Study On The Spatial Distribution Transition On China's Rice Production And Its Influencing Factors

Rice is China's most important food crops, and all regions (except Qinghai) have rice planting areas. There are more than one hundred million rice peasants in China and more than 60% of the whole population takes rice as the staple food. Thus, rice production is not only the foundation of China's agricultural production but the top priority of the national food security. Therefore, the sustained and stable development of the rice production is very important for the national life and the national security. Since the reform and opening, due to the social, economic, natural and other factors, rice production in China has undergone tremendous changes in the spatial layout. This paper describes the spatial distribution transition of China's rice production from 1978 to 2010, and then establishes spatial econometric models to investigate the influencing factors of the transition, thus to provide a theoretical basis for making rice production policy and allocating agricultural production resources.Based on the relevant research and theory, this paper first descriptively analyses the development and the regional changes of China's rice production; then, using the gravity center method to describe the evolvement track of rice production gravity center of three areas which are the whole country, the main producing areas and the southern areas. Finally, establish spatial econometric models to investigate the influencing factors of the rice production transition in the provincial level.This study found that, since the reform and opening up, China's rice production shows the trend of moving from South to North. The production gravity centers of the whole country and the main producing areas are moving from Southwest to Northeast, while the production gravity centers of the southern areas are moving towards west significantly. Empirical analysis shows that there is an obvious positive spatial effect in the rice production of the whole country and the main producing areas and the spatial distribution transition is positively affected by agricultural labor, chemical fertilizer, effective irrigation area, rice yield per mu, and cultivated land, but negatively affected by non-agricultural employment opportunities; there is an obvious negative spatial effect in the rice production of southern areas, and the spatial distribution transition is positively affected by chemical fertilizer, effective irrigation area, rice yield per mu, and cultivated land, but negatively affected by non-agricultural employment opportunities and GDP per capita.The main innovation of this paper is:set three research areas; calculate rice production gravity centers of the three areas and analyze the evolvement track of the gravity center with both quantitative and qualitative methods; introduce the spatial effort into the research of rice production transition by establish spatial econometric models thus increase the explanatory power of the conclusion and enrich the research perspective.