Abstract
Outsourcing, as a productive service, has been widely adopted in industrial production and international trade but less applied in agricultural management. With the advancement of agricultural labor division and specialization, outsourcing is becoming one of the most sustained trends in concurrent business. This study used a multiple linear regression and a propensity score matching model to quantify the different effects of participation in production outsourcing on farmers’ apple production efficiency and apple income based on field survey data from 960 apple farmers in the Shandong, Shaanxi, and Gansu Provinces. The results showed that, on average, the outsourcing of apple production increased farmers’ apple production technology efficiency by 5.60%, their labor productivity by 2121.48 kg/person, land productivity by 334.50 kg/mu, capital productivity by 0.05 kg/Yuan, and apple sales revenue by 13,300 Yuan. However, farmers’ net income from apples decreased by an average of 5000 Yuan. The outsourcing of apple production, which is labor-intensive, is constrained by the increase in labor costs, which, in turn, affect the transformation of the apple industry into a service-scale operation driven by the economy of division.
Highlights
Agriculture is a fundamental industry that is playing an increasingly important role in the national economy and in people’s livelihoods [1]
Some scholars think that the trend of “part-time” and “off-farm” labor, caused by the transfer of agricultural labor, promotes the concentration of rural land and the processes of industrialization and urbanization and that this process is conducive to the realization of agricultural scale operations [6,7,8,9]; the decentralized operation of small farmers is still the basic organizational form of agricultural production and management at this stage in China
This study focuses on the relationship between apple production outsourcing and apple production efficiency and apple income
Summary
Agriculture is a fundamental industry that is playing an increasingly important role in the national economy and in people’s livelihoods [1]. Various forms of moderate scale management have been developed to achieve the organic connection between small farmers and modern agricultural development. From an academic research perspective, scholars have focused on the developmental path and the mode of agricultural scale management. Some scholars think that the trend of “part-time” and “off-farm” labor, caused by the transfer of agricultural labor, promotes the concentration of rural land and the processes of industrialization and urbanization and that this process is conducive to the realization of agricultural scale operations [6,7,8,9]; the decentralized operation of small farmers is still the basic organizational form of agricultural production and management at this stage in China. The exploration of other paths to achieve scaled operations is important for agricultural modernization
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