| Improving the adoption of new technologies in grain production is one of the important means to promote farmers’ supply and income,to ensure national food security,and to reduce agricultural non-point source pollution.Regarding the promotion and diffusion of agricultural technology,in addition to the public promotion organized by the government and the market promotion from agricultural input(technology)producers to farmers,mutual learning by farmers through social networks is also one of the important ways.Existing literature has discussed that compared with rain-fed agriculture,irrigated agriculture provides farmers with a platform for mutual learning during irrigation,and promotes the spatial correlation of technological efficiency among farmers.Based on China’s rice production practices,this study further analyzes the effects of collective irrigation on the promotion of farmers’ mutual learning,hence the technology adoption in other area,and the spatial correlation of technological efficiency compared to individual irrigation.This study attempts to illustrate that organizing collective choice at certain operation(for example,collective irrigation or integrated pest control or joint plowing and seeding)will benefit farmers’ individual choices at other operations by promoting social learning.In this study,the tranlog production function was used to conduct stochastic frontier analysis on the tracking investigation of more than 300 administrative villages in jiangsu and sichuan provinces,and spatial autocorrelation analysis of the estimated technical efficiency was conducted to reveal the effect of collective action(collective irrigation)on the optimization of technical choice of farmers and the improvement of technical efficiency.The results show that:(1)Collective activities can promote the mutual learning among farmers and enhance the decision-making convergence between farmers and their neighbors in production behavior;(2)Through the communication and learning platform built by farmers’ gathering,the spatial relevance of farmers’ production efficiency is enhanced,so as to improve the production efficiency.Policy implications are put forward:(1)To strengthen the construction of socialized service system of agricultural production and the accumulation of agricultural labor capital.Establish a diversified agricultural production service system in areas where labor resources are scarce to provide farmers with information and technical support.(2)Pay attention to regional farmers’technical training and agro-technical extension activities,improve the human capital of the labor force,and thus improve farmers’ rice planting level and agricultural modernization degree.(3)The interaction between the government and farmers in information dissemination is brought into play by the social network communication subject.(4)To coordinate the small farmers who make decentralized decisions,promote the effectiveness of rural collective action,and promote the effective implementation of rural revitalization strategy. |
