Yu Zhong

Fiscal transfers are a key policy instrument for supporting grain production, and a systematic assessment of their effects offers a critical basis for improving the design of incentive-based grain production policies. Unlike most existing studies, which primarily examine fiscal transfers from the perspective of improving farm households’ welfare and micro-level production decisions, this paper focuses on their impact on the grain production performance of major grain-producing counties, which account for over 80% of China’s grain output. Utilizing panel data from 1319 county-level units in China, this study employs a difference-in-differences (DID) approach to evaluate the impact of the “Reward Policy for Major Grain-Producing Counties (RPMGC)”, a central-to-county fiscal transfer program, on grain production. The empirical results indicate that: First, the reward policy significantly promotes grain production, and this finding remains robust across a series of robustness tests. Second, from a temporal perspective, the policy’s impact follows a trend of initially increasing and then decreasing over time, suggesting that the policy effects lack long-term sustainability. Third, mechanism analysis reveals that the policy enhances grain production by fostering technological advancement, mitigating production risks, and facilitating scaled-up production. Fourth, further analysis indicates that the policy effects are more pronounced in counties located within major grain-producing regions and those experiencing higher fiscal pressure. These findings provide valuable insights for improving the design of intergovernmental grain production incentives, refining grain production incentive mechanisms, and consolidating national food security.

Using county-level designation as major grain-producing counties to capture China’s food security responsibility (FSR), we examine its impacts on water sustainability. Our findings are three-fold: (1) FSR significantly reduces terrestrial water storage (TWS) and groundwater storage (GWS); (2) Heterogeneous effects are stronger in main grain areas, become more pronounced after the Food Security Governor Responsibility System Evaluation (FSGRSE), are more significant where TWS and GWS decline is more severe, and amplify under low-precipitation conditions; (3) Further analysis shows irrigation expansion is the mediating channel from FSR to TWS and GWS decline, with a stronger mediation effect in fiscally constrained counties. These results suggest that the institutional design of FSR induces unsustainable water use, highlighting a trade-off between “feeding today” and “thirsting tomorrow.”

This study draws on data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS) to examine the impact of agricultural labor force aging on wheat production efficiency at the household level, with a particular focus on the moderating role of agricultural mechanization. The results reveal that the relationship between labor force aging and wheat production efficiency is not linear but exhibits an inverted U-shaped pattern. Production efficiency peaks when the average age of a household’s agricultural labor force approaches 55 and declines thereafter. Agricultural mechanization significantly moderates this relationship, alleviating the negative effects of labor force aging on production efficiency. Further heterogeneity analysis shows that the adverse impact is more pronounced among households that depend more heavily on grain or agricultural income, and in major grain-producing regions, indicating notable regional and structural variations. To address the challenges posed by an aging agricultural workforce, policy efforts should focus on establishing incentive mechanisms to attract young talent back to rural areas to engage in modern agricultural production; advancing agricultural mechanization to alleviate labor shortages and address the issue of “how to grow grain”; and fostering new types of agricultural business entities to promote appropriately scaled land management and address the question of “who will grow grain.”

Counties are key regions for grain production in China, and it is essential to incentivize county governments to focus on grain production to ensure national food security. This study uses county-level data from 2000 to 2021 to assess the impact of the reward policy for major grain-producing counties (RPMGC) on county governments' incentives to support grain production (CGISGP), employing a difference-in-differences approach. The results show that: (1) The implementation of RPMGC significantly increased CGISGP, and this result remains robust under parallel trend, placebo, and other robustness tests; (2) Further analysis reveals that the effect appeared in the first year after the policy's implementation and gradually diminished by the fifth year. The policy's impact is not sustained in the long term; (3) The effect was more pronounced in counties with high bonus distribution coefficients, large primary sectors, and significant financial pressure. It is necessary to promptly adjust and improve the RPMGC, accelerate horizontal grain interest compensation mechanisms, and enhance the endogenous motivation of grain-producing counties.

There is a strong connection between the Federal Reserve’s monetary policy and the trend of international food prices. Employing the average information share model, EGARCH(Exponential Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity), and DCC-MGARCH(Dynamic Conditional Correlation-Multivariate Generalized Autoregressive Conditional Heteroskedasticity) models, this study investigates the relationship between the U.S. dollar index, international grain futures prices, and spot prices in the context of Federal Reserve monetary policy adjustments from 2000 to 2023. The findings reveal that, first, under conditions of long-run cointegration, the U.S. dollar index exerts a strong pricing influence over international grain futures, while grain futures demonstrate a significant price discovery function over spot prices. Second, both international grain futures and spot markets exhibit asymmetric volatility, with price increases being more pronounced than decreases in response to external shocks. Additionally, the U.S. dollar index has a unidirectional and inverse influence on grain futures prices, while futures and spot prices interact bidirectionally and move in the same direction. This paper contributes to understanding the impact of Federal Reserve monetary policy adjustments on international food prices and offers policy insights for countries to manage food import risks and maintain price stability.

