Sustainable Development between Demonstration Farm and Agricultural Labor Productivity: Evidence from Family Farms in the Mountainous Area of Western China

Abstract

Agricultural labor productivity is an important indicator that reflects the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas. Demonstration farms provide an important link between small-scale farmers and modern agriculture in mountainous area of western China, which is playing an important role in improving labor productivity. This paper focuses on using the PSM-logit model and sensitivity analysis to empirically test the causal relationship between demonstration farms and labor productivity, and a micro-large sample of 1823 family farms was adopted. The highlighted findings are as follows: the average labor productivity of the demonstration farm is 2.8 times higher than that of the non-demonstration farm. There is a significant positive correlation between demonstration farms and labor productivity. Utilizing demonstration farms, when all control variables are added, can remarkably promote farm income by CNY301458 on average. In the matched sample, and under scenarios controlling for other covariates, we saw that demonstration farms can significantly enhance the farm income of CNY285108, CNY288509, and CNY291077 on average, respectively, after taking the radius matching, the kernel matching, and the nearest neighbor matching. The research inspired us to enhance the demonstrative establishment of family farms and accelerate the rate at which comprehensive development benefits are derived from demonstration farms. The results of this research could provide a policy reference for the promotion of high-quality development and the sustainable development of family farms in China and serve as an experience reference for promoting sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas globally.