Agricultural Machinery Service Research Articles

The effects of agricultural machinery services and land fragmentation on farmers' straw returning behavior

AbstractStraw returning is important for rural ecological management and sustainable agricultural development. Using farm survey data for Anhui Province, China, in 2020, we applied the double‐hurdle model to investigate the impact of agricultural machinery services and land fragmentation on farmers' straw‐returning behavior, and to explore the relationship between agricultural machinery self‐service and outsourced service. Self‐service had a significant positive effect on farmers' straw‐returning behavior, while outsourced service had a significant positive effect only on degree of adoption. Land fragmentation had a significant negative effect on farmers' straw‐returning behavior, and significantly inhibited the effect of self‐service on adoption decision. Complementarity existed between self‐service and outsourced service in farmers' straw‐returning adoption decision, and the effect was more pronounced among smaller‐scale farmers. There was significant substitutability between self‐service and outsourced service in degree of adoption among larger‐scale farmers. Transfer and integration of rural land, increasing agricultural machinery purchase subsidy, upgrading farmers' self‐service capability, and promoting development of socialized agricultural machinery services should be implemented to promote crop straw returning. EconLit Citations: Q01, Q16.

The Scaling-up of Agricultural Mechanization Services and the Re-shaping of Small-Scale Household Farming in China

Abstract Taking the case of the agricultural mechanization service industry as an example, this study discusses the dynamics of the transformation of China’s agricultural contracting service industry in the context of the scaling-up of agricultural production, and how the transformation is reshaping small-scale household farming in grain production. With the accelerated growth of farmland transfer, large-scale agricultural producers have been emerging rapidly in different parts of China in the past years. Since their demand for agricultural contracting services is different from that of small-scale household producers, the scaling-up of agricultural production has promoted the scaling-up of agricultural contracting services. Meanwhile, the capital surplus in the agricultural machinery manufacturing industry has created three consequences simultaneously: the excess supply of agricultural mechanization services, the acceleration of agricultural machinery renewal, and the rising cost of machinery purchases. The interactions of these three factors not only raised the threshold of the agricultural machinery service industry, which makes it difficult for part-time service providers to survive market competition, but also shortened the time window for machinery service provision, which makes it difficult for large-scale agricultural producers to balance land operation and machinery service provision. Consequently, large-scale agricultural machinery service organizations are continuously replacing those small-scale part-time service providers. During this process, small-scale household producers engaged in grain production are faced with increasing risks of being excluded from farming, both directly and indirectly, as it is difficult for small producers to deal with large service organizations, and the small-scale part-time service providers that used to serve them are continually being replaced.

How does digital financial inclusion affect farmers’ choice of agricultural mechanisation: evidence from China

ABSTRACT Employing the 2014 and 2016 Digital Finance Inclusive Index of China and the China Labour-Force Dynamics Survey, this study explores the impact of the development of digital financial inclusion on farmers’ selection regarding agricultural mechanisation. The results illuminate that the extended inclusive digital financial services can incentivize farmers to outsource agricultural machinery services. This shift is facilitated by non-agricultural employment and expansion of the agricultural machinery services market, which act as mediators between the provision of inclusive digital financial services and the utilisation of agricultural machinery services. Additionally, the study discerns variations in the influence of digital financial inclusion on farmers’ decisions related to agricultural mechanisation based on the scale of their farmland. Specifically, the fostering of inclusive digital financial services exerts a significant impact primarily on small-scale farmers. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the depth of farmers’ adoption of digital financial inclusion plays a more substantial role in determining their inclination toward outsourcing agricultural machinery services than the breadth of its coverage.

