Actuality and Inf l uencing Factors of Integrated Production Capacity of Foodstuff in Heilongjiang Province

Zhou Hui-qiu, and Zhang De-hua

1 College of the Application Technology, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

2 College of Economics and Management, Northeast Agricultural University, Harbin 150030, China

Introduction

Foodstuff Actuality of Integrated Production Capacity in Heilongjiang Province

Sowing acreage of cereal crops

Heilongjiang Province is a major marketable grain depot in China. It possesses the natural superiority of foodstuff production. According to Fig. 1, it can be obviously seen that the sowing acreage of Heilongjiang Province cereal crops is going up from 1980 to 2008. The lowest year of sowing acreage of cereal crops is 1986, which is 5 715 000 hm2. The highest year is 2008 which attained 10 988 000 hm2and it was 1.9 times compared with 1986. Besides wheat, the sowing acreage of Heilongjiang Province rice, corn and soybean increased obviously than those of 1980.But seeing from the tendency of the last few years,the sowing acreage of paddy rice and corn increased quickly, soybean sowing acreage changed and the wheat sowing acreage was nearly calm.

Fig. 1 Sowing acreage of staple food in Heilongjiang Province

Overall and unit production of foodstuff

Since the reform and opening up, Heilongjiang Province production capacity of foodstuff has grown increasingly, from 25 000 000 tons to 30 000 000 tons and then to 35 000 000 tons. From Fig. 2, it can be obviously seen that Heilongjiang Province food output has a quick climb during the fluctuation,especially in recent years the potential head went with a rush and in 2008, and it was up to 4 225 tricro.Meanwhile, compared with 1980, the output of rice,maize and soybean all went up. Maize and rice keep ascendant during the fluctuation. Soybean output declines in recent years. Wheat output has the big decreasing amplitude and the first cause is the sowing acreage of wheat chops back.

Since the reform and opening up, Heilongjiang Province unit production of foodstuff had a quick climb during the fluctuation (Table 1). Its unit production increased from 1 998.36 kg · hm-2in 1980 to the highest point of 4 161.37 kg · hm-2in 2005. Then it decreased in 2006 and in 2007 it began to rebound. In 2008, it reached 3 845.10 kg · hm-2. Meanwhile, the unit production level of rice, maize and wheat increased largely. Though the unit production level of soybean increased little, recently it began to fall. The unit production level of maize first rose and then fell.Its peak was 5 837.07 kg · hm-2in 1994. Subsequently,it fluctuated and its unit production reached 4 995.89 kg · hm-2in 2008. The unit production of rice rose from 1980's 3 790.48 kg · hm-2to 2008's 6 190.86 kg · hm-2.Its highest point was 7 361.30 kg · hm-2in 2007. The unit production of wheat rose from 1980's 1 874.58 kg · hm-2to 2008's 3 364.66 kg · hm-2. The highest point of it was 3 811.48 kg · hm-2in 2006.

In a word, from the above analyses, it can be seen that the sowing acreage, overall and unit production of Heilongjiang Province foodstuff have an increasing trend on the whole since the reform and opening up.Meanwhile, it fell and fluctuated for some years.Therefore, the continuous increase of Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff is of great importance for foodstuff security of China.Enhancing integrated production capacity of foodstuff is influenced by many factors, so many kinds of factors should be considered.

Fig. 2 Output of Heilongjiang Province's staple food

Influencing Factors of Integrated Production Capacity of Foodstuff in Heilongjiang Province

Data source and variable selection

In order to analyze the influencing factors of integrated production capacity of foodstuff in Heilongjiang Province; relation model between the food output of and other influencing factors can be established. Now Heilongjiang Province food output (Y), the sowing acreage of Heilongjiang Province food (X1), the consumption of agricultural fertilizer (X2), the total output of agricultural machinery (X3), the area of real disaster(X4)and the area of fertile irrigation (X5)(Zhang, 2008;Gao, 2006)will be introduced. The data from 1991 to 2007 was chosen to carry on the analysis (Table 2).

Model foundation

The relation coefficient between these several variables and Y was used to reflect the influencing effect among them and grain output (Y). In order to reflect with this relation coefficient conveniently, first multielement linear regression model was adopted. The common form of its model was just like the following:

If the multielement linear regression could not past muster, it would be adjusted. If it still could not past muster through adjusting, other methods would be selected to analyze it.

Table 1 Unit production of staple food crops in Heilongjiang Province (kg · hm-2)

Outcome of model estimation

We can utilize the above data to do linear regression analysis through SPSS software and get Tables 3, 4 and 5.

