新型农业经营主体发展具有小农户包容性吗

Is the Development of New Agricultural Business Entities Inclusive of Smallholder Farmers

本文基于中国家庭大数据库等微观调研数据,将村庄数据和微观农户数据进行匹配,实证估计了新型农业经营主体对村庄内小农户增收和收入不平等的影响,并进行包容性分析和影响机制检验。研究发现:(1)新型农业经营主体对村庄内小农户的农业经营性收入和家庭总收入起到了显著的正向提升作用。(2)新型农业经营主体降低了小农户的收入不平等程度,对较低收入队列小农户的家庭总收入的促进作用较强,且其增收效应在不同人力、物质和社会资本水平的小农户之间并无明显差异,体现了包容性。(3)新型农业经营主体主要通过促进土地流转和降低土地细碎化程度、调整种植结构、推动农业机械化、开展农业技术培训等机制,促进了小农户农业经营性收入和家庭总收入的提高。

China is featured by a large population and limited per capita arable land, and smallholder farmers need to be linked with new agricultural business entities represented by large farms, family farms, farmer cooperatives, and agricultural companies to achieve modern agriculture. However, do these new agricultural business entities have inclusive effects on the income of the surrounding smallholder farmers? Further analysis is still needed. Using the Chinese Family Database which contains data from a comprehensive survey in 2019,this paper analyzes the effects of new agricultural business entities on the income and income inequality of smallholder farmers, and examine the inclusiveness and mechanisms of the effects. The empirical results show that the development of new agricultural business entities significantly increases agricultural business income and total income of smallholder farmers, and meanwhile reduces the income inequality among smallholder farmers. The effects of new agricultural business entities on the agricultural business income and total income are inclusive of farmers with different levels of human, material, and social capital. Even more, the income increase effects are larger for farmers featured by lower income levels. New agricultural business entities can promote the income of smallholder farmers through mechanisms such as promoting land circulation, reducing land fragmentation, adjusting planting structure, improving mechanization, and providing technology training.The main contributions of this article are threefold: First, while most current research focuses on the role of one specific type of entities, this article investigates the impact of various types of new agricultural business entities on the agricultural business income and total income of smallholder farmers. Second, this article uses the Kakwani index to reflect the degree of income inequality, and examines the inclusive effects of new agricultural business entities for smallholder farmers with different ages, education, income, and informatization levels, and social relationship networks. Third, this article adopts both traditional and heteroscedasticity-based IV methods, PSM,and quantile regression methods to reduce the estimation bias and improve the accuracy of the conclusions.