Location selection of agricultural Machinery sheds for improved scheduling and efficiency under sustainability goals

The storage of agricultural machinery (AM) poses a critical operational challenge that requires attention to attain China's “Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality” objectives, due to the carbon emissions and fuel consumption associated with AM operations. Nevertheless, this matter has not garnered adequate consideration. Existing studies have rarely focused on optimizing the parking locations for AM to mitigate emissions and advance sustainability. This study employs the TOPSIS-MCGP method to explore sustainable location selection for Chinese AM sheds. The principal factors influencing location selection include carbon emissions, fuel consumption, operational distance, total cost, and timeliness, which were thoroughly examined for their impact. A weighted selection approach was utilized to ascertain key factors and their optimization implications. The AM shed location within the AM dispatching system was developed through the following steps: (1) Evaluation of influential factors for sustainable AM dispatching, encompassing carbon emissions, fuel consumption rate, AM dispatching distance, cost, and timeliness. (2) Quantification of the manager's experience in the AM service center as an index weight using the Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM). (3) Adoption of the TOPSIS-MCGP model to establish the relationship between operation points and AM shed locations during sustainable AM operations. A preliminary investigation was carried out in a company located in Harbin City, yielding an optimal solution encompassing a 13,500 mu working area, 3,300 total building area, and a 28-million RMB investment. The outcomes underscore the model's compatibility and its utility for optimizing sustainable AM service operations. In conclusion, this study underscores the significance of addressing AM storage to foster sustainability and emissions reduction. The TOPSIS-MCGP approach proves effective in selecting sustainable AM shed locations. By considering diverse factors like carbon emissions, fuel consumption, operational distance, total cost, and timeliness, companies can enhance their AM dispatching systems, contributing to China's “Carbon Peaking and Carbon Neutrality” ambition.

The Impact of Rural Industrial Integration on Agricultural Green Productivity Based on the Contract Choice Perspective of Farmers

Promoting farmers’ participation in rural industrial integration and driving farmers’ agricultural production with cooperatives and agribusinesses are conducive to realizing cost saving, efficiency, and green production and guaranteeing food security and sustainable agricultural development. Based on the microsurvey data of 1039 grain farmers in Henan Province, China in 2022, this paper examined the impact of contractual choices of farmers’ participation in rural industrial integration on agricultural green productivity while analyzing the mechanism of action by using OLS regression, a causal mediation analysis of instrumental variables, propensity score matching, and two-stage least squares (2SLS). The study found that: (1) farmers’ participation in a contract, driven by cooperatives or agribusinesses to carry out agricultural production, is conducive to improving their agricultural green productivity, but the effect of each main body to drive farmers varies; (2) farmers’ participation in a contract, through cooperatives or agribusinesses to obtain all kinds of agricultural production services—such as agricultural machinery services, agricultural supply services, and technical guidance services—improves the use of agricultural machinery, the standardization of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and other agricultural materials’ use, increases technical guidance, and improves agricultural green productivity. The findings of this paper suggest policy and practical implications for safeguarding food security and promoting sustainable agriculture, as well as enriching research on agricultural productivity.

The Impact of High-Standard Farmland Construction Policy on Grain Quality from the Perspectives of Technology Adoption and Cultivated Land Quality

The shift from increasing grain production to improving grain quality is a key measure to adapt to the changing structure of residents’ food consumption demand. High-standard farmland construction is an important means to achieve high grain production and excellent quality. To estimate the intervention effect of high-standard farmland construction policy, this paper analyzes it from the perspective of policy evaluation. The continuous DID model, moderating effect model, and the mediating effect model are used to systematically analyze the mechanism of high-standard farmland construction policy and its influence on grain quality. The findings are as follows: (1) The high-standard farmland construction policy has a significant promoting effect on grain quality, and the interaction coefficient of policy implementation is 0.074. is the results are still significant under the robustness test of lagging the explanatory variable by one period, replacing the core explanatory variable, changing the timing of policy implementation, and eliminating the interference of other relevant policies. (2) The adoption of environmentally friendly technology has played a positive moderating role in the process by which high-standard farmland construction policy promotes grain quality, with a moderating effect of 0.044. (3) The high-standard farmland construction policy can improve grain quality by improving cultivated land quality and adoption level of agricultural mechanization. (4) Heterogeneity analysis shows that high-standard farmland construction policy in major grain-producing areas and also non-major grain-producing areas can increase grain quality; the implementation of the policy has a more obvious effect on improving grain quality in areas with low distribution of grain quality. Accordingly, it is suggested to continue to promote high-standard farmland construction and implement special actions for farmland protection, focus on key technologies, encourage farmers to adopt environment-friendly technologies, accelerate the cultivation of diversified agricultural machinery service entities, and enhance the abilities of agricultural mechanization operations. This study provides a new perspective for improving grain quality and proves that a high-standard farmland construction policy is an important strategy for increasing grain quality.

