The Formation Process And Mechanism Of Specialized Agro-industrial Area

Agro-industrial area is one kind of spatial systems of agricultural production. Its main actor ishouseholds who engaged in producing main agricultural products in the area, and connect with otherspecialized households or enterprises on the same or related industries. It take enterprises as leader, takebank, research institutions, and government services and so on as ancillary services, combine with theagricultural circulation enterprises, agricultural intermediary organization, and enterprise which providesupporting products. It shaped bases on comparative advantage of local natural resources and other areasadvantages, according to regional distribution, industry management, and specialized production. It hasspecialized characteristics in space, economies of scope, sustainable competitive advantage. In addition, ithas obvious geographic boundaries. Agro-industrial area is the result that Industrial District Theoryinnovation applications in the agricultural industry, which is network presence of the industrialization ofagriculture, one of the ways to solve the current problems of China’s agricultural development with a strongcompetitive advantage like other industrial districts. Agro-industrial area has been determined to be animportant strategy by People’s Government of Henan Province for transforming agricultural development,realizing harmonious development of the new-type industrialization，new urbanization, agriculturalmodernization, and synchronous development of informatization, industrialization, urbanization,agricultural modernization. Practice needs theoretical guidance. However, theoretical studies onAgro-industrial area are less. The paper defines the concept and definition method of agro-industrial areaafter drawing lessons from related concept of industrial district and industrial clusters, and similar conceptof the agricultural cluster. Then, the theoretical framework of the forming process of the agro-industrial area is constructed from three aspects: formation conditions, formation mechanism and the formation ofphases. The forming process of the agro-industrial area is divided into four stages according to the“employment” and its spatial scale, the introduction of the major projects, the participation of the farmers,the forming of the agricultural production basses, and the maturity of the agro-industrial area. And then theformation mechanism of agro-industrial area is elaborated from four parts drawing on the experience ofentrepreneurship theory, the households produce behavior theory, the spatial diffusion theory, the enterprisenetwork theory, the industrial division of labor theory, and the theory of industrial agglomeration. Finally,given the advantage of Henan Province in the formation and development of agro-industrial area, the paperuse the first-hand data, adopts the theoretical and empirical combination methods, analyzes the factors andtheir interaction mechanism of project selection and participation among households, the formation processof agriculture products bases, and the formation of industrial division network respectively in thedevelopment process of rubus corchorifolius industry in Fengqiu County, mushroom industry in XixiaCounty, Japan root radish industry in Jiaxian County, Henan Province. The paper has gotten followingconclusions.(1) The formation of agro-industrial area began in the selection of advantage agriculture project. Atthis stage, the entrepreneurial actors play a very important role in introducing agricultural projectssuccessfully. The entrepreneurial actors have keen insight, never yield in spite of reverses perseverance,considerable human capital and resources organization ability.(2) The second stage of the formation of the agro-industrial area is the participation of a small grouphousehold. In the decision-making process of whether to participate in the new agricultural project or not,farmers are not blindly to follow the trend or just imitate others, but make decisions influenced by theinformation from their social networks. Farmers would certainly choose not to continue to participate in the agricultural project when the comparative advantages of agricultural projects are declining. The level offamilies earning affects the time and scale of households’ participation in the agricultural projects ofhousehold.(3) Agricultural products base is the embryonic stage of agro-industrial area, its formation is deeplyimpacted by diffusion mode of agricultural project, and spatial distance and traffic road between diffusionsource and receiving places. Agricultural projects would be easier to diffuse when the farmers’ acquisitionmeans of production information and manufacturing technology consistent with the transmission way ofthem in the agricultural project promotion process. Technology transfer network structured mainly byresearch institutions which established on local resources and environment are very important to theformation of the agro-industrial area. The distance between receiving place and diffusion source influencesthe rate of adoption, the farther the distance from the diffusion source, the lower the rate of adoption andthe smaller of production scale, the phenomenon is consistent with the first law of geography. In addition,the effect of different levels of roads is different to the diffusion of different agricultural project.（4）As far as the characteristics of spatial distribution of specialized production, the places where aresimilar in topographic features, resource endowment, the level of economic development and productionhabits are also similar in the professional level of the same agricultural project..(5) The sign of one area taking shape of agro-industrial area is that all kinds of division andcooperation is shaped between various economic entities who are engaged in the same agricultural. Theattributes of agricultural products affect their own scales network and the operation of correlative privateeconomic organization deeply. The root cause of the agro-industrial area formed slowly or failure is that thecomparative advantage of agricultural projects is decline or not enough. In addition, government plays animportant role in the formation of agro-industrial area in less developed rural area. The paper maybe has the following innovations:（1）There are all kinds of able persons, but not all of them can promote the formation ofagro-industrial area. The agricultural entrepreneur who has keen insight, never yield in spite of reverse andconsiderable resources organization ability, is very important in the introduction of the agricultural.However, the rich able people engaged in non-agricultural production activities hindered the diffusion ofagricultural projects, and not conductive to the formation of agro-industrial area. This discovery is differentfrom previous conclusion.(2) The farmer is a utility maximizer, their production decisions is a planning problem in essence,affected and restricted by many kinds of factors. Whether they participate in agricultural project or not,when participate in or exit from the agricultural project, which is the result of them pursuing the utilitymaximization and profit maximization, and also affected by their risk preference. This discovery isdifferent from that farmers like imitating others blindly and following the trend in previous document.(3) In addition to the farmer individual factors, the factors affecting deeply farmers to participate innew agricultural project are the level of their cash gift and information consumption that reflect the farm’srelationship network, and farmer’s social activities (e.g. the source of capital, information and technology,and the types of population they frequently communicate with). This is different from previous studies thatfocus factors just on the individual households, for example, the age of farmer, the gender and risk offarmer, or characteristics of household.(4) The paper suggests using the chemistry experience theory “like dissolves like” to explain thephenomenon that different village in different regions has different rate of participating in the newagricultural project. Empirical studies confirm that the stronger the homogeneity between different regions,the more similar agricultural projects involved in the time, the speed and the strength among different villages in the region. This discovery has a same idea with the concept of “like dissolves like”.According to the paper’s conclusions, some policy recommendations on promoting the formation ofagro-industrial area are proposed.(1) Agricultural entrepreneurs should be cultivated actively.(2) Localagricultural product with geographical features and high value should be heeded.(3) Good institutionalenvironment should be created for competition, cooperation and information transmission among economicsubjects.(4) Research and development should be strongly supported, technical innovation and itstransmission networks should be established for combining the research with the learning and production.(5) The construction of peasant economies and local professional markets should be paid attention to. Inaddition, some points should be noted by government in promoting the formation of agro-industrial area.(1)All the economic subjects should be supported by government than only one or only one kind.(2) Thefoundation of farmers should not be ignored.(3) Some role of the market should not be replaced bygovernment.(4) The production or development lessons should not be blindly drew from one region toanother region.(5) Environment cannot be ignored.