Labor Costs In Hunan Province On Grain Production Influence Of Mechanization Levels

Since the new century,the non-farm transfer of rural labor in China has gradually accelerated,and it has become an indisputable fact that the quantity and quality of labor in agricultural production have declined and the explicit price and relative implicit cost of labor have risen rigidly.According to the theory of induced technological change,the change of relative price of production factors will lead to the bias of technological progress,and induce each operating entity to use relatively low-cost agricultural machinery to replace higher-cost manpower.In recent years,with the introduction of the Law of the People’s Republic of China on the Promotion of Agricultural Mechanization and the implementation of the agricultural machinery purchase subsidy policy,the rapid development of China’s agricultural production mechanization has not only effectively replaced the missing labor in agriculture,but also accelerated the process of agricultural modernization while improving the efficiency of agricultural production.As a traditional agricultural and populated province,Hunan Province not only has to promote urbanization and reasonable transfer of surplus rural labor,but also has to bear the heavy responsibility of contributing to national food security.At the same time,as a typical mountainous and hilly region,it is urgent to explore how the rising labor cost in Hunan Province affects mechanization and how to follow the guidance of induced change theory to consider how to further apply and deeply promote agricultural mechanization in the main producing province in the context of topographic heterogeneity,and how to promote its grain production mechanization to achieve smooth and high-quality development under the substitution effect.Based on the analysis of the characteristics of labor cost change and mechanization level in grain production in Hunan Province,this paper uses single factor productivity analysis and two-dimensional spatial phase diagram growth analysis to determine the bias of technological progress and development path of grain production in Hunan Province;using double logistic regression model and panel data of 14 cities and states in Hunan Province,we focus on the analysis of the impact of labor cost increase on the development of grain production mechanization in Hunan Province from the perspective of induced technological progress at the provincial and county levels.The impact of rising labor costs on the mechanization of grain production in Hunan Province was analyzed using a double logistic regression model and panel data of 14 cities and states in Hunan Province.The results of the study found that the K value of technological progress in grain production in Hunan Province from 2004 to 2018 was 0.07,and the rising labor cost effectively stimulated the improvement of grain production mechanization in Hunan through the substitution effect,and each 1%rise in hired labor wages would increase the total power of grain machinery by 0.327%.At the same time,the cross product term of hired labor wages and topography has a negative effect on the total mechanized power,indicating that the topography factor affects the difficulty of substitution of machinery for labor.Grain production in Hunan Province has been obviously substituted by machinery for labor to save production costs,and this choice promotes the bias of labor-saving technological progress represented by mechanization of grain production;the rising labor cost advances the mechanization level of grain production in Hunan Province,but it is also hindered by mountainous and hilly terrain factors.In response to the above findings,policy recommendations are proposed:to promote reasonable labor transfer in Hunan Province and accelerate the cultivation of new professional farmers to adapt to the development of agricultural modernization;to improve the mechanization level of weak links in the province and promote the development of full mechanization;to follow the concept of moderate scale operation and promote the construction of farmland infrastructure.