Study On Households’ Technique Efficiency Of Planting Non-timber Forest Products In Western China

Since China has entering the forestry ecological construction-based period,as the key area of forestry ecological construction and under the dual goal of realizing the micro-economic benefits of local famers and regional macro-ecological benefits,developing non-timber forest products(NFTP)is the inevitable choice in Western China.How to improve the technical efficiency of NFTP has become the key research object to improve the NFTP yield and ensure local famers’ livelihood level.Based on the households classification,observing the difference of households’ technical efficiency of planting NFTP and its influence will lay an important foundation for exploring technical efficiency’s promotion path under the background of the labor force transfer and part-time farming status.Through the analysis of the research results and the proposed policy recommendations,NFTP industry’s effective development in western China can get relative support and to become a guarantee for regional economic development.Using 232 households survey data in Zhen’an County and Huanglong County of Shaanxi Province,four different household’s income types have been divided according to households’ income level and NFTP business income accounted for the proportion of total family income: high income-high forestry dependence type,high income-low forestry dependence type,low income-high forestry dependence type,low income-low forestry dependence type.As this perspective,selecting the appropriate variable indicators,based on SFA method,the measurement models of technical efficiency and influence factors have been built separately and been measured by the software of Frontier 4.1.According to the results,the conclusions are as follows:(1)For different income types households who plant NFTP,they own varied planting behavior in their production process with specific input and output.(2)For different income types households,there are differences of their technical efficiency mean value,in which,the households with low income-high forestry dependence type have the highest technical efficiency man value.(3)The distribution of technical efficiency mean value of the specific income type households is imbalanced.(4)There are several factors with a significant impact on households’ technical efficiency among all the selected influence factors,and they are as follows: the quantity of NFTP labor input,the planting experience and related technical training of head of household,the fertile degree of their forestland,and the average distance from their forestland to their house and to the road.According to above analysis of the relevant model,this paper proposes the following policy recommendations,and they are as follows: to continually enhance the training efforts of related plating skills and the publicity of all kinds of practical planting new technology to local farmers;under the premise of ensuring the safety of forest products and the quality of local ecological environment,to increase the amount of fertilizer and other production materials investment reasonably,in order to make up for the lack of forest land’s natural fertility;to improve the infrastructure construction such as forest roads;as the optimal management subject,the low income-high forest dependence should get reasonable guidance from relevant department in order to ensure the stable development of NFTP industry in western China.