土地流转对农户技术效率的影响

土地租赁市场的迅速发展对农业生产具有重要影响。本文利用河南省延津县331个胡萝卜种植户的问卷调查数据,采用超越对数随机前沿生产函数和倾向值匹配估计法等计量模型分析了土地流转对农户技术效率的影响。得出以下结论：被调查地区胡萝卜种植户技术效率异质性特征明显,技术效率介于0.41~0.98之间,平均为0.85,仍存在较大上升空间;土地转入行为的微观决策受到户主年龄、性别、文化程度、种植经验、家庭务农人数、距农资市场距离和是否存在非正规信贷约束等因素的显著影响;土地转入能够使农户技术效率得到显著提升,流转户的实际技术效率比不参与流转的反事实技术效率平均高出12.8~14.4个百分点,非流转户若参与土地流转,其技术效率平均也将提升约12.5~13.2个百分点;敏感性分析和稳健性检验进一步证实了土地流转对农户技术效率的积极影响。在此基础上,本文提出了相关的政策启示。

The effects of land transfer on technical efficiency

Land rental is one of the main ways in which operational land holdings are supposed to be expanded. Cultivated land rental will play an important role in China’s agricultural development strategy. However, the relationship between rural land transfer and agricultural production efficiency is an important ongoing area of research in both the theoretical and empirical literature. In this article, survey data from 331 carrot farmers from Yanjin County and two different models (stochastic frontier production function analysis in logarithmic form and propensity score matching) were employed to assess the effect of land transfer on technical efficiency. According to the results, carrot farmers present heterogeneity characteristics in technical efficiency, ranging from 0.41~0.98 (average=0.85). The decision of land transfer is significantly influenced by factors related to the householder such as age, gender, degree of education, planting experience, the number of farming members, distance from agricultural market and informal credit constraints. Technical efficiency is improved by land transfer by 12.8%~14.4% compared with before and the technical efficiency of non-land transfer farmers could be promoted by 12.5%~13.2% if they participant in land transfer. Sensitivity analysis and robust tests verify the average treatment effect of land transfer on technical efficiency. Farmland transfer is an effective way to improve the efficiency of agricultural production, but government should increase production service investment and advanced technology in agriculture to raise technical efficiency and create more opportunities for land transfer to encourage conditional farmers to roll out land to let them have the best ratio of production factors to improve their production efficiency. Government should encourage farming experts to roll in land in order to achieve scale operations to further improve efficiency.