| After the reform and opening up,backyard hog production as a traditional family sideline of thousands of small farmers in China has played an important role in safeguarding pork supply,providing employment,increasing income,and even coping with the impact of survival risks.With small farmers scattered pigs as the main force,Chinese animal husbandry has made amazing achievements.Until the 1990s,with the development of industrialization,urbanization,and the increase in farmers 'income,China's small-scale farmers of backyard production began to change their behaviours.The most prominent phenomenon was that a large number of farmers withdrew from pig farming.It made contrubition to pig breeding industry modernization.The pig farming industry has completed the transition from small-scale farmers to intensive and large-scale operations.But a small farmer is still the main body of agricultural because of the more people and less land.2018 Central Document No.1 affirmed the importance and sustainability of small farmers and their mode of production.However,unlike planting,livestock breeding,especially pig breeding,has completed the transformation from small-scale farming to intensive and large-scale management.Does this change violate the policy of balancing the cultivation of new agricultural operators and supporting the development of small farmers?Is it necessary to protect and maintain rural farmers' pork production?What's the trend of hog industry in urban China?Why the behavior of the small farmer has changed?Answering these questions is of great significance for us to grasp the development of pig breeding and formulate relevant policies scientifically in the future.A small number of studies have recognized the importance of the problems which mentioned above.After analyzing the evolution of backyard hog production in China,they found that the phenomenon of "expanding first and then quitting" between small-scale peasant households and economic growth.Then they divided the pig breeding process into two stages and discussed the reasons for the changes of each stage.However,we argue that the existing research only explaining the porcine scattered behavior of small farmers from a specific period or a specific stage is too scattered;the existing research on the causes of"this decline and the other growth" in the early period of reform and opening-up is worth discussing;the mid-1990s as a critical point of pig free-range breeding in China has its particularity,which should be analyzed and discussed separately;multi-angle research on the driving forces of pig free-range breeding changes can be incorporated into a unified analytical framework.Also the existing research lacks the judgment on the future direction of Chinese small farmers 'pig feeding.So we systematically describe the process of pork producing change in China since the reform and opening up.Secondly,the author puts forward the concepts of livelihood function,livelihood breakthrough and livelihood dependence,and construct a new analysis framework to explore the driving forces of backyard hog production change in different stages Then,discoing driving force of the change of small farmers 'porcine diversification bases on the newly constructed specific analysis framework.Finally,according to the rate of exit of small farmers in different regions,the change trend of small farmers 'wild pig is predicted.Through the analysis,we find that the revolution of pork production in rural China conforms to the general rule of inverted U-shaped relationship between household livestock production and the level of economic development in developing countries,but it has special characteristics of stages.We divide the changes of small-scale farmer's free-range pigs into three stages since the reform and opening-up:1978-1995,the contraction of household pig production in rich coastal areas and at the same time the expansion in poor inland areas;1996-2000,the small-scale pig production had began to withdraw completely;since the new century,Small farmers accelerated their exit nationwide.In addition,the distribution of livelihood functions of household pork production showed distinct spatial and temporal heterogeneity in different stages.Using Macro-Micro data by a variety of research methods,we make a theoretical analysis and empirical test on the dynamics of the changes of household pork production in various stages.It is found that in the early period of reform and opening up(1978-1995),the development of labor market and the increase of grain production are the reasons for the changes of household pork production in eastern and in poor inland areas.The opening of labor market and non-agricultural employment interweave with each other,weakened or replaced the livelihood function of small farmers in the eastern region,driving small farmers to form a breakthrough in livelihood and withdraw from pig farming;the opening of pig market,the slow development of labor market,the rise of pig prices,the substantial increase in grain production and agricultural employment interweave with each other,triggered and enhanced farmers' motivation and practical ability to strengthen pig breeding in the central and western regions.In the second stage,in the mid and late 1990s(1996-2000),the fluctuation of pig prices and the rise of material costs of pig farming were the main reasons for small farmers to quit pig farming.In the third stage,the driving factors of small farmers exit from different livelihood functions are different.Favorable geographical and transportation conditions,the younger age of household heads,the shortage of arable land resources and non-agricultural employment are the main reasons for the farmers' withdrawal;the change of consumption preference caused by the growth of traffic conditions,non-farm workers,non-farm operations and total income are the reasons for the self-sufficiency withdrawal;the significant reduction of survival risk is the reason of risk-prevention farmers' withdrawal.In addition,it was found that price fluctuations had no significant effect on the speed of farmers withdrawal in China.And the main reason for this result is that the market participation of Chinese small farmers in pig feeding is quite low.Finally,we use Macro-Micro data to calculate the change trend of the backyard hog production of the China's main pig-producing provinces in the future.Research findings show that most of the small farmers in China will give up pig farm completely in 2030,but the rate of withdrawal of the backyard hog production in different regions is different.Taking Hubei Province as an example,this paper discusses the persistent discovery of porcine dispersal in certain types of small farmers.We find that specific types,especially mountain farmers,will continue to feed pigs for a long time because of the special topography,economic development level and consumption habits.The innovation of this paper is expected to include:Firstly,this paper using the timeline to discuss the changes of backyard hog production systematically in China since the reform and opening up.The existing research on the behavior of backyard pork production in different stages is lack of dynamic and systematic.Secondly,based on the classical framework of sustainable upgrade,we establish a local livelihood system centered on specific upgrade activities,puts forward the concepts of livelihood function,livelihood dependence and livelihood breakthrough,and constructs an analytical framework for the changes of hog production in rural areas.The analysis framework can include the motivation analysis of farmers to strengthen,maintain or withdraw from hog production,and provide a more systematic and comprehensive analysis framework for the future study of changes in other backyard livelihood activities.Thirdly,we explain the reasons for the formation of pig-free-range characteristics of farmers in different stages by using the new analytical framework with the Macro-Micro data.In the first stage,the previous studies about the motivation of" the contraction of household pig production in rich coastal areas and at the same time the expansion in poor inland areas " is insufficient,so considering the level of economic development in China we put forward a new explanation which the increase of grain production strengthened the backyard pork production in the Central-Western regions.In the second stage,the fluctuation of pig prices and the rise of production costs reduce the profit space of pig production in rural areas,so we believe that the interweaving of multiple factors is the reason of farmers in the Central-Western regions began to withdraw from hog production.In the third stage,we find that the price fluctuations did not significantly promote the speed of farmers in China to withdraw from backyard pork production which different from the previous research.The limitations of this paper include the following aspects:Firstly,lacking of relevant data indicators before the reform and opening up,we cannot do the research since the founding of New China,not to mention the long period including the ancient and modern historical periods.Secondly,because of the availability of data,this paper analyzes the driving factors of farmers' withdrawal from backyard hog production in the mid-late 1990s,using only macro-provincial panel data for empirical analysis,lacking of micro-household survey data.Macroscopic data show that in 1996,the number of pigs sold and the production of pork decreased dramatically,which means that a large number of farmers quit backyard hog production.However,lacking the survey data of 1995 and 1996,we cannot examine the impact of price fluctuations on backyard pig breeding decisions in a micro perspective.Third,because of the data structure characteristics,we use the cross-sectional datas of 2005 and 2010,2013 and 2015,then we cannot observe the dynamic characteristics of price fluctuations and cannot investigate the impact of price fluctuations on the farmers'rebirth in the new century. |
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