Agricultural machinery service adoption and farmland transfer-in decision: evidence from rural China

With the deepening of China’s agricultural labor division, the rapid development of agricultural machinery service has had a profound impact on farmland scale management. Based on the new classical economic and transaction cost theories, this paper investigates the impact mechanism of agricultural machinery service on farmers’ farmland transfer-in decision from the dual perspectives of transaction cost and benefit of labor division, and uses the national rural survey data on the Chinese Family Database to conduct empirical research by using the ordinary least square (OLS) model and limited information maximum likelihood (LIML) method. The study finds that, first, agricultural machinery service expands farmers’ farmland transfer-in decision by encouraging them to obtain the economic efficiency of labor division. Not only agricultural machinery service can alleviate the constraint of farmers’ farmland transfer in labor and capital but also reduce the service transaction cost and increase farmers’ share of the division of labor economy, which further stimulates farmers to expand the scale of management. Second, with the deepening of labor division of agricultural machinery services, the higher transaction efficiency of agricultural machinery service promotes farmers’ farmland transfer-in participation. As long as the marginal net benefit obtained is greater than zero, farmers have incentives to expand the scale of farmland. Therefore, in order to promote China’s farmland scale management, the professional, whole-process, and large-scale development of agricultural machinery services should be further promoted, and the service capacity and fields should be expanded so that outsourcing services can be better provided to agricultural production demanders. At the same time, the technical standards, supervision system, and service platform of agricultural machinery should be established and improved so as to enhance the bargaining position of farmers in service outsourcing transactions, thus promoting the development of agricultural division of labor to a higher level and realizing the mutual promotion and mutual benefit of agricultural machinery service subjects and agricultural land scale management subjects.

Adoption of Improved Management Practices of Sugarcane in Bara and Nawalparasi Districts

Agricultural technologies have an important role to improve productivity as well as the quality of the crops.However, the adoption of improved technology has remained poor for sugarcane in Nepal. A research was conducted in Bara and Nawalparasi (Bardhaghat Susta west (BSw)) district of Nepal with a sample for 120 sugarcane growing farmers in the year 2019 to assess adoption of improved management practices of sugarcane. Descriptive statistics and inferential statistics were used to of improved management practices among farmers. Respondents were grouped into two categories, high adopter and medium adopter based on adoption index of each farmer. The average Adoption Index (AI) value obtained was 0.685. Around fortywere high adopters. The use of credit, ownership of agri-machine, and participation. All variables had a positive relationship with the level of adoption of improved practices. The study revealed that farmers using credit, ownership of power-driven agri-machine, participation in crop related training increased the probability of farmer being high adopter. Agricultural machinery services, easy and cheap credit facilities and, easy access to extension services can help to increase in adoption of improved practices by sugarcane farmer.

How agricultural contracting services are reshaping small-scale household farming in China

ABSTRACT This study examines the development of the ACS industry by taking the Agricultural Machinery Service (AMS) industry as a case study and discussing its impacts on small-scale household producers. Drawing upon the theory of ‘appropriationism’, this article shows that, by replacing family labor input, AMS providers take a share of the total agricultural income. As family labor input decreases, the producers are increasingly marginalized in the distribution of agricultural income. Even if small-scale household producers still retain small plots of land, they have increasingly lost control over the farming process and become increasingly subsumed to capitalism.

The Impact of Socialized Agricultural Machinery Services on the Labor Transfer of Maize Growers

Socialized agricultural machinery services, effectively cracking the “who to plant, how to plant” dilemma, are an important grasp of the development of modern agriculture. Based on the specialization division of labor theory, using the 2019 national survey data of maize growers in 13 provinces, the instrumental variable method and systematic generalized moment estimation (GMM) were used to overcome the endogeneity problem of mutual causality between socialized agricultural machinery services and labor transfer, analyze the impact of socialized agricultural machinery services on the labor transfer of maize growers and its link to heterogeneity, and explore the impact effect in different terrain conditions, part-time. We also explored the cohort differences in the effect in different terrain conditions and degree of part-time work. The endogenous switching regression model (ESR) was also applied to construct a counterfactual framework to further analyze the impact effect of socialized agricultural machinery services on labor transfer. The results showed that socialized agricultural machinery services could effectively promote labor transfer among maize farmers. Compared with maize farmers in other terrain conditions and part-time degree, the impact effect of agricultural machinery socialization services on labor transfer of flatland and pure farming households was more significant. Socialized agricultural machinery services play an important role in driving traditional farming households to labor transfer and realizing their organic connection with modern agriculture.