由2014年2月10日支付宝官方发布的数据可知，到2013年底，支付宝实名用户已近3亿，与此同时，余额的宝客户数量突破了4303万，若仅从余额宝客户需要具有支付宝实名账户这一要求来看，它的潜在用户数量已超过2.5亿。从另一方面来说，近几年的飞速发展使得传统银行的基金与理财产品在客户拓展中进入一个难以突破的瓶颈期。另外，由中国人民银行最近发布的数据，截止2013年底，居民的活期存款已突破16万亿，而余额宝的目标正是这数额巨大的活期存款量。

From the above, we can observe R2=0.953, this means that the degree of fitting is very high and it is suitable for the real performance. F=44.613 and sig.=0.00＜0.05 which means it has passed F test and 0 hypotheses is rejected. Meanwhile, at 5% level of significance, it can be seen that the sowing acreage of food (X1), the consumption of agricultural fertilizer (X2)and the area of real disaster (X4)have passed t test,but the other two X variables have not passed t test,the values of sig. are 0.281 and 0.707, and they are bigger than 0.05. Therefore, for further optimizing this function, the total output of agricultural machinery is(X3)and the area of fertile irrigation is (X5). Then we do multielement linear regression analysis again. Then we can get Tables 6, 7 and 8 through the analysis.

It is observed that the sowing acreage of food (X1),the consumption of agricultural fertilizer (X2)and the area of real disaster (X4)have passed t test at 5% level of significance. The values of sig. are 0.029, 0.001 and 0.002, and they are smaller than 0.05. R2=0.938, after adjustment, it becomes 0.923 and its value is bigger than 0.8 which means the model's degree of fitting is very high and it is suitable for real produced situation.From Fig. 3, it can be also clearly seen that the discrepancy is relatively small between real grain output line and predicted grain output line, also the fitting is better. Therefore, the following food-production function of Heilongjiang Province can be got.

Y=-101.101+1.914X1+13.985X2-0.159X4

Table 2 Influencing factors of food output in Heilongjiang Province

Table 4 ANOVA (b)

Table 5 Coefficients (a)

Table 6 Model summary (b)

Table 7 ANOVA (b)

Table 8 Coefficients (a)

Fig. 3 Fitting of Heilongjiang Province grain output

Analyses of Results and Causes

Interpretation of results

Through the above model analysis, it can be seen that the main factors influencing Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff are the sowing acreage, the consumption of agricultural fertilizer and the area of real disaster which coefficients are 1.914, 13.985 and -0.159, respectively. The total output of agricultural machinery and the area of fertile irrigation have less influence on Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff and they have not passed t test at 5% level and the values of sig.are 0.281 and 0.707 and they are bigger than 0.05.

(1)The coefficient of the sowing acreage of food is 1.914 which is positive. This means the impact of the sowing acreage of food to grain output is positivegoing. That is to say, if we increase X1per unit, Heilongjiang Province food output (Y)will increase by 1.914 per unit.

(2)The coefficient of the consumption of agricultural fertilizer is 13.985 which is positive. This means the impact of the consumption of agricultural fertilizer to grain output is positive-going. That is to say, if we increase X2per unit, Heilongjiang Province food output (Y)will increase by 13.985 per unit. Compared with the impact of sowing acreage of foodstuff, the impact of the consumption of agricultural fertilizer to integrate production capacity of Heilongjiang Province foodstuff is more apparent, which is 7.3 times for sowing acreage of foodstuff.

(3)The influence coefficient of the area of real disaster to integrated production capacity of Heilongjiang Province foodstuff is -0.159 which is negative. This means if it is increased per unit, Heilongjiang Province food output (Y)will decrease by 0.159 per unit.Therefore, we should decrease the area of real disaster.Because Heilongjiang Province major casualty is drought, we ought to construct agricultural hydraulic engineering to reduce the rate of real disaster.

Interpretation of causes

(1)The sowing acreage of foodstuff is the main factor of influencing Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff. Its increase makes more outputs of foodstuff fundamentally. But at the same prerequisition of technological level, such kind of increase is mainly because we increase extra the sowing acreage of foodstuff in order to improve overall production of foodstuff. The sowing acreage of Heilongjiang Province foodstuff is relatively more stable, the incremental probability of its future sowing acreage is low. Therefore, in order to improve Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff, we should pay more attention to the progress of scientific technology. On the basis of combining improved variety of seed and improved methods as well as relying on improved rate of output by scientific technology, Heilongjiang Province could step forward to the road of agricultural sustainable development.

(2)The influence coefficient of the consumption of agricultural fertilizer to integrated production capacity of Heilongjiang foodstuff is 13.985, which is clearly higher than the impact of sowing acreage of foodstuff.The main cause is that soil fertility of Heilongjiang Province goes down in recent years. Fertilizer could supplement the fertility of soil loss, what's more, reasonable increase of fertilizer application rate has direct impacts on unit production of foodstuff, furthermore,improving overall production of foodstuff. Besides,agricultural degree of mechanization in Heilongjiang Province is relatively higher, so the increase of total output on agricultural mechanization has relatively lower impact on Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff.

