Demographic change and its impact on farmers' field production decisions

Abstract

Following the general trend in demographic change, and enhanced by the large-scale and continuous rural-urban migration, the rural labor force remaining in farming is quickly reducing and aging. This is likely to have significant impact on the labor-intensive agriculture. However, the fast growing of machinery service has provided farmers an opportunity to out-source field work that demands heavy labor inputs. Therefore, the demographic change and development of machinery service may jointly influence farmers' production decision in terms of crop choice and inputs. Household data of Fixed Point Rural Survey (FPRS) are used to examine the potential change in farmers' decisions on crop mix and input uses. It is found out that, under current situations, aging may impact agriculture through changing crop mix, and the choice is largely determined by access to service of farm machine; which, in turn, is likely to be determined by topography.