رشد بهره وری در کشاورزی چین در 1985-2010

This paper made an empirical analysis of China's agricultural growth path and influential factors using the province-level panel data of agricultural inputs and outputs during 1985–2010. The findings indicate that the increase in agricultural inputs and TFP contributed 40.6 and 55.2% to the agricultural output growth, respectively; China's agriculture had jumped out of the pattern which output growth was mainly driven by increasing input. Of the total inputs, chemical fertilizer had the most important contribution to the output growth, followed by mechanical inputs. The contribution of land and labor was negative. China's agricultural output growth belonged to the type of induced technology innovation. China's agricultural TFP growth had characteristics of fluctuations over time and unbalanced between regions, but the gap between the eastern, the middle, and the western regions has been narrowed.

The issue that how China’s agriculture can be ensured to have a sustained and healthy growth has been a concern of the policymakers and scholars. China’s rural reform, beginning in the late 1970s, has not only solved the problem of food shortages plaguing China, but also had a profound influence on the reform of the country’s economic system. However, with the acceleration of industrialization and urbanization, agricultural resources are continuingly flowing to non-agricultural industries; the pressure to maintain the growth in agriculture is increasing,and the whole society has an increasing concern for the ability to retain the agriculture stable growth. It has been widely accepted that the extensive mode of growth has become the major obstacle to the sustainable, healthy and steady development of China’s agriculture, and it is imperative to transform the mode of agricultural growth. The meaning of the mode transformation of agricultural growth is shifting the source of agricultural growth from the inputs to the increase in TFP growth. Therefore, the accurate evaluation of the trend of the contribution rate of TFP to the agricultural growth has an extremely practical significance for the agricultural development strategy in the future. It is generally recognized that China’s agricultural output growth comes from the input increase, technological progress and institutional innovation, while the contribution of institutional innovation is made mainly in the early stage of rural reform. The study by Lin (1992) shows that about 40% of agricultural out-put growth during 1980-1984 are contributed by the household responsibility system reform. This conclusion is supported by other researches (e.g., Mcmillan and Zhu 1989; Wen 1993; Fan and Zhang 2002). The outstanding contribution of the household responsibility system to the agricultural growth is fully released with the reform widely spread since 1984. Afterwards, agriculture enters a normal growth stage in which it is more sensitive to the prices and factor inputs. That is, technological progress has become the major factor to promote the agricultural output growth after the household responsibility system reform spread nationally (Huang and Rozelle 1996; Fan and Pardey 1997; Mao and Koo 1997; Jin et al. 2002). Nevertheless, scholars did not reach an agreement on this judgment.By analyzing the change in the rural land systems and price, financial and taxation systems and its influences on the agricultural growth during 1978-2004, Qiao et al. (2006) reach the conclusion that institutional change is still the decisive factor of agricultural output growth after rural reform. That is, after the full release of the effect of the household responsibility system reform, the following innovations in agriculture institutions continue playing a huge role in agricultural output growth. Some research shows agricultural output growth still relies on the inputs since the rural reform, but TFP contribution gradually increases.The research conclusion of Xu (1999) is that TFP has a contribution rate of 47% to agricultural output growth from 1979 to 1996. The research conclusion of Zhou (2009) is that TFP has a contribution rate of 51.24% to agricultural output growth during 1978 to 2005. Based on the revised data of inputs and outputs, Zhao and Cheng (2011) reach the conclusion that the contribution of TFP growth has exceeded the contribution of the output growth of the comprehensive inputs since 2001.During 1996-2003, China’s agricultural output growth was staying in a depressed stage. From 2004 to present, the situation of agricultural output growth is obviously improved and the grain production has continuously increased.Using the provincial data of agricultural inputs and outputs during 1985-2010, this paper analyzes the paths and the factors affecting China’s agricultural output growth by phases, expecting the research results results being able to provide a support to the long-term policies of China’s agricultural development. The rest of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 introduces methods, model selection and data processing. Section 3 analyses the sources of agricultural growth. We analyses agricultural TFP growth in section 4. Finally, we conclude.

