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| 1 |
ID:
089575
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| Publication |
2009.
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| Summary/Abstract |
We conducted a nationally representative survey to measure the impact of China's institutional reforms in public agricultural extension on the time allocation of its one million agricultural extension agents. We found that Chinese agents spent much less time than their titles would suggest on providing agricultural extension services, and that agents whose base salaries were funded fully or partially by commercial activities spent substantially less time serving farmers. The institutional incentives associated with the source of funding have a much larger effect on agent time allocation than do the levels of funding. We conclude that the recent government policy to separate commercial activities from extension services is a step in the right direction and should be expanded. The results also suggest that, at least for agricultural extension, the goal of many national governments and international donors to develop locally financing institutions to sustain development projects may be misguided.
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| 2 |
ID:
144852
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| Summary/Abstract |
China's agricultural sector faces challenges because most farms are still small scale. China's policy is to encourage the consolidation of farms and promote farms that are larger in scale. A question that arises is: Are China's farms growing? The goal of the present paper is to determine whether large farms in China have emerged or if farms remain small. To meet this goal, we systematically document the trends in the operational sizes of China's farms and measure the determinants of changes in farm size. Using a nationally representative dataset, the study shows that in 2013 China's farming sector was still mostly characterized by small-scale farms. However, at the same time, there is an emerging class of middle-sized and larger-sized farms. Most large farms are being run by households but there is a set of large farms that are company/cooperative-run. Today, farmers on larger farms are younger and better educated than the average farmer.
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| 3 |
ID:
143434
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| Summary/Abstract |
As the rapid development of Genetically Modified crops, Chinese government has been increasing its efforts in GM crop biosafety management. However, the rapid expansion of Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) cotton varieties and less regulated seed industry also resulted in a large amount of Bt cotton varieties that bypassed China's biosafety regulations. This study shows that the Bt cotton varieties without biosafety certificates (BC) have been widely used by farmers in practice. Econometric analysis further shows that the Bt cotton varieties with BC outperform the varieties without BC in terms of pesticide use. The paper concludes with policy implications.
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| 4 |
ID:
147422
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| Summary/Abstract |
While it is widely accepted that industrialization has brought both environmental pollution and economic growth in rural areas of China, very little is known about whether the negative effects of industrial pollution on rural residents have been proportionally offset by positive effects due to improvements in off-farm income. This paper improves our understanding of these tradeoffs by conducting an empirical analysis based on a set of nationwide panel data collected in 2008 and 2012 and covering five provinces, 101 villages, and 2020 households. Evidence is found to suggest that it is not always the case that rural households that are affected by pollution reap the off-farm employment benefits associated with industrialization. Specifically, although industrial pollution incidence is found to be positively related with the level of local off-farm employment, this relationship is statistically insignificant when migrant labor is included. It can be explained as areas that less economically benefited from industrialization tent to have more labors migrated out and the average annual wage income of one migrant labor is much higher than that of local off-farm labor.
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| 5 |
ID:
147434
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| Summary/Abstract |
China's hog production has undergone significant structural transition, from the traditional backyard production mode to the large-scale production mode. In this study, we illustrate the linkage between economic development and the transition in hog production mode. Using unique and nationally representative survey data, we find that an increase in farmer wealth motivates them to transition away from backyard hog production. However, the relationship between wealth and herd size among large-scale hog producers is positive. With farmer wealth increasing rapidly, the transition of China's hog production toward the large-scale mode is expected to continue; this will have significant implications for not only hog production, but also the feed sector and many other related sectors.
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| 6 |
ID:
120601
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This paper contributes to the assessment of China's rural labor markets. According to our data, the increase in off-farm employment that China experienced during the 1980s and 1990s continued during the 2000s. Our analysis shows that migration has become the most prevalent off-farm activity, although the destination of migrants is shifting from outside of one's province to destinations closer to home. The present paper finds that large shares of male and female individuals, especially those under 40 years, are working off the farm. These findings represent an important contribution to the labor economics field. First, the results of the present paper reveal that the labor transition from the agricultural sector to the non-agricultural sector for key segments of China's rural labor force is nearly complete. Second, although a large share of China's rural labor force work in agriculture, most of these workers are older men and women (and likely would not be willing to take low-wage, labor-intensive jobs). Third, the rising unskilled wage rate in China is partially a result of the tightening of the labor force in the young age cohorts. Finally, due to factors associated with the one child policy and other demographic transition forces, successive age cohorts will continue to fall in absolute number in the coming decade. Assuming China's growth continues, we expect to see further wage increases since it will take higher wages to coax more workers to work off the farm.
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| 7 |
ID:
109907
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2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Understanding the determinants of consumers' acceptance towards genetically modified food (GMF) is critically important for the biotechnology industry. Based on a unique data set collected by the authors in 2002 and 2003 in 11 cities of China, an econometric model of consumers' acceptance of GMF is estimated. The results show that consumers' acceptance of GMF is high in urban China and consumers' trust in government has a significantly positive effect on consumers' acceptance of GMF. Our study also shows that failure to consider the endogeneity of consumers' trust in government will lead to serious underestimation of its impacts on consumers' acceptance of GMF. This is, to the best of our knowledge, the first study on the impact of consumers' trust in government with consideration of the endogenous problems that often are encountered in consumer perception studies.