Against the backdrop of increasing financialization of grain markets, the cross-cycle and cross-market contagion among commodities has been intensifying. To investigate the risk spillover among commodities across different cycles, this study selected UK WTI crude oil and soybean, corn, and wheat futures prices from the Chicago Board of Trade as research subjects. Using ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD), the original sequences were decomposed into sub-sequences of different frequencies. Based on these frequency characteristics, long-term, medium-term, and short-term fluctuations were constructed. The BEKK-GARCH model was then applied to explore the volatility spillover across markets under different cycles. The results indicate that in terms of pricing mechanisms, crude oil futures dominate the price fluctuations of grain futures. In terms of risk spillover across different cycles, there is a bidirectional risk spillover effect between crude oil and grain futures in short-term and medium-term fluctuations, while in long-term fluctuations, there is only a unidirectional transmission from crude oil futures to grain futures. Based on the research findings, this paper proposes relevant policy recommendations, aiming to provide government regulatory authorities and futures investors with policy guidance and a theoretical foundation across different cycles.

With the market-driven approach to agricultural technical services and the application of digital technology, digital agro-technical services have gradually emerged as a novel service model. However, there is a lack of empirical research on the effectiveness of this service in the academic literature. To address this research gap, this study measured the impact of this service on the technical efficiency and income levels of mango farmers, using data collected from 131 mango farmers in Hainan Province, China, from 2022 to 2024. This study employed the endogenous switching regression model (ESRM) and the inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment model (IPWRA) to analyze the data, addressing endogeneity through the instrumental variable method by replacing core explanatory variables and conducting sub-regional regression for robustness testing. The main research conclusions are as follows: Under the counterfactual assumption of ESRM, farmers who adopt this service would have experienced a decrease in technical efficiency by 0.025 (a decline of 3.6%) if they had not adopted the service. Conversely, farmers who did not adopt it would have seen an increase in technical efficiency by 0.047 (an increase of 7.3%) if they had chosen to do so. Additionally, under the post-treatment income effect estimation using IPWRA, compared to farmers who did not receive the service, those who did so saw an income increase of 15.6%. The analysis results from methods such as K-nearest neighbors matching also confirm this conclusion. Therefore, it is evident that digital agro-technology services play a significant role in improving the technical efficiency and income levels of small-scale farmers.

Improving the efficiency of fertilizer usage is important to achieve sustainable agricultural production. As a major agricultural producer, China formally proposed a national fertilizer reduction and efficiency initiative in 2015. Using the double stochastic meta-frontier method to measure the fertilizer use efficiency of 31 provinces in mainland China from 2005 to 2019, this study evaluates the effectiveness of the said initiative on grain production. The results show that China’s initiative has achieved some success, with the average value of fertilizer use efficiency in national grain production increasing by 2.53 percentage points. However, the changes in fertilizer use efficiency show regional heterogeneity. Specifically, the fertilizer use efficiency of the main grain-producing and marketing regions has increased significantly, while that of grain-producing-and-marketing-balanced regions has declined. Further investigation shows that this phenomenon may be related to the importance attached by local governments to the initiative and the uneven distribution of related resources.

The spread of COVID-19 has affected not only public health but also agriculture, raising global concerns regarding the food system. As an immediate impact of COVID-19, farmers around the globe have had difficulties with sales, resulting in large amounts of overstocked agricultural products and food loss. This further threatens the livelihood of rural, poor farmers and impacts sustainable production. To provide a better understanding of the overstocking situation after the outbreak of the pandemic, this study depicts the distribution characteristics of overstocked agricultural products in China. After analyzing a nationwide data set collected from 3482 individuals/organizations by the Chinese Agri-products Marketing Association after the outbreak of the pandemic, we found that some of the initial prevention and control measures disrupted sales channels, and in turn, caused the farmers to suffer losses. The impact was more severe in perishable products and their production areas, as well as in poverty-stricken regions. Then, we identified China’s quick and effective actions to match the supply and demand. These findings suggest that emergency responses should coordinate the relationship between emergency actions and the necessary logistics of agricultural production. To prepare for the possibility of such shock in the future, the government should take actions to clear logistics obstacles for necessary transportation, keep enhancing the fundamental infrastructure and effective mechanism of the food supply chain, and actively include innovative techniques to build a more resilient food system.