(3)The influence of the area of real disaster is negative-going. The principle has dual effects. The area of real disaster has direct influence on overall production of foodstuff in natural calamity's region when destructed calamity happens. Heilongjiang Province major casualty is drought in recent years;and is lagged behind in constructing agricultural hydraulic facilities. Meanwhile, the amount of fertile irrigation area has certain influence on Heilongjiang Province integrated production capacity of foodstuff. But the area of real disaster and fertile irrigation area has certain co-linearity, so the influence coefficient of fertile irrigation area is relatively smaller when we choose the area of real disaster in the model.It is observed that the people of China could not get rid of the situation of living. Therefore, we should strengthen agricultural infrastructure construction so as to improve integrated production capacity of foodstuff.

(4)The benefiting-peasants policy of China has direct influence on farmers' enthusiasm in planting foodstuff. In recent years, China increase benefitingfarmers force continuously. It formulates protective price of main agricultural products successively and adopts the benefiting-peasants policy of direct subsidies. China purchases grain from farmers when it has not enough purchase forces from market in order to reduce the marketable contradiction between supply and demand and make farmers benefit from it. Such series of good policies encourage confidence of farmers who plant grain. Especially Heilongjiang Province project of fifty billion kilos foodstuff in 2008, implants new energy for Heilongjiang Province foodstuff production and establishes welldefined foundation for improving integrated production capacity of foodstuff.

(5)It is an approach for increasing Heilongjiang Province grain output to exercise integrated-soil management. In response to China's calling, Heilongjiang Province exercises this policy which decreases manufacturing cost and increases competitive force of agricultural products. Due to good benefiting-farmers policy from government, farmers who cultivate land could get subsidies. If farmers are not willing to cultivate land, they could contract their land to others and gain ground rent from it, then free their own work force so as to get more income from other working activities. Therefore, the popularization of exercising integrated-soil management obtains the opportunities on development. Such kind of method will be the dominant form for Heilongjiang Province agricultural production in the future.

Measures and Suggestions

Firstly, we should establish long-acting foodstuff production mechanism based on science and technology. Science and technology are the first productivity which play the decisive role in advancing integrated production capacity of foodstuff (Wan, 2004).To advance the integrated production capacity of Heilongjiang Province foodstuff mainly depends on increasing the sowing acreage of foodstuff in recent years. We should make use of technology instead of increasing part of sowing acreage of foodstuff.Heilongjiang will be the most important marketable grain depot in China both at present and in the future.Heilongjiang Province exports its foodstuff to other provinces continually and meets their foodstuff demands of food-deficit provinces. So, it requires that Heilongjiang Province should depend on science and technology so as to supply everlasting impetus for its foodstuff production.

Secondly, we should lay stress on constructing agricultural hydraulic facilities and decreasing the rate of real disaster. There should be an emphasis on constructing agricultural hydraulic facilities in Heilongjiang Province. We should attach importance to construct hydraulic facilities of middle-small types and give full play to its function in accordance with local conditions (Yin, 2005). Heilongjiang Province should take advantage of this facilities in order to solve the problem that drought has great influence on Heilongjiang Province foodstuff production more directly and efficiently, to create stable natural environment and to decrease the rate of real disaster to a great extent.

Thirdly, we should protect and improve land capability and increase fertilizer application rate reasonably. In successive years, Heilongjiang Province plants grain crops in a large acreage and some areas utilize less fertilizer application rate, primarily relying on fertility of soil which is a kind of despoilfashioned utilization for soil (Wang, 2001). Such sort of utilization will result in decline of soil fertility certainly, then to a large extent decrease land capability which requires that Heilongjiang Province increases application rate of fertilizer and agricultural solid-manure reasonably and technologically, meanwhile it puts stress on crop rotation (Yin, 2005; Zhang and Che, 2008).

Lastly, benefiting-famers force should be increased continuously and popularized the integratedsoil management. Heilongjiang Province, as a large agricultural province, deserves to get more benefitingfarmer policies. Take soybean as an example, farmers coming from Heilongjiang Province require more direct subsidies, larger sum of money and higher protective price. In the aspect of exercising integratedsoil management, we should protect it by formulating effective laws. The lowest lease time ought to be duly postponed, such as five or ten years. For policies, we should pay more attention to integrated-soil management which could urge dispersed farmers to abandon planting with initiative and to rent their ground to others. However, we must assure farmers' benefits and only by this way can we realize integrated-soil management orderly.

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