Field–Road Operation Classification of Agricultural Machine GNSS Trajectories Using Spatio-Temporal Neural Network

The classification that distinguishes whether machines are driving on roads or working in fields based on their global navigation satellite system (GNSS) trajectories is essential for effective management of cross-regional agricultural machinery services in China. In this paper, a novel field–road classification method utilizing multiple deep neural networks (MultiDNN) is proposed to enhance the accuracy of field and road point classification. The MultiDNN model incorporates a bi-directional long short-term memory network (BiLSTM), a topology adaptive graph convolution network (TAG), and a self-attention network (ATT) to effectively extract spatio-temporal features for field–road classification. The BiLSTM is used to capture temporal relationships along the time axis of a trajectory, providing global contextual information for each point. Then, the TAG network is used to obtain the spatio-temporal relationships between adjacent points in a trajectory, offering local contextual information for each point. Finally, the ATT network assigns varying weights to features to emphasize important characteristics. The performance of the MultiDNN model was evaluated using a wheat harvesting trajectory dataset, and the results showed that it achieved a high degree of accuracy, up to 89.75%, outperforming the best baseline method (GCN) by 2.79%.

Research on the Impact of Internet Use on Farmers’ Adoption of Agricultural Socialized Services

Developing agricultural socialized services is of great significance for promoting agricultural sustainable development and ensuring food security. The use of the Internet provides new opportunities to promote the development of agricultural socialized services. Using data from the China Family Panel Studies (CFPS) in 2016 and 2018 with 8850 observations, this paper investigates the effects of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services, and explores the mediating effect of social networks. The adoption of agricultural socialized services is divided into adoption decision and adoption degree, and the Probit model and Tobit model are used for empirical analysis. The results showed that: (1) Internet use has a significant positive impact on both the adoption decision and the adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Specifically, the impact of Internet use on the adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services is greater than that of agricultural hired labor services. (2) The mechanism analysis found that social networks partially mediated the effect of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural socialized services. Furthermore, social networks have a greater mediating effect on the influence of Internet use on farmers’ adoption decision and adoption degree of agricultural machinery services compared to agricultural hired labor services. (3) The heterogeneity test found that Internet use has no significant impact on the adoption of agricultural socialized services by older farmers and farmers with a low education level. Therefore, it is crucial to fully leverage the potential of the Internet to facilitate the supply and demand of agricultural socialized services. Moreover, it is essential to integrate the market of agricultural socialized services with the rural social network to realize the synergy of “Internet plus social network”. This integration facilitates the organic connection between small farmers and modern agricultural development.

The Influence of Agricultural Production Mechanization on Grain Production Capacity and Efficiency

As an important production factor of grain production, agricultural machinery can effectively provide a theoretical basis for agricultural modernization development strategies by exploring its impact on grain production capacity and efficiency. This research starts from the two aspects of grain production capacity and grain production efficiency, takes rice, wheat, and corn as the research objects, and uses the C–D production function and Tobit model as the basis, respectively, to establish two impact models of production capacity and production efficiency. At the same time, according to the different emphases of the two models, this research designs different variable systems and finally uses the data from 2017 to 2021 for empirical analysis. The research results show that the influence coefficients of machinery service income and machinery power resource input on the total grain production capacity are 0.0976 and 0.0437, respectively, with a significant positive impact. At the same time, for rice crops, wheat crops, and corn crops, the amount of mechanization cost per mu has a significant positive impact on the yield capacity of crops, with impact coefficients of 0.0311, 0.0827, and 0.0233, respectively. The supply level of agricultural machinery services and the utilization rate of agricultural machinery services per mu have a significant positive impact on grain production efficiency. The impact coefficients of the supply level of agricultural machinery services per mu are 0.0192, 0.0587, and 0.0241, respectively. The impact coefficients of the agricultural machinery service utilization rate are 0.0059, 0.0148, and 0.0607, respectively, with a significant positive impact. It can be seen that agricultural production mechanization can effectively promote the improvement in grain production capacity and efficiency and promote the process of agricultural modernization. At present, most of the research on industrial mechanization services is biased toward the choice of agricultural mechanization services by farmers. However, this research has carried out the impact mechanism analysis from the perspective of time and space and the perspective of crops, rationalizing the impact mechanism of agricultural production capacity and agricultural production efficiency under agricultural mechanization.

