A Study On The Farmer Human Capital Accumulation And The Technological Progress In Agriculture

China's agriculture has entered a critical stage of the strategic restructuring since the beginning of this century. Rural labor force employed in the agriculture has declined sharply. At the same time, agricultural land has been decreasing with the accelerated process of industrialization. Sustainable growth of China's agriculture is not able to be achieved only by the growth of factor inputs. We need to highlight the role of technological progress.Applying discrete-time household human capital (HC) investment model the first part analyzes the mechanism of the farmer HC accumulation. The accumulation equations are derived through the dynamic evolution method, as well as the transfer constraints of the accumulation equilibriums, the virtuous circle mechanism of the agricultural technology and the farmer HC.The second part tackles the micro-mechanism of the farmer HC and the agricultural technology progress from three levels. The first level focuses on the farmer HC and the agricultural imported technology digestion model. We must consider the economic development, the market size and some other factors that affect the technology digestion while importing agricultural technology. For the area with the low HC variance and mean, we should import the middle or the original technology. While for the area with the high HC variance and mean, we should import the advanced technology. The digestion process of the imported technology depends on the technology diffusion, which are affected by the learning process and R&D. In the learning process the higher HC variance economy experiences a relatively faster diffusion initially and a lower diffusion later on. While for the R&D diffusion, the lower HC variance economy experiences a relatively faster diffusion speed. The faster the diffusion speed, the higher the secondary innovation speed will be.The second level addresses farmer HC distributions and agricultural technology adoption. Other things being equal, the smaller the HC critical value of the technology adoption or the greater the HC variance, the faster the present value of the technology price drops. The technology adoption delay is dominated by the HC distributions. The optimal introduction date of the innovation technology decreases with the HC variance initially, and increases with that later on. The greater the HC variance, the fewer farmers adopt the technology at the introduction date.The third level deals mainly with the agricultural technology adoption and diffusion under Uncertainty. Other things being equal, the smaller the HC the stronger the tendency to delay the adoption, and the more positive information the greater the probability of the farmer's adoption. In the process of technology diffusion the adoption proportion accelerates increment initially and decelerates increment later on. The inflection point of the diffusion curve occurs before the adoption proportion of farmers accounted for 50%. The diffusion speed is determined by the HC of farmers, the discount rate, as well as the initial mean and variance of the positive information estimated probability.The last part empirically analyzes the HC and the technological progress in China's agriculture, testing the impacts of the HC stock on the TFP change, the HC stock on the technical efficiency change and the HC distribution on the technological progress.