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| 8 |
ID:
116517
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The top-down public agricultural extension system in China and its early commercialization reforms during the 1990s have left millions of farmers without access to extension services. A pilot inclusive agricultural extension system was introduced in 2005 to better meet the diverse needs of small-scale farmers. Three key features of the experiment are (1) inclusion of all farmers as target beneficiaries, (2) effective identification of farmers' extension service needs, and (3) an accountability system to provide better agricultural extension services to farmers. This paper describes design of the reform initiative and examines its effect on farmers' access to extension services. Based on farmer supplied data from six counties for the years 2005 to 2007, this paper shows that inclusive reform initiatives significantly improve farmers' access to and actually received of agricultural extension services as well as their adoption of new technologies. Implications for further reforms to the agricultural extension system are also discussed.
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| 9 |
ID:
073636
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2006.
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| Summary/Abstract |
By conscious design, reformers in China only gradually focused their efforts on expanding the role of markets for the allocation of goods and services in the economy. As a result, markets-especially in the agricultural sector-developed slowly. Throughout the 1990s there was a heated debate about the degree to which markets had emerged. The main goal in this paper is to bring together a number of simple and revealing facts on the emergence of China's markets. To do so we examine several sets of price data and analyze spatial patterns of market prices contours over time and text the extent to which market prices are integrated among China's regions. According to our analysis, we find that to a remarkable degree, agricultural commodity markets have emerged; price patterns look much like those in market economies in the rest of the world and prices are highly integrated across space.
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| 10 |
ID:
124541
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| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Even though both empirical studies and field evidences show that Bt cotton can significantly reduce pesticide use, Chinese farmers are still spraying excessive pesticide in field production. Based on primary household surveys in the North China Plain, this study shows that farmers' lack of knowledge on pest management and pesticide use is strongly correlated with their excessive pesticide use. According to this study, improving farmers' awareness and knowledge could potentially reduce pesticide use by 10-15%. The paper concludes with policy implications.
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| 11 |
ID:
097374
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| 12 |
ID:
145580
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| Summary/Abstract |
The goal of the present paper is to examine how the expansion of the economy from 2000 has affected rural off-farm labor market participation. Specifically, we seek to determine whether off-farm labor increased after 2000, what forms of employment are driving trends in off-farm labor and whether gender differences can be observed in off-farm employment trends. Using a nationally representative dataset that consist of two waves of surveys conducted in 2000 and 2008 in six provinces, this paper finds that off-farm labor market participation continued to rise steadily in the early 2000s. However, there is a clear difference in the trends associated with occupational choice before and after 2000. In addition, we find that rural off-farm employment trends are different for men and women. Our analysis also shows that the rise of wage-earning employment corresponds with an increasing unskilled wage for both men and women.
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| 13 |
ID:
100756
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| Publication |
2010.
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| Summary/Abstract |
In asymmetric information markets, consumers often rely on certain extrinsic indictors to assess the safety of food products. This study analyzes how consumers in Beijing determined milk safety when they purchased liquid milk using survey data conducted just before the melamine-contaminated infant formula event was disclosed. The key finding indicates that milk brand and purchase venue, on average, were ranked as the first two important safety indicators in fluid milk purchases, suggesting that China's milk safety regulators should put more monitoring resources toward supervising the safety of milk produced from branded firms and milk sold in ostensibly trustable stores and not allow exemptions to inspections. Meanwhile, the findings of this study indicate that the existing milk safety certification system in China might be significantly inefficient, suggesting potential waste of regulatory resources.
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| 14 |
ID:
079064
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| Publication |
2007.
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| Summary/Abstract |
This study aims to examine the impact of the China-ASEAN Free Trade Area (CAFTA) on China's international agricultural trade and its regional agricultural development, using the Global Trade Analysis Project model and the China Agricultural Decision Support System. Our analysis showed that: (i) CAFTA will improve resource allocation efficiencies for both China and ASEAN and will promote bilateral agricultural trade and, hence, will have positive effects on the economic development of both sides; (ii) CAFTA will accelerate China's export of the agricultural commodities in which it has comparative advantages, such as vegetables, wheat and horticultural products, but at the same time bring about a large increase in imports of commodities such as vegetable oil and sugar; and (iii) CAFTA will have significantly varying impacts on China's regional agricultural development because of large differences in the agricultural production structure in each region. Our results indicate that agriculture in the northern, northeastern and eastern regions of China will benefit from CAFTA, whereas agriculture development in southern China will suffer. Those regional specific impacts are quite different from the effects brought by multilateral free trade treaties, such as those of the WTO, which usually have positive effects on south China but negative impacts on the northern and western parts of China
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| 15 |
ID:
156469
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| Summary/Abstract |
The goal of this paper is to examine the impact of changes in China's rural land policy on agricultural investments. Dramatic changes occurred in China's rural land policies after 2000, including the extension of rural land contractual period, restriction of land reallocation among villages and villagers groups, elimination of agricultural taxes for responsibility land, and rapid development of rural land rental markets. These changes have given farmers more secure tenure on collectively controlled responsibility land and have strengthened farmers' income rights for responsibility lands, incentivizing them to increase their investments on responsibility lands. A panel data method was used to quantitatively investigate the impact of land policy changes on agricultural investment. We considered the application of organic fertilizer as an indicator for long-term agricultural investment, and compared the use of organic fertilizer between private plots and responsibility lands operated by the same household. The results showed that the difference in organic fertilizer use between private plots and responsibility land for the same household has become smaller from 2000 to 2008. Our findings suggest that recent changes in rural land policies have provided farmers incentives to increase land quality investment on their responsibility lands.