Influence of Agriculture M(i) Services on Rice Planting Costs on Chinese Family Farms

Through a questionnaire survey on family farms in Chongqing, Shaanxi, Henan, Liaoning, and other provinces and cities, the authors compared and analyzed the factor importance ranking results of three models—multiple linear regression, SNA social network, and multi-layer perceptron neural network—indicating that different research methods have different calculation results. The results are similar and consistent, and the role of agricultural mechanization and informatization services in the three stages of rice planting—harvesting, plowing, and sowing—is significant. The high use of agricultural machinery services during the harvesting, tillage, and sowing stages of rice planting can reduce the cost of rice planting on family farms.

Maintenance Skill Training Gives Agricultural Socialized Service Providers More Advantages

Agricultural machinery maintenance skill training is conducive to improving the fault diagnosis and maintenance levels of agricultural machinery for agricultural socialized service providers and plays an important role in providing stable and reliable agricultural machinery operation services. This paper aims to study whether maintenance skill training gives agricultural socialized service providers more advantages than untrained providers, exploring the relationship between maintenance skill training and agricultural machinery service area. Based on a survey of 4905 farmers from 10 provinces in China, an empirical analysis was carried out using a fixed effect model and a propensity score matching method. The results showed the following: First, maintenance skill training had a significant positive impact on agricultural machinery operation service area, including 10.426 ha of machinery tilling service area and 8.524 ha of machinery harvesting service area. Second, since maintenance skill training gave agricultural socialized service providers more advantages in agricultural machinery operation services and enabled them to obtain more orders, it had an indirect positive impact on the quantity of demand for large- and middle-sized agricultural machinery.

Mathematical Model for Determining the Time of Preventive Replacements in the Agricultural Machinery Service System with Minimal Repair

In this paper, a semi-Markov model for determining the optimal time for preventive replacements according to the age of technical objects is presented. In the analyzed system of transportation, due to its specific characteristics, the basic type of renewal process carried out is minimal repair. Minimal repairs of technical objects in semi-Markov models have been analyzed in the literature to date. In the system studied, the technical objects (sets of agricultural tractors with trailers), due to the continuous operation of combine harvesters, should carry out the assigned tasks of transporting agricultural crops without interruption. The damage to agricultural tractors that arises during the implementation of transport tasks should be repaired in the shortest possible time. The repairs to damaged tractors are carried out primarily by the Technical Emergency Service and, due to their purpose and scope, may be considered minimal repairs. The effectiveness of the function of the tested technical objects is analyzed by two criteria functions, which are very important for the system managers. These are profit per unit of time and availability. In the analyzed case, it is the availability to carry out the assigned transport tasks. The conditions for the existence of a maximum of criterion functions have been written for the assumptions. The analyzes carried out, which are presented in the work, are illustrated with sample calculations. It has been proven that, under general assumptions, the criterion functions considered in the paper have exactly one maximum. On the basis of the conducted analysis, sufficient conditions for the existence of a maximum of these functions were formulated. In the analyzed transport system, it is possible to increase the efficiency of the function of the technical facilities in use as a result of planning additional preventive replacements (increasing the frequency of these replacements). This is especially important for a system where transport units must have high availability.

