, more labor input, higher labor intensity, unstable productivity, lower economic outcome, lower labor productivity, and lower efficiency of resource utilization for a long time. Therefore, the situation is unfavorable for the sustainable and stable tobacco production development in Wulong and Qianjiang, which are the major tobacco producing counties in Chongqing, and where tobacco is one of the important local crops.There are rich light and suitable soil resources, but they are mainly located in mountainous or hilly areas of Wulong and Qianjiang. So this paper investigates the modern planting pattern in the specific conditions of mountain-scale for tobacco leaves. It is hoped to improve the tobacco production conditions and enhance the level of production and technical content of tobacco leaves, and have a great significance for sustainable and stable tobacco development.Using Data Envelop Analysis (DEA) model, the paper first estimates production efficiencies of 80 tobacco planting households in Wulong and Qianjiang maintain areas, Chongqing, China, and then the optimal farming sizes are identified by using projection analysis. The estimated results show that when the tobacco farm sizes range 1.20-1.67 ha, the input-output ratio is relatively reasonable; labor management is competent; and return to scale is larger. Therefore, it is implied that the optimal planting sizes for tobacco growing households range from 1.20-1.67 ha in Chongqing mountain areas.Finally, the existing questions for factor input are pointed out and the suggestions to improve tobacco production efficiency are provided. Some inspiration and reference for policy implications with the existing problems in the process of tobacco production are provided. The paper proposes the general tobacco-growing organizational model, the coherence of agricultural social and government action, the characteristics between rural infrastructure and rural public management functions in agricultural development.