In summary, the following conclusions are reached based on the research of this paper.First, during 1985-2010, the contribution of agricultural input growth to output growth dropped to 40.6% at the national level. The contribution dropped to 26.6% in the major areas of grain production, but still up to 53% in the non-major areas of grain production. The contribution of agricultural input growth to output growth has dropped to lower than 50% in all the eastern, middle and western regions. The result that about 55.2% of the output growth comes from TFP growth means that China has started to get rid of the growth pattern in which agricultural output growth was mainly promoted by the increase in inputs.More assistance should be given to non-major areas of grain production to drive TFP growth of China’s agriculture in the future.Second, during 1985-2010, fertilizer has the most important contribution to agricultural output growth in the various inputs. Machinery has a positive contribution,but not great. The contributions of land and labor are negative.Third, during 1985-2010, TFP growth of China’s agriculture shows obvious fluctuations, and the fluctuations was closely bound up with agricultural policy change. The average annual rate of agricultural TFP growth maintained a relatively high level when government supporting agriculture more effectively, the low rate of agriculturalTFP growth often corresponds to the lack of governmental support. Therefore, the government assistance will be one of the keys to TFP growth of China’s agriculture in the future. Forth, during 1985-2010, the annual rate of China’s agricultural TFP growth is 3.8%. The annual growth rate of technology progress is 5.1%. The annual growth agricultural growth The contribution of TFP to output growth can be measured by the ratio of TFP growth and output growth (Federico 2011). The average annual rate of China’s agricultural TFP growth is 3.8% from 1985 to 2010, while the average annual rate of total agricultural output growth is about 6.9% during the same period.This reflects that around 55.2% of China’s agricultural output growth comes from the increase in agricultural TFP. For this reason, we say that China has started to get rid of the growth pattern dependent on the increase in factor inputs since the research period. CONCLUSIONIn summary, the following conclusions are reached based on the research of this paper.First, during 1985-2010, the contribution of agricultural input growth to output growth dropped to 40.6% at the national level. The contribution dropped to 26.6% in the major areas of grain production, but still up to 53% in the non-major areas of grain production. The contribution of agricultural input growth to output growth has dropped to lower than 50% in all the eastern, middle and western regions. The result that about 55.2% of the output growth comes from TFP growth means that China has started to get rid of the growth pattern in which agricultural output growth was mainly promoted by the increase in inputs. More assistance should be given to non-major areas of grain production to drive TFP growth of China’s agriculture in the future.Second, during 1985-2010, fertilizer has the most important contribution to agricultural output growth in the various inputs. Machinery has a positive contribution, but not great. The contributions of land and labor are negative. Third, during 1985-2010, TFP growth of China’s agriculture shows obvious fluctuations, and the fluctuations was closely bound up with agricultural policy change. The average annual rate of agricultural TFP growth maintained a relatively high level when government supporting agriculture more effectively, the low rate of agricultural TFP growth often corresponds to the lack of governmental support. Therefore, the government assistance will be one of the keys to TFP growth of China’s agriculture in the future.Forth, during 1985-2010, the annual rate of China’s agricultural TFP growth is 3.8%. The annual growth rate of technology progress is 5.1%. The annual growth rate of technical efficiency is -1.2%. These results show that China’s agricultural output growth belongs to the type of induced technology innovation, which indicates that the ways of agricultural technology promotion were unsuccessful in past years. So, China must not only continue to promote agricultural technical innovations, but also reform the system of agricultural technology promotion in the future. And the later purpose is more important that the first one.Fifth, during 1985-2010, China’s agricultural TFP growth shows the characteristics of large fluctuations and unbalanced between regions. In general, there are convergence effects between the eastern, middle and western regions, with a total index of 0.384%. The trend is that the gaps between the regions are narrowed.