Evaluation Of The Productivity Of Kaifeng’s Farmland Based On DEA And Tobit

Land is the basic production and labor objective for human survival. Human activities depend on the land. Land resources have two characteristics of sustainable utilization and scarcity. China is known for her massive land, abundant resources. However, the cultivated land resources per person are small. There is a prominent contradiction between Man and land. Moreover, the cultivated land per person is reducing year by year. An important problem faced by local government and farmers is how to use the arable land, to allocate resources, to improve the productivity of cultivated land efficiently.Kaifeng city is located in east of Henan Province in the central China. It is the part of Huang-Huai-Hai plain. It belongs to a warm temperate continental monsoon climate, and is very suitable to agricultural production. Moreover, Kaifeng city was the ancient capitals of seven dynasties. So, it is an important and famous city in history and culture. Since 2003, the government of Henan province proposed the implementation of the rising of the regional cities around Zhengzhou, and the integration of Zhengzhou city and Kaifeng city. It is important how to achieve rational allocation of resources and ensure the agricultural production. In this dissertation, according to 2003-2012 statistics of Kaifeng city, data envelopment analysis(DEA), Malmquist index and Tobit regression were used to analyze arable land productivity of different counties.Based on the calculating of the productivity of Kaifeng’s arable land, it was found thatthe technical efficiency(TE), pure technical efficiency(PTE) and scale efficiency(SE) of Tongxu county’s arable land have reached the desired output level in 2003-2012. However, Lankao county’s arable land productivity is less than 1, failing to achieve the desired level of output. In 2006, technical efficiency of Qi xian is 1. However, in other years, technical efficiency of Qi xian is small than 1. The technical efficiencies of Weishi, Kaifeng, Lankao are small than 1 in 2003-2012. The pure technical efficiencies of Kaifeng’s Suburban, Qixian, Tongxu are 1, which implies their pure technical efficiencies are optimization.Malmquist index method was used to analyze the changes of total factor productivity of Kaifeng city. In 2008, the change of index is 0.988, and in other years, the changes are large than 1. That is, production technology for arable land improved continuously, and technical progress index increased at all time. Meanwhile, the changes in total factor productivity of Kaifeng city are caused by the technical improvement. In 2003-2012, the change trend of technique change and the change of total factor productivity index is consistent, along the trend of going down-going up-going up. Tobit model was used to analyze the factors affecting the productivity of Kaifeng’s arable land. The results showed that the dummy variable for policy, the number of large and medium-sized tractors positively influence on technical efficiency of arable land. The sown area of crops inversely influenced on technical efficiency of arable land. According to the results, good policy for the production of arable land should be proposed by the government of Kaifeng city. The sown area of grain influences negatively technical efficiency of cultivated land, which implies the efficiency of arable land of Kaifeng decreases with increasing of the sown area of grain. Therefore, the sown area of grain and other agricultural crop sown area ratio should be determined reasonably.In the last, a few suggestions on the improvement of productivity of Kaifeng’s arable land are given, as followed:(1) The long-term policy of supporting agriculture and benefiting farmers is unchanged all the time.(2) To establish the technology system of agricultural modernization.(3) To insist on the grain production due to Kaifeng being one of main region of Henan province.(4) To solve the problems according to actual situations.