我国农业信息化建设的现状及对策

农业信息化建设是发展现代农业的重要途径,对于农业生产模式的转变、农业经营市场化的实现及农业产业化和生态农业的发展具有重要意义.目前,我国农业信息网络基础建设滞后,农业信息资源欠缺,农民的信息消费能力低,信息化建设人才缺乏.为此,要加强农业信息化的基础设施建设、资源建设,提升农民的信息消费能力,加快人才培养,以促进农业信息化发展.     

农业信息化建设的问题与对策

农业信息化是农业现代化的重要内容和标志。目前,农业信息化建设还存在着信息资源分散不足,信息人才缺乏等问题。加强农业信息化建设,必须加大投入,完善政策法规,加快信息资源建设和信息人才的培养。     

中国农业科技推广模式与实践

农业科技须在健全完善的农业科技推广体系和推广模式下才能有效地为农业服务,促进农业发展。综观中国农业科技推广体系及推广模式还存在着诸多问题,直接影响农业现代化的进程,表现在区域发展的不均衡性,模式的零散性以及推广渠道不畅,资金投入不足等问题,无论在理论和实践的层面,与发达国家的农业科技推广均存在着较大的差距,这些差距反映在农业科技推广的主客体以及制度、机制与体制的层面。针对这些问题须从将农业科技推广的内涵扩展到广义的农业推广上,从制度上,修订和完善相关法律,实行农业科技推广人员职业资格制度;提高对农业科技推广的投资强度;构建现代信息服务平台,促进农业科技推广应用;培养高素质的新型现代农民;明确农业科研、教育单位为农业科技推广主体地位与作用。     

循环农业专业人才结构的现状及其完善

发展农业循环经济存在着符合农业发展要求的复合型人才稀缺、人才的继续教育机制、培训机制不完善等问题。完善循环农业专业人才结构,要科学进行循环农业专业人才培养的合理规划、加快复合型人才的培养、加强对企业管理者的培训、大力开发农村乡土人才、采取各种方式引入人才、建立专业人才的奖励、选拔机制。     

基于农业废弃物资源化利用的农业循环经济发展模式探讨

基于农业废弃物资源化利用的农业循环经济发展模式是一种具有普适性的农业循环经济发展模式,该模式分为基于农作物秸秆资源化利用的农业循环经济、基于畜禽粪便资源化利用的农业循环经济、以沼气为纽带的农业循环经济三种典型类型,其发展需要在运行机制、公共政策、技术人才等方面构筑起完善的保障体系.     

基于农业废弃物资源化利用的农业循环经济发展模式探讨

基于农业废弃物资源化利用的农业循环经济发展模式是一种具有普适性的农业循环经济发展模式,该模式分为基于农作物秸秆资源化利用的农业循环经济、基于畜禽粪便资源化利用的农业循环经济、以沼气为纽带的农业循环经济三种典型类型,其发展需要在运行机制、公共政策、技术人才等方面构筑起完善的保障体系。     

我国农业保险信息不对称问题研究

农业保险是现代农业发展的有力保障,也是强农惠农的重要政策之一,但信息不对称问题严重阻碍了我国农业保险的发展。研究发现,投保农户与保险公司的逆选择、心里风险和道德风险是农业保险信息不对称的主要表现形式,而农业生产的特殊性、农业风险的多样化,以及农业保险的利益外溢性和我国农民保险知识匮乏、诚信意识较差等等是导致我国农业保险信息不对称问题产生的主要原因。因此,本文提出建立适合我国国情的农业保险经营模式,积极发展由政府支持、商业保险公司参与的农业保险合作社模式经营农业保险;并根据农业保险信息不对称的不同表现形式,建立相应的博弈模型从而优化保单设计、制定合理价格策略;最后,加大科技投入建立信息甄别机制和险情评估系统、宣传农业保险以及建立农业保险监管体系等也是防范信息不对称的重要举措。     

城乡统筹环境下的农业人才孵化机制研究

针对目前城乡统筹协调发展中因农业人才培养模式落后而导致农业人才严重缺乏的问题,提出了以农业企业孵化器为平台的农业人才孵化模式,具体为:基于农业人才需求主体和农业人才类型的分析,引入人力资本理论和社会资本理论,构建了由多领域配套支持系统、多层次人才孵化系统、多维度优化支持系统构成的农业人才孵化机制,并在此基础上对农业人才孵化的预期效果进行了研究。     

保定市绿色农业发展模式研究

绿色农业是21世纪农业发展的方向,是一种生态健全、技术先进、经济合理、社会公正的农业发展模式。保定市在发展绿色农业的意义和现状的基础上,提出了发展绿色农业的模式。包括产业化经营主导型模式;循环农业发展模式;观光休闲农业模式;设施农业模式。当前国际市场越来越关注农产品的生产环境和内在质量,我国的农产品出口企业不同程度地受到了绿色壁垒的影响,这给中国这样一个农业大国再一次敲响了环境问题的警钟。     

人力资本集聚:农业科技园区可持续发展的路径选择

于20世纪90年代初诞生的农业科技园区,作为一种新型的农业发展模式而被迅速推广,其发展不仅是一个地区技术、资金的角逐,更重要的是一场高智力人才的竞争。因此,人力资本成为农业科技园区发展的重要因素。以农业科技园区人力资本集聚作为研究视角,首先探讨了农业科技园区中人力资本集聚的重要性;其次以实际案例为依托分析了农业科技园区中人力资本的现状;最后提出了农业科技园区中加强人力资本集聚效应的对策。通过以上论述得出,农业科技园区中拥有越多出类拔萃的高技术人才,农业科技园区就相对拥有更为强劲的可持续发展能力这一结论。     

