Interplay between China’s grain self-sufficiency policy shifts and interregional, intertemporal productivity differences

• Published in: Food policy Vol. 117; p. 102446
• Main Authors: Ito, Junichi, Li, Xinyi
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-05-2023
• Subjects: Agricultural policy shift; Convergence; Meta-frontier function; Output distance function; Technological gap; Technological gap; Agricultural policy shift; Meta-frontier function; Output distance function; Convergence
• ISSN: 0306-9192; 1873-5657
• DOI: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2023.102446

•In 2013, China’s central government historically first recognized moderate imports as a policy option for ensuring food security in the country.•Chinese crop production has recently transformed from a resource-input-driven activity to one driven by science and technology.•The western region has made remarkable progress in agricultural productivity over the past two decades.•This is arguably due to the fact that the western region diversified into the horticultural sector, in which China has a comparative advantage.
In 2013, the Communist Party of China decided to partially relax its self-sufficiency targets for grain, historically first recognizing moderate imports as a policy option for ensuring food security in the country. This study empirically examines the interplay between the policy shifts and the interregional, intertemporal productivity differences in Chinese agriculture. It employs a meta-frontier stochastic output distance function approach. Our empirical result shows that input augmentation was the main contributor to the agricultural output growth during 1984–2000, whereas total factor productivity is the main driver of the growth during 2001–2020. This lends strong support to an argument in the literature that Chinese crop production has recently transformed from a resource-input-driven activity to one driven by science and technology. Our study also demonstrates that the western region, which far lagged behind others in the past in terms of agricultural technology, has made remarkable progress during 2001–2020, which confirms the cross-regional productivity convergence over time. It is likely that farmers in this region were better able to gain a higher economic return from crop diversification into horticulture, for which they might have been all the more motivated to improve their productivity.