Thinking On China's Major Food Crops To Produce Optimal Layout

Although China has a long history of agriculture, it had long been in a state of small-scale peasant economy in the former feudal land system lasting several thousand years and backward productivity conditions. Since the founding of the new Republic of China, the pattern of domestic food production layout has been adjusted step by step, but it has not achieved the greatest degree of optimization. With the current steady population growth and the rapid economic development, plus the increasingly tense relationship between man and the nature and the more and more fierce international competition, it has been an inevitable choice of the times for us to transform traditional agriculture into modern agriculture. We have to give full play to comparative advantages and lay out the space reasonably, which is not only the inner meaning of modern agriculture, but also an effective way to improve agricultural competitiveness of China.In view of this, the paper analyzes the trends and current problems on the changes in spatial distribution of China's major food crops, puts forth the aim and principles of spatial distribution optimization, and thinks about ways to promote the spatial distribution optimization of China's major food crops.This paper is composed of five chapters. Chapter 1 briefly introduced the conditions since the founding of China in two aspects: the first aspect is about the changes and features in the spatial pattern of China's food production, and the second dwells on the production and distribution of three major crops, that is, rice, wheat and corn. Based on the concept of comparative advantages of regional farm goods, Chapter 2 calculates the Location Quotient (LQ Index) of rice, wheat and corn by provinces from two angles of planting acreage area and yields.According to the acreage and yield LQ indices of the above three crops in the comparison period, Chapter 3 analyses the extent of specialization and the concentration and scattering trend of spatial distribution in China's major food production areas, which leads to the conclusion that changes of spatial distribution of China's major food cropproduction are mainly influenced by the following factors, such as changes of agricultural policies, regional differences in the level of development, technological advances, institutional transformations, regional cultivated land resources, and adjustment on food consumption structure, etc.On the basis of the analysis of the problems on China's major food crops spatial distribution, Chapter 4 establishes the regional distribution optimization objectives and principles of China's food production, and considers on six ways to optimize the spatial distribution, that is, imposing specialized production on the major food production area, actively promoting the industrialization of food business; improving the market system, raising the level of food's commercialization, depending on the advances of science and technology to improve the profits and efficiency of food production, realizing reasonable division to raise labor productivity of the food producers. As to Chapter 5, it reviews the achievements in the developments of China's major food crops industrial belts rich of comparative advantages since "Plans for the Regional Distribution of China Advantageous Farm Goods" was issued in 2002. In this chapter, it also contends that we should pay extra attention to various factors affecting the formation and the developments of agricultural industrial belts, speed up building agricultural management system that adapts to the healthy development of farm goods industrial belts, establish and improve the risk protection system, have a full understanding of the long-term and arduous nature reflected in the formation and development of farm goods industrial belts, and must not seek quick results in order to further implement the strategy of agricultural industrial belt.A combination of two methods, quantitative and qualitative analysis methods, is used in this paper. Calculation formula is advanced in this paper based on the analysis of theories of comparative advantages of agricultural products. Thus the LQ calculation results during different periods of rice, wheat and corn give data support to the analysis on the extent of specialization and concentration or scattering trend in spatial distribution in major food crops production area in China. Based on theabove analysis results, we reveal problems in reality about the spatial distribution of major food crops in China, and further think on the ways to optimize the spatial distribution of major food crops.The innovations of this paper are mainly reflected in three aspects. Firstly, this paper makes a calculation and comparison on LQ of rice, wheat and corn from two different angles(acreage and output). Secondly, the observation covers a long time span from 1978 through 2005, and focuses on three important years, that is, 1985, 1997 and 2005, to make analysis, which determines that data in this paper are relatively up-to-date and reflect the current situation. Thirdly, considering that food production are often affected by factors such as climate, institutional innovation, inputs and governments' food price policies, etc., we use the average data in three continuous years to reflect annual acreage and yields .