Farm Size, Agricultural Mechanization and Technical Efficiency - An Empirical Study on Grape Producers in China

摘要

This paper attempts to examine the impact of agricultural mechanization on technical efficiency of grape producers with different farm size by using stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) approach as well as survey data of 1690 farmers in Hebei, Liaoning, Zhejiang, Shandong and Xinjiang Province. The results show that technical efficiency of grape producers in different farm size has increased significantly as the increasing of agricultural mechanization; there is a positive impact of agricultural mechanization on rural income with a small farm size while a negative impact when farm size is large. Therefore, moderate scale management should be promoted, the mode of production should be transformed and agricultural mechanization should be accelerated.