Study Of The Relationship Between Scale And Production Efficiency In Desertification Grassland--A Case Study Of Arxant Village In Xisu County

In the early 80s, pastoral areas followed agricultural areas establishing the household responsibility system gradually which operated based on the family units and divided pastures and livestock to specific families. Given different initial conditions, such as pasture quality, population and even different climate, different pasture regions made very different division of pasture and livestock. System changes and differences in initial conditions lead to the changes of the way using resources and then the changes of production efficiency. Many scholars advocate large-scale livestock operations, and this article aims to explore the relationship between the operation scale and production efficiency. Selecting Arxant village In Xisu Counties, a desertification grassland, as the study case, this article wishes to help improve the production efficiency in those desertification grassland.Core of this paper consists of two aspects:(1) measure the production efficiency of the 85 subjects using DEA method, which is indicated by technical efficiency and divided into pure technical efficiency and scale efficiency. Grouped by the cattle scale and pasture size, this part discussed the relationship between scale and efficiency. (2) Analyze the underlying factors caused the non-efficiency and differences using SFA method.Results of DEA method shows that:most of the households achieve a relatively higher efficiency in extremely poor production conditions; half of the households operate at the stage of increasing returns to scale; the relationship between scale and technical efficiency is not a simple positive or negative relationship. That is, if the scale is indicated by the number of livestock that households own, the technical efficiency shows an inverted V-curve with the expansion of the cattle scale; if the scale is indicated by the pasture size, the technical efficiency is still shown in the early changes of V-type curve, but the technical efficiency of the largest-sized grassland has declined again. In spite of a downward trend, its technical efficiency is still higher than the efficiency of the middle scale. The production efficiency of medium-sized household has greater room for improvement.SFA method results show that:first, capital is a key factor that can promote the output. Second, overall speaking, households operate at the stage of increasing returns to scale and most of the households achieve a relatively higher efficiency. Third, buying fodder, using mechanical equipment and improvement of livestock breed help to improve the production efficiency.