| Under the basic national conditions of large country and smallholders,how to let the most smallholders share the development achievements of modern agriculture is a problem of modernization in China.Agricultural socialized services are considered as the basic way and main mechanism to realize the organic connection between smallholders and modern agriculture,which can lead smallholders into the track of modern agricultural development.As agricultural mechanization is an important foundation and symbol of modern agricultural development,agricultural mechanization services bear the main content of agricultural socialized services in the current process of accelerating China’s transformation into an agricultural powerhouse and promoting agricultural and rural modernization.The development of agricultural mechanization services demands subsidy support of government.Supporting agricultural mechanization to develop agricultural mechanization services is an important way to realize the organic connection between smallholders and modern agricultural development.Although there are differences in national conditions and agricultural conditions in different countries,all countries have provided support for agricultural mechanization in agricultural development,and pay attention to breaking constraints of development,improving the efficiency of subsidies,and optimizing the structure of agricultural machinery.Diversified support means have paved the way for the development of agricultural mechanization in various countries.Among them,the focus on scientific and technological research and development,green production,the guidance of mutual assistance and cooperation,the determination of land improvement and infrastructure improvement,and the combination of agricultural machinery purchase subsidies and credit support are all worth learning from China.As one of the “four subsidies” in China’s agriculture at the beginning of the 21 st century,agricultural machinery purchase subsidy is an agricultural subsidy policy aims at promoting the purchase and use of agricultural machinery by farmers,improving the level of agricultural mechanization,and enhancing the comprehensive agricultural production capacity.Since the implementation of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy in 2004,although it has not undergone major reforms like many agricultural subsidy policies implemented in the same period,it has also undergone minor adjustments,and has undergone certain changes in the amount of subsidy funds,the sphere of subsidy,the mode of subsidy,and the standard of subsidy.The sphere of subsidy regions has been extended from individual regions to the whole country,and the sphere of subsidy objects is always included in agricultural production organizations or individuals.The mode of subsidy has gone through the transition from “price subsidy” to “quota subsidy” and from “cut-price purchase mode” to “full-price purchase mode”.The standard of subsidy has also been adjusted according to the policy orientation while basically unchanged.The change in the investment of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy is basically consistent with the change in the national agricultural mechanization level,which reflects the effect of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy in promoting the development of agricultural mechanization at the macro level.At the micro level,the target of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy is a small number of farmers who purchase agricultural machinery,while more than 98%of China’s agricultural producers are smallholders who are unable to purchase modern agricultural machinery.Therefore,how to make agricultural machinery purchase subsidy benefit a wide range of farmers is a key issue under the current national conditions.Since the agricultural socialized service is the basic way and main mechanism to realize the organic connection between smallholders and modern agricultural development,and the agricultural mechanization service is the main content of agricultural socialized services,the impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on farmers’ acquisition to agricultural mechanization services is the basic point and important content of this paper.Based on this,this paper mainly evaluates the policy effect of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy by using the data from Fixed Observation Points of the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs in China from 2009 to 2018,studies the impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on agricultural production from both input and output,and draws the following conclusions:First,by analyzing the impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on farmers’ acquisition to agricultural mechanization services,it is found that the subsidy not only significantly improve the availability of agricultural mechanization services for smallholders,but also significantly expand the scale of services.The impact mechanism is that the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy has changed the liquidity constraints and the relative price of production factors,promoted the development of the agricultural mechanization service market,and then affected the acquisition of smallholders to agricultural mechanization services.The impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on the acquisition of agricultural mechanization services is also different due to the difference of resource endowment in the region where the farmers are located.Compared with other regions,the subsidy effect in areas with larger market capacity,less land fragmentation and smaller terrain slope is more significant.Second,the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy has significantly increased the amount of agricultural machinery owned by farmers,but has not promoted the use of their own agricultural machinery.Farmers have the problem of blindly buying machinery,paying more attention to buying than using.In recent years,the number of farmers who use agricultural mechanization services has increased,and because of the characteristics of multiple links in agricultural production,most farmers use both their own agricultural machinery and agricultural mechanization services.Among production links,the pesticide spraying link is more suitable for farmers to use their own agricultural machinery.The harvesting and straw returning link is more suitable for farmers to use agricultural mechanization services.Based on the investigation on the behavior of using agricultural machinery in different types of cultivated land,it can be found that compared with the contracted land,the proportion of farmers who use their own agricultural machinery will significantly increase on the transferred land.The decision of farmers to purchase machinery for their own use or to use agricultural mechanization services according to their own conditions is a vivid reflection of Chinese modernization in agricultural production.In addition,agricultural machinery purchase subsidy is not conducive to improving the utilization rate of farmers’ own use of agricultural machinery,but the promotion effect of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on agricultural mechanization services has fixed its adverse impact on the utilization rate of agricultural machinery to a certain extent.Third,agricultural machinery purchase subsidy has a significant positive impact on agricultural Total Factor Productivity(TFP),and the positive impact on agricultural TFP growth rate is only significant for smallholders,and this impact is restricted by the degree of land fragmentation and terrain factors.The agricultural mechanization services have become the key link of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy affecting agricultural TFP and TFP growth rate due to its dual attributes of expanding the sphere with improving quality and efficiency and being subject to transaction costs.Through further decomposition of agricultural TFP growth rate,it can be found that the insufficient improvement of allocation efficiency and scale efficiency is an important reason for the insignificant impact of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy on agricultural TFP growth rate among all farmers.Fourth,the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy is generally conducive to improving the Comprehensive Capabilities of Grain Production represented by the land productivity,labor productivity and TFP growth rate.The agricultural machinery purchase subsidy has produced policy spillover effect through the development of socialized services,expanded the sphere of policy benefits,and enabled farmers to achieve effective improvement in quality and reasonable increase in quantity of factor inputs for grain production,thus affecting the Comprehensive Capabilities of Grain Production.This impact varies among different farmer groups and regions.This paper makes a supplementary study on the evaluation of agricultural machinery purchase subsidy and even the entire agricultural subsidy policy system,and suggests that: Increase the support for agricultural socialized services,and improve the acquisition of smallholders to socialized services through supply-side subsidy support;Actively eliminate the influence of endowment constraints on the effect of subsidy policies;Develop diversified modes of agricultural machinery using and improve the utilization rate of agricultural machinery;Pay attention to the coordinated development of land scale management and service scale management;Pay attention to improving the capacities of grain production and fundamentally guarantee the national food security;Take capacity-building as the guidance,give play to the policy spillover effect and improve the efficiency of using the subsidy funds. |
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