Study On The Distribution Difference Of Food Security Responsibility Among Districts And Counties

Food security occupies an important position in national economic security,and improving food self-sufficiency is the core of addressing food security and ensuring the fundamental of stable social development.To this end,the central government’s annual "No.1 document" will be the first and prominent food security issues,and clearly require governments at all levels to pay attention to and assume local responsibility for food production.In recent years,the state has,for the first time,made comprehensive grain production capacity a binding indicator for local governments’ economic and social development from a strategic level of top-level design.In China’s organizational governance model,the solution to food security is achieved through a mutually constraining organizational system with the division of authority and responsibility,and checks and balances between the various subjects,with county-level governments,as administrative units at a lower administrative level,assuming the front-line responsibility for ensuring food security in China.However,at the county level,counties and municipal districts,as two basic forms,show differences in the degree of responsibility for food production due to differences in the focus of socioeconomic development and other aspects,while the differences in food security responsibilities between district and county establishment types reflect,to some extent,the uneven degree of distribution of local government responsibilities.Therefore,in the background of the current arrangement of compacting local government’s food security principal responsibility system,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to take the binding index of food production capacity as the foothold for the analysis of local government’s behavior,explore the internal mechanism of food security responsibility distribution,and compare the differences of food security principal responsibility distribution among local government’s establishment types.Therefore,based on the theoretical analysis,this paper uses county-level panel data from 2020-2022,bidirectional fixed effect model to empirically examine the direct impact of regional and county establishment types on the distribution of food security responsibilities.By analyzing the strategic behaviors of local governments in food security responsibilities distribution,this paper explores the impact of the differences in the distribution of food security responsibilities between counties in terms of the intensity of food security constraints and the stage of economic development.The results show that:(1)the responsibility for food production targets is decomposed at each level of government,vertically in a top-down manner,and horizontally in the form of differences in the distribution of responsibilities among governments at the same level,and ultimately the responsibility is compacted to the county level;(2)differences in the type of district and county establishment affect the distribution of food security responsibilities,and the responsibility for food security borne by counties is greater than the responsibility for food security borne by municipal districts;(3)The food security responsibilities assumed between district and county formations are influenced by the intensity of constraints on food security responsibilities by higher level governments;the greater the intensity of constraints on food production responsibilities imposed on local municipal governments,the more it will exacerbate the differences in the distribution of food security responsibilities between districts and counties;the food security responsibilities assumed between district and county formations are influenced by the economic development of local municipalities;less developed areas with lower stages of economic development will exacerbate the differences in the distribution of food security responsibilities between districts and counties The differences in the distribution of food security responsibilities between districts and counties are influenced by the economic development of municipalities.Based on this,this paper attempts to propose the following three policy recommendations: first,strengthen the institutional arrangement of food security responsibilities and reasonably allocate food security target responsibilities;second,comprehensively consider the responsibility constraints and strategy space of local governments to coordinate food security and economic development;third,establish an efficient responsibility mechanism to strengthen the implementation of local government food security responsibilities.