Abstract
While the aging of agricultural labor force and its impact on agricultural production have been attracting extensive attention, little is known about the relationship between aging of agricultural labor force and technical efficiency in tea production. Using the stochastic frontier analysis and cross-sectional survey data covering 241 tea-producing farmers in Meitan County in China, this study attempts to investigate the impact of aging of tea-producing farmers on technical efficiency in tea production in the mountainous areas of southwestern China. The results show that the average technical efficiency in tea production is 0.581, implying a great room for improving technical efficiency in tea production in Meitan County. While there might exist an inverted U-shaped relationship between farmers’ age and technical efficiency, the aging of tea-producing farmers would exert negative impact on technical efficiency in tea production. In addition, rural–urban migration experience, number of household laborers, distance from home to village committee, and township location are also significantly related with technical efficiency. The findings in this study are proved to be robust. Hence, several policy implications for meeting the challenges from aging of agricultural labor force and improving technical efficiency in tea production in the mountainous areas of southwestern China are also discussed.
Highlights
The past decades since the reform and opening up have witnessed an intensifying aging of population and agricultural labor force in China [1,2]
This study focuses on the impact of aging of agricultural labor force on technical efficiency in tea production in the mountainous areas of southwestern China, which is expected to provide several policy implications for meeting the challenges from aging of agricultural labor force, and promoting tea production and income growth of farmers in the mountainous areas
Given the fact that the sampled farmers averagely aged over 50 years old and more than 83.4% of them are aged and over 43 years old, this study reveals that the aging of agricultural labor force has a negative impact of technical efficiency in tea production
Summary
The past decades since the reform and opening up have witnessed an intensifying aging of population and agricultural labor force in China [1,2]. A large number of young rural labor force have been entering the city, which further aggravates the aging of agricultural labor force in rural areas in China [4]. In 1996, nearly 8.5% of the total agricultural labor force in China were aged over 60 years old, while it dramatically rose to 11.2% in 2006 [5,6]. A previous study predicted that the average age of agricultural labor force in China would further increase to about 55–56 years old in 2020 [7]
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