Research On The Impact Of Food Production On Economic Growth

Food security is the foundation of the national economy,and food production has great social benefits.At the historical intersection of the "two hundred years",China’s economy has continued to develop steadily,while grain production has successfully achieved "nineteen consecutive bumper crops",and food security has been effectively guaranteed.However,behind the "nineteen consecutive bumper crop",there is also the fact that the return on grain cultivation is low,which cannot be ignored.While the proportion of food production in the main food-producing regions has been steadily increasing,the proportion of GDP has been decreasing year by year,which is a stark contrast that shows the potential of food production to bring about "poor counties with abundant food".However,the quasi-public goods attribute of food determines that it will not be produced in full accordance with the law of market supply and demand,and the government’s strict regulation of food supply and the division of functional food production zones lead to the spatial spillover characteristics of food production.In other words,although large food-producing provinces are to a certain extent subject to rigid constraints on food production,they can relieve the pressure of food production for other regions,so that other regions can enjoy the "dividends" of positive spatial spillover effects of food production,and thus promote the realization of "abundant food and rich country" in the whole region."The literature,however,has not taken into account the fact that most of the existing literature has not taken into account the fact that food production in other regions is a major source of food production.However,most of the existing literature does not take into account the spatial spillover effect of food production,underestimates the social benefits of food production,and ignores the "rich food and rich country" behind the "rich food and poor county".Accordingly,based on the spatial externality perspective,this study uses panel data of 284 prefecture-level cities in China from 2004 to 2020 to measure the direct impact of grain production on economic growth and spatial spillover effects through a spatial Durbin model,and proposes an inter-provincial horizontal cross-regional compensation mechanism based on the estimation results to suggest suggestions for increasing the compensation of large grain-producing counties.This study focuses on the following aspects: First,this study reviews the relevant theories and literature on food production,economic growth and externalities.Second,it compares the characterized facts of food production and economic growth and analyzes them spatially and statistically.Third,based on the existing studies and spatial econometrics,the research hypothesis is proposed,and the direct effect of food production on economic growth and spatial spillover effects are verified using the fixed effects model and spatial Durbin model.Meanwhile,to address the endogeneity issue,this study selects extreme weather as an instrumental variable for regression and obtains basically consistent estimation results.Fourth,based on the estimation results,this study proposes a horizontal cross-regional grain production compensation mechanism based on the grain self-sufficiency rate of each province;and measures the compensation to be paid by each major grain marketing area to each major grain producing area.Fifth,this study analyzes the impact mechanism of food production on economic growth from the perspectives of both land capital and mobile capital;and introduces the interaction term of local government economic development goals to study the moderating effect based on government goal behavior.It is found that: first,the center of gravity of food production shifts from south to north and the center of gravity of economic growth shifts from north to south during 2001-2020,and they show opposite evolutionary trends.Second,under the three spatial weight matrices of the adjacency matrix,the geographic distance matrix,and the actual traffic time matrix,food production has a negative and significant impact on local economic growth,but has a positive and significant spatial spillover effect on the economic growth of other regions and the whole region.Among them,under the setting of the actual transportation time matrix which is more suitable for the actual situation of grain deployment,each 10,000 tons of grain production increase in one region will promote the per capita GDP growth of other regions by $375.114,and will promote the per capita GDP growth of the whole region by $370.874.Third,based on the spatial spillover effect measurement results,grain production,and ration self-sufficiency rate,a differentiated compensation strategy is proposed.Fourth,food production realizes the positive spatial spillover effect of local food production on economic growth in other regions by promoting land capital accumulation and mobile capital inflow in other regions.Fifth,the government’s economic objectives weaken the negative direct effects of food production and economic development and strengthen the positive spatial spillover effects of food production.Compared with existing studies,firstly,this study incorporates government behavior into the analysis framework and explores the deep logic of local governments’ trade-off between food production and economic growth in the context of local government competition.Second,instead of being confined to the traditional assumption of sample independence,this study uses the spatial Durbin model to measure the direct impact of food production on economic growth and spatial spillover effects,which more realistically reflects the social benefits of food production.Third,this study proposes an inter-provincial horizontal cross-regional compensation mechanism for food production based on the estimation results,which provides new ideas to improve the compensation mechanism for food production.In addition,this study verifies the mechanism of the impact of food production on economic growth from the perspective of resource allocation,and incorporates the government’s economic development goals into the analysis framework to illustrate the moderating effect of the government’s "economic man" attribute on food production and economic growth.The findings of this study can provide proven policy insights for further improving the compensation and incentive mechanisms for food production,increasing the government’s motivation to capture food,and ensuring sound economic development.