基于 CRITIC 和 TOPSIS 方法的跨区收割机备件重要性评估

Aiming at the problem of insufficient research on the importance evaluation of agricultural machinery spare parts in the process of cross-region operation of combine harvester, Based on CRITIC and TOPSIS, an evaluation model of the importance of spare parts for cross region combine harvesters was established. The CRITIC model was used to calculate the weight of each evaluation index, the weighted TOPSIS evaluation model was used to process the data, and the relative closeness between the spare parts of each harvester to be evaluated and the ideal solution was calculated. Finally, the spare parts resource management decision-making system platform is developed to effectively integrate the spare parts resource allocation. The results show that the model can reasonably and effectively evaluate the important demand degree of combine har-vester spare parts, and has a good reference value for the cooperative service of agricultural machinery service vehicles and the priority degree of spare parts loading.

Why China’s AMS Market Is Difficult to Develop Sustainably: Evidence from the North China Plain

The agricultural machinery service (AMS) market enables China to rapidly realize agricultural mechanization on the basis of smallholder farmers. Academics generally believe that China has created a model of agricultural mechanization that matches small-scale farmers with large-scale machinery. However, in recent years, the transformation of the AMS market from prosperity to decline has been under-analyzed. This paper used farm and AMS supplier survey data from the North China Plain to estimate the links between acquaintance transactions, segmentation of the AMS market and losses in terms of transaction efficiency. We found that although the AMS from acquaintances is more expensive and less efficient than from non-acquaintances, farmers still buy from acquaintances because this reduces the transaction costs of the AMS. However, acquaintance transactions have led to the segmentation of the AMS market, reducing the transaction efficiency of the AMS. The AMS market has gradually changed from open to closed in China. The Chinese government should determine how to adjust policies to promote the sustainable development of the AMS market.

The Impact of Socialized Agricultural Machinery Services on Land Productivity: Evidence from China

Under the background of urbanization, rural hollowing out, and aging, it is increasingly urgent to solve the problem of “who will farm the land” to stabilize the foundation of national food security. The socialized agricultural machinery service undoubtedly provides a feasible solution. From the perspective of land productivity, and based on field survey data from 597 farmers in four major wheat-producing provinces in China, this study applied an endogenous switching regression model. By constructing a “counterfactual” analysis framework, this paper’s empirical analysis showed that the socialized agricultural machinery service had a positive impact on the land productivity of wheat production. At the same time, the impact of socialized agricultural machinery services on land productivity was heterogeneous due to the differences in planting scale, terrain, and concurrent business. It can give full play to the positive influence of socialized agricultural machinery services on stable grain yields and increases. It is necessary to guide and support the effective supply of socialized agricultural machinery services in the key links of food production, and to reasonably guide the main providers of socialized agricultural machinery service to provide high-quality services that meet the production needs of small farmers according to local conditions, so as to promote the organic connection between small farmers and the development of modern agriculture.

The impact of agricultural machinery services on cultivated land productivity and its mechanisms: A case study of Handan city in the North China plain

Studying the impact of agricultural machinery services (AMS) on cultivated land productivity is conducive to scientifically improving agricultural production and has far-reaching significance for ensuring food security. Taking Handan City in the North China Plain as the research context and using a surveyed sample of 1918 farming households, this paper examines the effect of AMS on the productivity of cultivated land using OLS estimation and estimates the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) using the propensity score matching (PSM) method. The research findings are as follows. 1) AMS has a significantly positive impact on cultivated land productivity, and a heterogeneity analysis finds that the effects are larger for farmers with relatively less cultivated land and the marginal effects decrease as the adoption of AMS increases. 2) In various planting activities, AMS adoption in basic activities (e.g., ploughing, seeding, and harvesting) has positive effects on cultivated land productivity, while AMS adoption in management activities (e.g., fertilizing, irrigation, and pesticide spraying), has no obvious effect on cultivated land productivity. 3) According to the results of ATT, the conversion of non-adopting farmers to adopting AMS would increase cultivated land productivity by 7.6%–12.1%. 4) A mechanism analysis reveals that AMS adoption relieves financial constraints, improves technical efficiency, and increases smallholders’ crop yields. These results suggest that AMS has a positive effect on cultivated land productivity and therefore have valuable policy implications for increasing smallholders’ access to various types of AMS to improve the productivity of cultivated land in regions dominated by smallholders.