Research On Technical Progress And Its Inducement Of Wheat Production In China

With the deepening of industrialization and urbanization in China,the contradiction between the rigid growth of grain demand and the continuous reduction of arable land area,the imbalance between supply and demand of grain-growing labor force and the decline of farmers' enthusiasm for grain-growing has become increasingly prominent.Food security has become one of the important problems restricting the development of national economy.As one of the three major staple cereals,wheat is an irreplaceable and important ration for Chinese residents.It is of great significance to ensure the stable growth of its output for solving the problem of food security in China.However,the "extensive" growth mode driven by factor input makes the increasing space of wheat yield extremely limited.Therefore,it is of great practical significance to change the mode of wheat production and realize the continuous improvement of wheat yield by relying on technological progress.Existing studies on wheat technological progress are mostly based on the framework of total factor productivity(TFP)decomposition.Data envelopment analysis(DEA)or stochastic frontier analysis(SFA)are used to measure the rate of technological progress in wheat production.However,the analysis of materialized embodied technological progress in various factors of production is rarely involved,and it is impossible to identify the embodied technological progress of each factor of production.The incentive of step.Therefore,based on the theoretical model of cost function,this study first decomposes technological progress into embodied technological progress by introducing factor price enhancements,and then analyses the contribution of materialized technological progress to total technological progress.On this basis,we decompose the embodied technological progress of each factor again,and further analyze its main incentives: exogenous investment promotion,factor price induction or scale induction.In this study,the input-output and price data of 14 major wheat-producing provinces in China from 1984 to 2017 were used to estimate the technological progress rate of wheat production in China,and the characteristics of its time series evolution and regional differences were compared and analyzed.On this basis,the contribution of embodied technological progress of labor,machinery and fertilizer to total technological progress is evaluated,and the main causes of technological progress of each factor are further identified,so as to accurately locate the weak links of technological progress in wheat production and provide decision-making basis for the forward-looking planning of our government.The main conclusions of this study are as follows:(1)From 1984 to 2017,the annual average value of wheat technological progress rate was 2.79%,but there were obvious differences in the trend of wheat technological progress in different periods.According to its fluctuation,the sample period can be roughly divided into four stages: rapid promotion stage,gradual decline stage,re-promotion stage and re-decline stage.In terms of regional distribution,although the rate of technological progress in all major wheat producing areas has been over 2.20% since 1984,there are significant regional differences.(2)For the change of input efficiency of each factor,the input efficiency of chemical fertilizer factor increased by 15.98% annually during the research period,while the input efficiency of labor and machinery factor decreased by 1.70% and 8.97% annually,respectively.(3)On average,chemical fertilizer factor embodied technology progress rate is the highest,with an average annual value of 3.54%,and its contribution to the total technology progress rate is also the largest.On the contrary,the average annual rate of technological progress of labor is-0.57%,which has a negative contribution to the total technological progress,while the rate of technological progress of machinery has a greater impediment to the total technological progress,with an average annual value of-1.80%.(4)The technological progress of wheat in China mainly comes from the pure technological effect promoted by exogenous investment.The price-induced effect of factors and the scale-induced effect have not been highlighted.The time series evolution characteristics of the three main incentives have significant heterogeneity.Specifically,the pure technology effect presents the "inverted U" change characteristics on the whole,the scale-induced effect presents the "U" change,and the price-induced effect presents the "N" change.In terms of the incentives for technological progress of various factors,the progress of mechanical technology mainly comes from the pure technological effect promoted by exogenous investment,and the price-induced effect also contributes positively to it,while the technological progress of labor and fertilizer factors mainly comes from the scale effect.