State grain marketing policy and farmer behaviour

Abstract

Government grain marketing policy has an important impact on farmers’ production behaviour, which, in turn, directly tests government grain marketing policy. In 1998, the Chinese government issued a new grain marketing policy package. What have been farmers’ reactions to the new package? This paper uses farmer household grain production and marketing survey data for 1,000 farmer households from the five provinces of Shandong, Henan, Jiangxi, Jilin and Sichuan for the period 1999-2000 to analyse farmers’ reactions to the new grain marketing policy. The study focuses on farmers’ grain marketing channels and changes in grain production in terms of grain-sown areas and grain production inputs. The farmer household survey was conducted jointly by the Department of Policy and Law, Chinese Ministry of Agriculture (MOA), and the Chinese Economies Research Centre (CERC), Adelaide University, Australia, and was sponsored by the Australian Council for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR).