Research On China’s Grain Productivity Growth And Technology Choice

Currently, the development of China’s grain industry was under multiple pressures, such as the shortage of natural resources, insufficient labor resource, limited agricultural inputs and weakly agricultural infrastructure. In this context, to study how to protect our grain production being steadily increasing was very important to Chinese grain industry as well as for the development of agriculture in China. From the point of view of production, this research has researched production status quo and production fluctuation characteristics of China’s three main kinds of grain, estimated TFP and decomposition and analyzed regional differences in of labor and land productivity, analyzed the spatial distribution and technology spillovers of technical efficiency, deeply discuss the effect of different types of technology on the development of overall grain production ability, empirically analyzed household technology choices from the micro-level, and finally based on the above studies provided useful policy recommendations for the future development of China’s grain industry.Based on three-phase DEA method, the TFP growth rate of China’s main grain-producing area reached an average of 1.8%. There were significant differences in major grain-producing areas. Study shows that grain TFP in China was no absolute convergence, but conditional convergence. The fastest convergence rate in China is the West. Based on the method of regression-based decomposition, it decomposed regional differences of grain productivity of labor and land. It shows that technical efficiency was the key factor.China’s grain production distribution of technical efficiency had a significant spatial agglomeration effect. Based on spatial panel regression model, research shows that significant differences among the regional technological accumulation, capital investment and agricultural technicians influenced overflow of the technical efficiency in space. It was leading to regional differences in grain production efficiency cannot achieve homeostasis by grain industry itself.Based on the E-S model to calculate the effect of changes in technology on grain production, and bring in moderators to change traditional Cobb-Douglas production function with using hierarchical linear regression model to fit, the study shows that, biochemical technology investment’s contribution to grain production reached a level of 86%, as the dominant position. Biochemical and mechanical technology inputs on grain production had interference effects. It means that with increasing spending of two types of technology inputs, it can overcome water and soil resources and labor constraints. According to the model results expectations, in the period of "Thirteenth Five-year Plan", the annual grain output amounted might up to 630 million tons level.Based on technology selection theory, it used the multivariate Logit model to research the impact of individual characteristics, economic characteristics, production and technological features, subjective norms and management features on farmers’ grain production technology choice. The study suggests that biochemical technology was the main choice of China’s grain-growing farmers for now, and there was a more broadly prospect for mechanical technology in the future. Biochemical technology development trend would mainly dominated by bio-breeding techniques, and the development direction of machinery technology was the precision agriculture technology based on the agricultural information technology.Based on these studies, the following policies were recommended:to stabilize grain sown area and to accelerate the transformation of farmland water conservancy projects; to promote of reform of the rural land operating right transfer system and to encourage moderate scale of operation; to accelerate the transfer of surplus labor and to increase the level of subsidies; to strengthen agricultural science and technology innovation, the introduction of technology, agricultural technology promotion and training system and the organizations of rural grain cooperation; to increase funding to support grain industry and to reduce regional differences; to construct agricultural disaster warning and insurance compensation mechanism and to strengthen national grain purchasing and storage management system.