Research On The Impact Of Rural Labormigration On China’s Grain Production

In terms of China’s vast rural areas, apart from the change of birth rate and death rate, another major form of demographicchange is rural labor’smigration to the urban and non-agricultural sectors by way of urbanization and labor force flow. Since the reform and opening-up policy,hundreds of millions of rural labor force has migrated to urban and non-agricultural sector,which caused widespread concernsby the whole society. Especially with a large number of young workers getting away from the agricultural sector, whether the sustainable development of the agriculture and rural areas, especially the grain production,isaffected and the extent of its influences, are bound to become an important issue.Many scholars have expressed deep concern on food securityfor the impact of labor out-migration and the aging and feminization of rural population on it(Liand Zhao, 2009; Chen et al., 2011). However, the data of food production of recent ten years shows that the trend of grain production did not deteriorateas the migration of labor force.On the contrary, both the total grain quantity and total sown area of grain crops have been continuing to rise. It makes us think that if the labor force migrationdoes have negative impacton the food production in our country? Is this sitiation iscaused by the reasons that migration of rural laboritself does not affect food production in reality, orin the same period the postive impact to the grain production which caused by the other factors is stronger than the negetive impact on grain production which caused by the migration of rural labor?For a long periodin the future, the rural labor force will continue to migrate to urban and non-agricultural sector, the number of rural labor force will continue to reduce. Changes in the rural population not only affect the decision-making of farmers in grain production, but also promote the development of rural land rental markets. Drivenby the maximization of profits,farmers began to gradually adjust their production scale, some farmers rent out their land, or even withdrew from agricultural production, while some other farmers expand the scale of grain production and engage in largescale production. Therefore, the change of rural population caused the reallocation of the land resources, apart from directly changes in the production decision-making of farmers, it also indirectly led to the grain production. Therefore, the potential impact of the rural population changes to reallocation of land resources is also worth deepevaluating.This research mainly analyzes the impact of the existing labor migration and its possible future demograph changes on China’s grain productionby using the method of econometric models.The main research contents and related conclusions are listed as follows:Research content one: the impact of labor migration on farmers’ planting structure decisions.The influence of the change of the rural population to the grain production depends on the behavior of the farmers and the change of the behaviorfundamentally. In this study, I use a large sample of the farmers’ micro data for some certain time to dig the reasons for farmers’ changingin production behavior and the differences in decision-making of farmers who inface of different constraints . Such analysis will help to analyze the reasons of the change and the change of farmers’ production behavior from the micro aspect. Based on the large sample data of rural fixed observation point system of Minstry of Agriculture from 2004 to 2011, this paper discusses about the farmers’ decision-making in production behaviorfrom the micro level. The results show that, in China’s major grain producing provinces, the migration of labor force will make farmers change their planting structureto the grains which need less labor force input and the labor needed can be substituted by the machines. However, the adjustment of the planting structure of the farmers faces some certain constraints, such as the difficulty of labor-machinery substitution and whether there is more market space for product adjustment. The result shows that, in the hilly areas where the mechanical operationis not suitable,the postive impact of rural labor migration to the non-agricultrial sectors on the grain production will be weakened; in the suburbs of urban areas,due to the large market capacityfor agricultural products, the space of adjustment of production structure is big, and the postive impact of rural labor transferring to the non-agricultrial sectors to the grain production will also be weakened.Research content two: the impact of the migration of labor force on farmers’ grainyield.The last part analyses the influence of the migration of labor force on the planting structure from thehousehold level. However, the change of total grain quantity not only depends on the change of planting structure,but also depends on the yield of grain production of farmers. This section focuses on the issues that whether the level of farmers’ grain yield is lower because of the migration of labor force and its heterogeneous effect based on the difficulty of labor-machinery substitution. First of all, the research shows the calculation of the elasticity of substitution between labor and machinery in grain production in different provinces. On the basis of that, the research analyzes the impact of themigration of rural laborto the level of grainyieldin different areas, meanwhile compares the differentimpacts of different crops. The conclusion of the study showes that the migration of labor had no obvious effect on the level of wheat’s yield beacause the labor used in this corp is easily substituted by mechines, but labor migration did have negative impacts on rice yield and corn yield, the inputs of which can be relatively less easily substituted by machine and need more labor input. In terms of regional heterogeneity, the provinces where the elasticity of substitution between labor and machinery in grain production is low are affected significantly by the migration of rural labor, while the provinces where the elasticity is high are not affected.Research content three: the impact of land resources reallocation on grain production.The two parts above mainly use the micro-level data from households in recent years to examine the impact of labor migration on grain production. However, changes in the rural population not only affect grain production through directly affecting farmers’ planting decision,but also affect it indirectly through the reallocation of land resources. According to the analysis above, this part analyzes the influence of land circulationof rural household on the sown area of grain crops and the level of grain yield, and also discusses about the influence of the regional heterogeneity. The conclusion shows that in the areas where machine is easy to substitute the labor,farmers tend to expand the production of food crops, while the areas where machinery operationis not suitable,farmers have no such tendency. What’s more, the land circulation has no significant impact on the grain yield.Research content four: the impact of the migration of labor force on grain quantity.The above three empirical chapters analyze the micro mechanism of the impact of labor migration on grain production from the perspective of the farmers.Using micro-level data analysis could describe considerable clearly the mechanism of the impact of labor migrationon grain production,but as these two mechanisms took place respectively "between farmers" and "inside farmers",micro-level farmers data cannot reflect the impact of labor migration on grain production in the round, in order to fully analyze the impact of migrant labor force on grain production, the regional level aggregate data for analysis is necessary. This part useaggregate data from the provincial level,according to the above analysis thought, discusses the effect of labor migration on grain production from the provincial level, and discusses the regional heterogeneity of impact. The research results indicate that, on the whole, labor migration did not bring obvious negative impact on grain production. However, this effect also exhibits certain regional heterogeneity, labor migration has no effect on the provinces whose mechanical - labor elasticity of substitution was stronger, but has certain negative impact on the provinces whose mechanical -labor elasticity of substitution was weaker.Above all of the research contents, the main conclusions are as follows:Due to the high degree of mechanized grain production and less labor demand, current trend of labor transfer and the reallocation of land resources which are caused by the labor migration have no significant nagetive impact on China’s grain production. Therefore, at present, China’s demography changes which are caused by rural labor migrationhave also no significant negative impact on China’s food security issues. The analysis of constraint conditions and regional heterogeniey show that, the grain production of areas where have low elasticity of substitution between grain production labor and machinery is easily affected extensively by the migration of the rural labor force.Therefore, developing suitable institutional arrangement and service systemis a vital method to help farmers adapt to rural demographic changes,and also is a key measure to improve the efficiency of agricultural production and ensure food security.