Impact Of Direction Of Technology Investment On Increasing Food Production

Technology investment is an important way to increase food production. However in recent years, although the investment for science and technology increased year by year, the national yield per unit area has been slowing down. Since the national yield per unit area is weighted average of every region, so the trend of yield per unit area of every region may not slow down.According to the law of diminishing marginal returns for science and technology investment, while the absolute volume in grain production is growing, the growth rate is indeed slowing down, and there will be differences of the slowing down in different regions, usually, regions with high yield per area should be faster slowdown in growth, regions with low yields per unit should be slower slowdown in growth, and the growth rate of different fields will show the convergence trend. However, in reality, this is often not true, growth rate remained high in areas with high yields, while the growth rate in the low-yielding fields which accounts for2/3of the country’s total land area did not grow fast. The trend of growth in different fields is reflect of scientific and technological investment, therefore, whether the current direction of scientific and technological investment achieves the optimal configuration of technological resources, thus increases food production effectively is worth exploring.At present, our scientific and technological resources are led by the government, while government gives considerable autonomy in all parts of our country, and the government can influence allocation of resources determined in every places by encouraging and rewarding them, this will lead to, in practice, evaluation criteria of scientific and technological achievements usually tends to encourage a record or to catch up with the world advanced level, and the scientists themselves also hope getting such results. Thus, while our country needs comprehensive grain production capacity, and continues to increase investment in agricultural research funding, and there are various incentives for scientific and technological progress from national and local, this research direction which is created to encourage and reward new high-yield field may be agree with enhancing the overall grain production capacity target or weighted average yield by a substantial increase in the low-yielding fields. Therefore, the article, from the feedback of the scientific and technological investment, that is whether the trend of growth of field per unit area reflects the law of diminishing marginal returns, determines whether current allocation of resources is effective polices to increase food production, in the context of our hoping to keep food production growing, and attaching great importance to the potential of low-yielding fields.Since the law of diminishing marginal returns for science and technology investment is objective, if the goal is maximizing total grain production capacity or the weighted average yields, science and technology investment should be configured to increase more in the low-yielding fields of production, if this is true, growth rate of different fields should show the convergence trend, that is growth rate in the low-yielding fields should be relatively higher. Whether the reality is derived as above, we can use the actual data of grain yield growth rate of various regions and varieties to test, if the empirical result of actual data do not support derivation of growth convergence, it indicates that there are certain problems in the direction of science and technology investment, and these problems can largely be illustrated by the guiding role of scientific and technological achievements in the evaluation system. In empirical analysis, in order to eliminate geography and natural interference, the mainland of China is divided into six regions, the article verifies whether growth rate of field per unit area has a positive correlation to the level of initial yield per unit within the region, by using data of China Rural Statistical Yearbook (1987-2009), and explains whether science and technology investment meets the law of diminishing returns, the results show that:in half of the country’s6regions, growth trends of grain yield does not meet law of diminishing marginal returns for science and technology investments, so technological resources do not achieve the optimal configuration. Then, the article analyzes the causes through catalog of the National Science and Technology Award and research projects of specific cases of biased technological progress in the direction, the results show that:in Reward of National Science and Technology Progress, the more awards a region gets, the farer it is from the law of diminishing marginal returns for science and technology investment; in the meantime, the experimental base for scientific research projects selection is biased in favor of to the high land and demonstration fields of high-yield.The full text shows that:technological achievements evaluation system guides the direction biased in favor of provinces with high growth rate, thus growth rate of different fields do not converge, costarring to the law of diminishing marginal returns for science and technology investments. This article puts forward a new interpretation for slowing grain production, noting that the goals for our expecting to improve the overall grain production capacity and incentives used by the government are inconsistent. Since the allocation of resources will affect improving the weighted average yield, then encourage of scientific and technological progress which affects resource allocation system needs adjustment, and the achievement in the low-yielding fields should be given more support and encouragement.