Migration And Household Agriculture Production:Influence And Adjustment

Labor migration is a common phenomenon in the world.Since the reform and opening-up,C hina's rural labor force begin to migrate from rural to urban area.Early studies on labor migration focus on the impact of migration to the destination and the overall economy.Along with the continuous migration of rural surplus labor,the impact of migration to agricultural production has gradually attracted the attention of the academic circles.Because of the complexity of migration issues,many aspects in the existing research has not reached consensus.In this paper,based on the new economics theory of labor migration,from perspective of labor reduction and household income increasing which caused by the migration,the influence will be described and analyzed from the following aspects: household income,remittances,investment in agricultural production,rice yield and rice production efficiency.Data used in this paper was collected from 454 households who engaged in r ice production in Hunan,Hubei,Anhui,Jiangxi and Guangdong province in 2014.From analyzing,farmers who engaged in agricultural production mostly are aged above 45 and the members who migrate are the young generation in the household.Most of the older generation farmers believe that the younger generation members have less engaged in agricultural production before migration.Therefore,they think that reduction of labor in household has not caused much impact on domestic agricultural production.However,non-agricultural income as well as occasional remitta nces from the younger generation migrants have increased the overall family income which has improved life quality and less investment in agricultural production.Material input,labor input and cultivating methods make influence on the rice output.Moreover,the input and output together will affect the efficiency of rice production.This paper will use data envelopment analysis(DEA)to evaluate the efficiency of household rice production,and then use Tobit model to analysis the impact of migration to the efficiency.The result shows that household migration has no significant effect on the efficiency of rice production.In the process of labor migration,rural areas and agricultural production has undergone tremendous changes,such as the popularity of mechanical automation,the forming of rural labor and land leasing market.Andthe gradually changes have weakened the impact of migration to agricultural production in members' impression.Comparing the rice production between 2007 and 2014,it was found that the machine and employment services are used to substitute the labor which can reduce labor input,meanwhile the increasing income increases the material input.Although the family head does not think that the labor migration has bring huge impact to the family agricultural production,it is undeniable that labor income from migration has alleviated the family capital restraint and improved the quality of family life.With the popularization of mechanization,labor demand for agricultural production has been gradually alleviated.Insum,householdagricultural production has gradually changed and madeadjustment against the influence brought by migration.