A Study On The Impact Of Production Outsourcing Services On The Allocation Of Production Factors Of Farm Households

The vision of agricultural modernization with mechanization as the carrier has been a part of the agricultural development policy since the founding of New China more than 70 years ago,and the agricultural production outsourcing service has been instrumental in achieving a comprehensive mechanization rate of over 70% for staple foods in China today under the basic agricultural situation of "big country,small farmers".Agricultural production outsourcing services introduce new factors and technologies into smallholder operations in a roundabout way,which can effectively compensate for the lack of quantity,quality and skills of family labor,promote production efficiency through division of labor,and realize the organic connection between smallholder farmers and modern agriculture.Theoretically,the development of production outsourcing services with machinery as the main service means will affect the factor allocation of agricultural production of farmers,specifically by accelerating the transfer of agricultural labor and increasing the mechanical input of agricultural production.Moreover,the impact of production outsourcing services on the allocation of production factors differs for different types of farmers with different endowment characteristics in terms of labor,capital,risk preferences and production goals.In addition,not all segments of production outsourcing services achieve the same factor allocation effect,which varies depending on the production segment attributes.The reason why the level of production outsourcing services varies across links is that the formation of link production outsourcing services depends on both the scale of service demand and the possibility of scaled supply,which is related to the degree of link standardization and the degree of continuous land leveling.In summary,this study investigates the relationship between production outsourcing services and farmers’ production factor allocation,focusing on the nonfarm allocation of labor and the machine-labor allocation of production factors,and examining the differences in these effects when considering farmer heterogeneity and link heterogeneity.The study first analyzes theoretically the impact mechanism of production outsourcing services on rural production factor allocation considering household heterogeneity and link heterogeneity,and then empirically tests these relationships using four periods of panel village-level data and1,000 households research data spanning 15 years from 2003 to 2018,applying a combination of fixed-effects models and moderating effects.It is found that village production outsourcing services have a significant positive effect on the off-farm allocation of farm households’ labor and a significant contribution to the machine-labor allocation ratio of farm households’ production.In addition,there were significant differences in the structure of production factor allocation by different segments of outsourcing services,and outsourcing services of machine tillage segment for maize and rice,plant protection segment for maize and rice,and machine harvest segment for rice had significant positive effects on farm household labor nonfarm allocation,while outsourcing services of machine sowing segment for maize and rice and machine harvest segment for maize had no significant effects on farm household labor nonfarm allocation.In addition,the study also found that the effect of production outsourcing services on the proportion of part-time labor of farmers varied according to the farming scale of farmers,and the larger the scale of farmers,the smaller the effect of the development of production outsourcing services on promoting the proportion of their part-time labor.The larger the farmer,the smaller the impact of outsourcing services on the proportion of part-time labor,and the more it increases the attachment to the land.The findings of this paper have the following policy implications:(1)the technical bottleneck breakthrough of production links with low degree of outsourcing services should be accelerated,which can be achieved through subsidies to agricultural machinery enterprises to encourage them to increase their R&D investment,and at the same time to provide agricultural technology training to service providers to improve their service level,so as to solve the problems such as poor compatibility of rice machine sowing links and insufficient development of plant protection links;by solving the weak links of outsourcing services to achieve By solving the weak links of outsourcing services,the whole link development can be achieved,thus realizing the economies of scale of the service providers in terms of the total number of services,as well as the economies of scope brought by increasing the service links,reducing the service fees on the demand side,improving the production efficiency,and further realizing the win-win situation for both the service providers and the producers.(2)Improve the construction of regional labor market,improve the labor information network,focus on employment skills training for small farmers,guide small farmers to export their labor,and give full play to the role of production outsourcing services in replacing labor in order to achieve the optimal allocation of resources.(3)Accelerating the flow of agricultural land to contribute to moderate scale operation of agriculture will help farmers engaged in agricultural production to make full use of production outsourcing services to achieve optimization of agricultural production factors,while with the development of outsourcing services,larger machinery with more cost advantages will join to reduce the production costs of large-scale operation,and large-scale households will gain more income.(4)To deepen the supply-side reform of agricultural production outsourcing services,explore whether the demand for agricultural production outsourcing services of different scale grain operators in different regions matches with the supply of local agricultural production outsourcing services,strive to solve the related resource mismatch problem,and provide relevant policies and technical support.