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| 16 |
ID:
112718
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
There have been growing concerns about the effects of food safety standards on agricultural trade throughout the world. The objective of this paper is to assess the impacts of food safety standards on tea exports from China, the world's largest tea producer and exporter. To achieve this objective, the paper discusses the trends and nature of China's tea production and export, analyzes changes on tea safety standards indicated by Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) measures, Maximum Residual Limit (MRL) of pesticides and the coverage of tea safety standards concerning regulatory pesticides in major importing countries, and quantitatively estimates the impacts of food safety standards on China's tea export based on a gravity model. The results show that the MRL of pesticides (e.g., endosulfan, fenvalerate and flucythrinate) imposed by importing countries have significantly affected China's tea exports. The results also show that China's tea exports have been significantly restricted when importing countries increase coverage of tea safety standards concerning regulatory pesticides.
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| 17 |
ID:
128162
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
Small farmer participation in marketing chains in emerging commodity markets and the determinants of their marketing channel choices are the center of many recent empirical and theoretical papers in the literature. The dairy sector is emerging in China. There are many fundamental questions about how farmers make dairy marketing decisions in China at the farm gate level that are unanswered. This makes the dairy sector in China a good place to study farmers in emerging marketing chains. Based on three sets of unique data collected in the mid-2000s in Greater Beijing, the analyses show that small farmers were the major producers of milk. There is no evidence that small farmers are being excluded from emerging marketing channels. One of the differences of China's dairy sector in the mid-2000s is that its marketing chain itself had many different types of agents that procure milk - and few of them were large; most were individual entrepreneurs. The high level of the competiveness may be the reason that individual agents do not have monopoly power and why small farmers can operate in the system.
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| 18 |
ID:
128161
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| Publication |
2012.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The upstream agrofood market in China is dominated by a vast number of small farmers and traders, which challenges food safety compliance. To promote small farmers' access to the commercialized agrofood market, membership in farmer professional economic cooperatives (FPCs) is considered to be an important strategy by the Chinese leaders. The goals of this study are to investigate the marketing of FPCs in China and to determine their record of food safety compliance. Based on 157 FPCs from a nearly national representative survey, this paper shows that marketing FPCs in China relies primarily on the wholesale market, but there is a notable penetration of the modern supply chain via FPCs. Government-driven agribusiness facilitates farmers' access to markets via FPCs. However, food safety standards are not well-specified in the current FPCs' marketing.
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| 19 |
ID:
159027
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| Summary/Abstract |
While it is well known that China's off farm labor market is emerging rapidly, less is known about the effect of movement off the farm on the farming practices of those that have continued to farm. The overall goal of this paper is to analyze the effects of changes in China's off farm employment on one aspect of the performance of China's agricultural sector: the emergence of specialization in farming. To achieve this goal, we have three specific objectives. First, we document the changes in the flow of labor out of China's villages. Second, we examine how specialization in farming has changed over time. Third, we examine the association between off farm labor flows and specialization. Using panel data from a national representative data collected by the authors between 1999 and 2008, the analysis finds that off farm employment is indeed rising rapidly. At the same time, specialization is occurring off and on the farm. There is a strong and robust correlation between off farm employment and on farm specialization. The results imply that China's agriculture has responded dynamically to the modernization happening elsewhere in the economy.
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| 20 |
ID:
083956
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| Publication |
2008.
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| Summary/Abstract |
The present paper analyzes the potential impacts of bio-ethanol expansion on agricultural production, food prices and farmers' incomes in different regions of China. The results show that increase in demand for feedstock to produce bio-ethanol will lead to large increase in the prices of agricultural products. The increase in prices will trigger a significant rise in the production of feedstock at the cost of lower rice and wheat production. The study also reveals that the impacts of bio-ethanol on farmers' incomes vary largely among regions and farmer groups. Given the expected expansion of bio-ethanol production in the future, and the limited land resources for feedstock production in China, the viability of different crops as feedstock for bio-ethanol requires careful analysis before a large-scale expansion of China's bio-ethanol program. Bio-ethanol production in China should be relying more on the second generation of bio-ethanol technologies (i.e. using celluloses to produce bio-ethanol), and China's government should increase research investment in this field.
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