Study On The Influence Of Agricultural Infrastructure Investment On Grain Yield

Food is the priority of the government,and grain is the life of the people.Food security is an important guarantee to promote the healthy development of the national economy and maintain long-term social stability.At present,the situation of food security is not optimistic,especially under the multiple blows of frequent natural disasters,volatile food prices,severe COVID-19 epidemic and international tensions.Although China’s grain output has reached a record high for seven consecutive years since the 18 th National Congress of the CPC,the country is also facing challenges such as increasing resource and environmental constraints,rising grain production costs,serious problems of non-grain cultivated land,and economic backwardness in major producing areas.Therefore,the grain production increase needs to find a new breakthrough.As an important carrier of "storing grain in the land" and "storing grain in technology",agricultural infrastructure is regarded as an important approach to our sustainable grain production increase.Therefore,it is necessary to explore the effect of agricultural infrastructure on food production.Specifically,this study attempts to answer the following questions:(1)What is the change trend between the level of agricultural infrastructure and food production in China? What are the current challenges?(2)What is the mechanism by which agricultural infrastructure affects grain yield?(3)Does agricultural infrastructure promote food production?(4)Further,if the overall investment level of agricultural infrastructure increases grain yield,is there any difference in the effect of different types of agricultural infrastructure on increasing grain yield?(5)If there is a type difference effect of grain increase in agricultural infrastructure,how should we optimize the input structure of agricultural infrastructure accordingly?On the basis of literature review and summary of relevant theoretical research,this paper proposes the grain increase mechanism of agricultural infrastructure: on the one hand,agricultural infrastructure promotes the expansion of grain sown area by increasing the cultivated land area,increasing the multiple cropping index and expanding the scale of operation.The direct effect was to increase the cultivated land area and increase the multiple cropping index,and the indirect effect was to expand the scale of operation.On the other hand,agricultural infrastructure increases grain yield per unit area by improving the quality of arable land,reducing drought and flood hazards,encouraging farmers to adopt advanced technologies,and increasing private investment.The direct effect is to improve the quality of cultivated land and reduce drought and flood disasters,and the indirect effect is to encourage farmers to adopt advanced technology and increase private investment.That is,agricultural infrastructure affects the total grain output by acting on the sown area and grain yield per unit area.The results of mechanism test showed that agricultural infrastructure had a significant promoting effect on grain yield per unit area and grain sown area.Furthermore,based on the panel data of prefecture-level cities from 2011 to 2020,a time-individual fixed effect measurement model was used to calculate the effect of agricultural infrastructure on grain output in China.The empirical analysis mainly includes the overall evaluation effect and type difference effect assessment of agricultural infrastructure on grain yield.In both cases,grain yield was taken as the explained variable.Overall evaluation effect research mainly through the use of entropy method to construct evaluation index system of agricultural infrastructure as explanatory variables,on the whole inspection to the effects of food production,agricultural infrastructure to increase the use of variable lag one period and the two phase lag variables as a tool,by using two-stage least squares method and test system GMM method,In addition,the samples were split twice to test the robustness of the conclusion.According to the standard of balanced production and sales area,the sample was divided into main grain sales area,main grain production area and balanced production and sales area.According to the regional standard,the sample was divided into three sub-samples: eastern,central and western regions.In the study of type difference effect assessment,three core agricultural infrastructure,namely irrigation and water conservancy facilities,agricultural electric power facilities and rural transportation facilities,were respectively used as explanatory variables to measure the difference in their contribution to grain yield.The empirical results show that agricultural infrastructure plays a significant role in promoting grain yield on the whole.The grain yield increases by 0.141% with the increase of agricultural infrastructure construction level.In addition,the yield increase effect of agricultural infrastructure has regional heterogeneity.Specifically,the yield increase effect of the production and sales balance area is better than that of the main grain production area,and the yield increase effect of the main grain sales area is the weakest,and the yield increase effect of the central area is better than that of the western area,and the yield increase effect of the eastern area is the weakest.In addition,the three types of agricultural infrastructure have positive effects on grain yield,but their effects are different.Among them,irrigation and water conservancy facilities had the strongest effect on grain yield,followed by rural transportation facilities,and agricultural electric power facilities had the weakest effect.Based on the above research,this paper puts forward policy suggestions from three aspects: scientific planning,stable supply and strengthening management and protection.First of all,financial funds should be tilted to areas with balance between production and sales and major grain producing areas to make up for the shortcomings of agricultural infrastructure types and construct an effective multi-directional preference expression and truth-showing mechanism.Secondly,increase the public investment in agricultural infrastructure and innovate the investment and financing methods of agricultural infrastructure;Finally,the responsibility of the main body of agricultural infrastructure management and protection should be clarified,and the market-oriented management and protection mode should be adopted to strictly implement the performance evaluation of agricultural infrastructure.Hope through the policy suggestion to promote agricultural infrastructure construction,strengthen our food security foundation,to ensure national food security.