Corn Grain or Corn Silage: Effects of the Grain-to-Fodder Crop Conversion Program on Farmers’ Income in China

Shukun Wang, Changquan Liu, Lei Han, Tingting Li, Guolei Yang and Taofeng Chen
Additional contact information
Shukun Wang: Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100732, China
Changquan Liu: Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100732, China
Lei Han: Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100732, China
Tingting Li: Rural Development Institute, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing 100732, China
Guolei Yang: Institute of Technology and Economy of Grain Industry, Academy of National Food and Strategic Reserves Administration, Beijing 100037, China
Taofeng Chen: School of Economics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China

Agriculture, 2022, vol. 12, issue 7, 1-16

Abstract: The Grain-to-Fodder Crop Conversion Program (GCCP) in China mainly promotes the green and sustainable development of grain crops, economic crops, and silage crops by subsidizing livestock farms to encourage farmers to plant silage crops, such as corn silage and alfalfa silage. In this context, this study assesses the impact of planting silage crops on farm household income. Based on a survey of 495 households in Henan and Hebei Provinces, China, we first constructed a theoretical model of the program’s effect on farmers’ income, and then used an ordinary least squares (OLS) method to estimate the magnitude of the GCCP on farmers’ income. To identify endogeneity and further test the stability of the results, we adopted instrumental variable estimation, subsample estimation, and matching methods. The GCCP significantly increased smallholder farm income. Compared with growing corn grain, corn silage increased income by approximately CNY 101/mu. Meanwhile, corn silage reduced the capital input cost of farmers by 10.71% per mu and labor input by 26.6% per mu. Heterogeneity analysis revealed that farmers who plant corn silage on a large scale, closer to dairy farms, have higher incomes. Few scholars have empirically analyzed the impact of GCCP on farm household income from a micro-farm household perspective. This study enriches the empirical literature on the effects of the GCCP on farmers in China, which can help policymakers understand policy implementation.

Keywords: Grain-to-Fodder Crop Conversion Program; corn silage; farmers’ income; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q1 Q10 Q11 Q12 Q13 Q14 Q15 Q16 Q17 Q18 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/7/976/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2077-0472/12/7/976/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jagris:v:12:y:2022:i:7:p:976-:d:857323

Access Statistics for this article

Agriculture is currently edited by Ms. Leda Xuan

More articles in Agriculture from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().