Empirical Study on the Sustainability of China’s Grain Quality Improvement: The Role of Transportation, Labor, and Agricultural Machinery

Ming Zhang, Fang Duan and Zisen Mao
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Ming Zhang: School of Political Science and Public Administration, Southwest University, Chongqing 400715, China
Fang Duan: School of Business Administration, Shanghai Lixin University of Accounting and Finance, Shanghai 201620, China
Zisen Mao: Department of Mathematics, The Army Engineering University of PLA, Nanjing 211101, China

IJERPH, 2018, vol. 15, issue 2, 1-14

Abstract: As a major part of farming sustainability, the issues of grain production and its quality improvement have been important in many countries. This paper aims to address these issues in China. Based on the data from the main production provinces and by applying the stochastic frontier analysis methodology, we find that the improvement of transportation and the use of agricultural machinery have become the main driving forces for grain quality improvement in China. After further studying different provinces’ potentials of grain quality improvement, we show that grain quality has increased steadily. Therefore, we can conclude China’s grain quality improvement is indeed sustainable. Furthermore, different grains like rice, wheat, and corn share similar characteristics in terms of quality improvement, but the improvement rate for rice is relatively low, while those of corn and wheat are relatively high. Moreover, the overall change of efficiency gain of grain quality improvement is not significant for different provinces. The efficiency gains of the quality improvements for rice and wheat even decrease slightly. In addition, we find that only expanding grain quality improvement potential can simultaneously achieve the dual objectives of improving grain quality and increasing yield.

Keywords: grain quality improvement; stochastic frontier model; quality improvement; quality improvement efficiency (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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