Analysis on Characteristics of Corn Farmers on Selecting Seeds Under the Seed Subsidy in China: A Case Study in Liaoning and Hebei Provinces, China

Abstract

The Seed Subsidy (SS) is the direct subsidy to encourage farmers cultivate with high quality seeds, which was introduced to nationwide farmers by Chinese government since 2004. China is the second biggest corn producer in the world and the government has provided SS for the corn producers since 2004. As the government allocated an increasing amount of budgets on SS during the last decades, this study attempts to investigate the effectiveness of the SS from the social and demographic aspects of grain farmers associated with their seed choices under the allocation of SS. A descriptive analysis and OLS model are adopted to analyze including the demographic factors of grain farmers as well on selecting seeds under the circumstance of receiving SS. We found that the larger the land area endowment and the higher the income from vegetable and fruits, the higher the seed quality they apply in Gaizhou. In Yangyuan, the same situation for the land area endowment but a contrary situation for off-farm income, the more off-farm income, the lower the seed quality they apply. What’s more interesting is the estimated coefficients of the awareness of the SS were statistically insignificant in both regions. In order to stimulate the use of high quality seeds, the government should set another policy system in a different way.