MINGWEN LI, ZHENHUA WANG, GUANGSHENG ZHANG﹡ ﹡Corresponding author College of Economics and Management, Shenyang Agricultural University, Shenyang, ,

Guangsheng Zhang The impact of migrant labor on production in China

KEYWORDS: Farming, migrant work, rice production, production factor input, family life cycle.

With the increasing trend of rural laborers engaging in non-agricultural employment, significant changes Abstract have occurred to the income structure and production and management mode of farming. An increase in the age of the agricultural workforce has also occurred, resulting in a shortage of agricultural labor, creating concern regarding food production and security. Using the 2010 survey data of the Rice Research Institute of Liaoning province, this study established a rice production function and analyzed the influence of rural-urban migration on rice production from the perspective of production factor inputs and the family life cycle. These empirical results indicate that the aging agricultural workforce has no obvious negative impact on rice production, because of the important role years of experience plays in rice production and a reduction in body strength demand stemmed from agricultural mechanization. The positive influence of non-agricultural income obtained by migrant workers appears to offset the negative effect of on production. Young farmers tend to have an extensive management role in as a result of their negative opinion of farming and increased income from non-agricultural sources. Conversely, older farmers are not as likely to seek migrant labor elsewhere as they tend to maintain their traditional dependence on agriculture, and are also deterred by the uncertain expectation over working remittance. In conclusion, the migration of people from farms to cities is not found to be harmful to rice production. A current obstacle involves developing a means of adapting farming production and management with migrant work, meeting the new demands for food production as well as utilizing the financial resources offered by migrant work on food production, rather than reducing the number of migrant farmers.

INTRODUCTION collected at the county level, concluded that the migration of rural labors has almost no impact on food production in The mass migration of rural laborers to cities increases the China (3). Yi used data collected in the province and income of a rural population, and alleviates the disparity showed that the rural labor migration there has no significant between the large human population and relatively small influence on wheat or rice production, but does negatively landmass of rural areas. However, it also poses huge influence potato, corn and soybean production (4). Using challenges in agricultural development, especially in food survey data from Liaoning province, Chen et al. studied the production and security. Though agricultural production is influence of migration of different generations of rural laborers becoming increasingly modernized, a potential problem on input elements and technical efficiency in rice production. worth considering is whether the mass migration of rural The results indicated that income from urban labor enables laborers will negatively impact food production, especially farmers to invest more in . However, due to rice production. generational differences of the migrant workers on remittance, families with only first generation migrant workers, Wu et al. estimated food production function from farming in and those with both the first generation and the new China using data collected from 1993–1994. Their results generation migrant workers, invest more than those with only indicated a significant negative correlation between crop new generation migrant workers (5). Qian et al. analyzed yield per hectare and the ratio of agricultural workforce to data from province, and showed that infrastructure total workforce per family. They thus concluded that the investments, such as collective irrigation and water migration of rural laborers has a positive influence on food conservancy, are important guarantees for a stable rice yield. production in China (1). Rozelle et al. discovered that the Furthermore, in the areas with poor infrastructure, migration of influence of migrant workers on food production could be rural laborers will lead to a shortage of labor in rice viewed in terms of the negative effect of labor loss, and the production, thus severely impacting productivity (6). compensatory effects of remittance. However, labor outflow was found to result in the overall decline of corn yield per unit The influence of migrant workers on food production is a (2). Ma upon analyzing 10 years worth of statistical data contentious issue. Previous research has suggested that this

Agro FOOD Industry Hi Tech - vol. 27(6) November/December 2016 53