Changes In Labor Endowment, Factor Substitution And Adjustment Of Agricultural Planting Structure

Policy adjustments and production conditions improvement make China’s agricultural products supply capacity constantly enhancing,and the variety of agricultural products become richer.However,with the improvement in the living standards of residents,the rapid expansion of the middle-income class,and the increasingly diversified consumption patterns,the level of agricultural products supply has been difficult to satisfy the increasing demand for residents’ food consumption.Hence,the “No.1 Document” of the Central Committee in 2017 pointed out that the main contradictions in China’s agricultural development have changed from insufficient past aggregates to structural contradictions,and the contradiction between supply and demand for some agricultural products has continued to deepen.In the current agricultural planting structure,the scale of grain production continues to expand,especially corn production,which presents a problem of oversupply.However,the supply of crops such as fiber,oil,and sugar is seriously insufficient,but it shows a downward trend.Those changes reflect the contradiction of the total structure of the planting industry.Reasonable agricultural planting structure is related to the national economy and people’s livelihood.Reasonable adjustment of agricultural planting structure is not only a major issue that must be faced in modern agricultural development,but also one of the important ways to solve China’s “three rural” issues.Under the new situation,the pressure for planting structure adjustment is increasing,and the contradiction of more people and less land determines that the space for structural adjustment is limited.To speed up the adjustment of the agricultural planting structure to meet changes in market demand,it is necessary to clarify the laws and logic of production changes in agricultural planting structure,and grasp the causes of contradictions in planting structure.In the context of industrialization and urbanization,what is the logic for crop production to respond to the impact of endowment changes? What are the differences that lead to the formation of the abovementioned structural contradictions? For the production of cash crops,what are the paths of crop production location adjustment? Whether it can form regional specialized products in the future? Answering these questions clearly helps us grasp the space and potential for planting structure adjustment.Most research has discussed the issue of planting structure adjustment,but most of the studies focus on grain production,and the investigation of cash crops is still relatively weak.Based on the reality and theoretical requirements,stand on the actual situation of China’s agricultural planting structure adjustment,based on theories of structural transformation,induction technology innovation,and used econometric models,this study systematically examines the impact of changes in labor endowments on the structural adjustment of the planting industry,revealing the logic of the effect that factor substitution on the adjustment of planting structure,which is of great theoretical and practical significance to further promote the adjustment of agricultural planting structure in China.The article observed the transformation of the planting structure from the time and space scales,and including the more prominent production exit and industrial transfer in agricultural production into the scope of the study,providing a more complete analysis framework.To explain the causes of changes in planting structure from the perspectives of factor endowments regional differences and factor substitution differences,which enhanced the explanatory power of induction technology innovation theory.Moreover,the article estimates agricultural production factors’ relative price.The main research conclusions of the article include the following parts:First of all,the adjustment of China’s agricultural planting structure has gradually shifted from policy guidance to market and resource orientation.Before 2004,the market mechanism was absent in guiding agricultural planting structure adjustment.Policy interventions dominate planting structure adjustment,which leads to planting structure frequent changes accompanied by obvious “policy-type fluctuations”.Since then,the planting structure adjustment is gradually reduced by the influence of policy factors,demand and resource constraints guide the planting structure adjustment playing an increasingly important role,but the impact of grain production-oriented policies on the planting structure adjustment still exists.Secondly,China’s agricultural labor supply continues to decline,but the decline in agricultural labor supply is not global.The shortcomings gradually shifted from the east to the central and western regions.The temporal and spatial changes of factors have caused the relative price of China’s labor capital to rise continuously,and the differences in the relative price of labor capital between regions continue to widen.Induced by the rapid rise in relative prices,the use of capital in agricultural production has been accelerating,and the degree of capital substitution for labor has continued to deepen.For different crop varieties,the technology selection models exist significantly different.In particular,the technology selection of grain crops is mainly based on improving labor productivity,and the technology selection of cash crops is mainly based on improving land productivity.This directly leads to the different degree of factor substitution,which has laid the groundwork for the changes in planting structure.Thirdly,the rising labor prices has contributed to grain production.The characteristics of grain production that are easy to implement mechanical substitution are the main reasons for this change.However,facing rising labor prices,the performance of the three major grain crops are differences.The rising labor prices has significantly promoted the ratio expansion of rice and corn production,which has a positive impact on wheat,but not significantly.In the actual production process,there is a partial substitution of wheat for rice and corn production,and this substitution relationship is mainly due to differences in grain prices.As far as cash crops are concerned,the rising labor prices has a negative impact on the production ratio of cash crops such as cotton,oilseeds,sugar,and the more difficult to achieve mechanical substitution of crop production,the greater negatively affected by rising labor prices.The reason is that the above-mentioned crop production is highly labor-intensive,and it is difficult to mitigate the impact of rising labor prices through mechanical substitution.Of course,in the face of the negative impact of rising labor prices,there is also a mitigating effect of rising agricultural product prices,but when the effect of rising agricultural product prices is not enough to make up for the negative impact of rising labor costs,crop production shows a certain exit trend.Fourth,with the continuous adjustment of the crop variety structure,the regional structure of crop production is also constantly changing.Regional differences in labor endowment are the main reasons for this change.The results show that the transfer of agricultural production location has obvious space,time and breed order.The labor endowments regional differences significantly constitute the push and pull force of agricultural production location transfer,and crop varieties with weaker mechanical substitution capacity are more affected by labor endowment regional differences.In the process of industrial transfer,the difficulty of substituting labor with machinery has accelerated the process of agricultural production location transfer.Fifth,through calculation we found the structural adjustment capacity is a significant difference in different crops.The structural adjustment capacity of grain crops is generally higher than that of cash crops,and the structural adjustment capacity of grain crops has increased rapidly.This paper believes that the main reason for this difference is the difficulty of obtaining modern production factors and the transformation of production methods.Due to lack of available input factors(such as machinery and fine varieties),most cash crop production still maintains the characteristics of intensive use of labor,which largely restricts the improvement of structural adjustment capabilities.Based on the above analysis,this study proposes the following policy recommendations: First,we should increase the research and development of highyield and high-quality grains,and increase the level of grain yield can release more structural adjustment space;for cash crops,guide the innovation of multi-industry labor-saving technology,increase supply of small and medium-sized agricultural machinery.Second,according to the space and breed order of industrial transfer,it is classified to guide the transfer of different crop production to advantageous production areas,and improve the efficiency of agricultural resource allocation.Third,improve the price system of agricultural products,allow market-oriented structural adjustment to play a greater role,and improve the self-regulation capacity of agricultural production.