“以工哺农”、“以工促农”与我国传统农业现代化

在市场经济条件下,“以工哺农”主要是借政府“有形之手”实现工业对农业的利益回馈,“以工促农”则是借市场“无形之手”实现工业对农业的自然促动。推进我国传统农业的现代化,“以工哺农”与“以工促农”不可偏废,一方面要通过“以工哺农”来为“以工促农”创造条件,另一方面又要通过“以工促农”来引导“以工哺农”的方向。     

Trophically balanced sustainable agriculture

Considering an economy without fossil fuels, literally built from the ground, then up, we developed several interactive research models of biointensive farms that use no fossil fuels. Quantifying and summarizing total human labor–energy input and total caloric energy output, we demonstrate that a successfully designed farm can produce a positive energy-return-on-investment (EROI) leaving excess caloric energy available for building economic-community structures (e.g., schools and hospitals). Farm products with negative EROI must be coupled with other products with positive EROI to assure nutritionally balanced diets are maintained while still achieving an overall positive EROI for the total agroecological operation. We show that similar to the ecosystem, energy budgets are tight which makes for difficult decisions on diet, farm plot diversity, and energy profitability for future growth. Considering the totality of this low energy agro-system based economy, we simplify many operational variables into a unique graphical solution space, which reveals both reasonable expectations of agroecological EROI performance, and extreme asymptotes, beyond which indicate regions of system failure.     

中国现代农业的出路

在工业化、信息化、全球化的今天,加快农业现代化,实现从传统农业向现化农业的转变,是我国农业的唯一出路．而要实现这一目标须学习西方发达国家的经验,着力提高农民文化素质,重视农业科技的研究和推广,改革现有土地制度,逐步实现农业的专业化、规模化、现代化经营。     

日本的现代化农业

日本国土面积37.78万平方公里，1995年耕地面积516万公顷，占国土面积的13.6%，人均耕地仅有0.04公顷。山地约占80%，耕地分布较分散，斜坡地占的比重较大。因此，分布在山上的小块梯田在耕地中占有相当大的比重，对耕作，特别是机械化作业有较大影响。日本属于海洋性温和气候，比较适合各种农作物的生长，尤其是水稻。除北海道外，基本上一年都可种植两茬作物。另外，由于日本的土地肥力低，再加上坡度大、雨量多，土壤肥力流失严重。正是在这样的自然条件下，日本在第二次世界大战后不到30年的时间里就实现了农业的现代化。实现农业现代化…     

试论中国农业产业结构调整

一、当前中国农业现状 经过近半个世纪,以破坏人与自然环境间和谐、消耗大量能源、机械化程度高、劳动生产率高为特征的准现代农业的发展,农业已由解决温饱需要逐步转向适应进入小康的更高要求,由单纯追求数量、速度转到以提高质量和效益为中心的轨道上,农业和农村经济发展正处于一个重要的转折时期,农产品供求总量基本平衡,丰年有余,但     

Getting income shares right in agriculture

Most economic studies assume that factor shares are constant across countries and sectors. This article calculates factor shares in the agricultural sector across all US states and shows that there are huge differences, which can be explained by crop composition. In states that focus on more labour-intensive crops, such as fruits, the share of income going to labour is larger than in grain-growing states.     

Constrained output maximization and US agriculture

This paper presents a framework for estimating an indirect production function and then applies it to aggregate US agriculture. Issues addressed include tests of standard hypotheses about the underlying technology (homotheticity, neutral technical change, etc.) as well as examination of consistency in aggregation and the effects of changes in the level of aggregate expenditure on farm output. Since there already exist several studies empirically describing agricultural production technologies with indirect objective functions, one might fairly ask whether this paper really breaks any new ground? We feel that it does. One reason is that existing studies (e.g. Binswanger, 1974; Lopez, 1980; Ball and Chambers, 1982; Ray, 1982; and Weaver, 1983) all rely on either profit or cost functions. To date there appears to be only one study using an indirect production (Appelbaum, 1979), and it is not in agriculture. This seems unfortunate because there are many instances in agriculture for which an indirect production function (or revenue function approach) seems more appropriate. The reason why relates directly to one's belief about the objective function and constraints farmers face. Ultimately, it seems plausible in a certainty framework that producers maximize profits. And since cost minimization and output maximization are just constrained versions of profit maximization, both cost and indirect production functions are more appropriately viewed as restricted profit functions. What differs is the constraint. Assuming cost minimization implies that farmers are constrained by a fixed output which they must produce; in most instances, this is implausible. More likely, the level of output is itself a choice variable. Output maximization, on the other hand, suggests that the main constraint is the amount of money that producers can muster to hire resources. In other words, farmers may face binding constraints in obtaining the profit maximizing level on expenditure on input utilization. One might think that expenditure may not be a binding constraint because there exists a relatively active US credit market. However, the US credit market is far from being perfectly competitive in a stylized sense, and thus, the possibility of a farmer being able to finance a given level of expenditure may be limited.

Readers familiar with the dual approach to production problems may already be asking why these ideas rule out cost functions since it is well known that the cost function is the distance function of the indirect production function (Blackorby et al., 1978)? In principle, therefore, one could always estimate a cost function and then invert it to obtain the indirect production function. There are two problems with this approach: the first is that if output maximization is truly the objective, output is not predetermined and cannot be treated as exogenous in cost function estimation. Second, estimation of direct and indirect functions using the same data set does not always yield comparable results. Estimation of a transcendental logarithmic (translog) indirect production function and a translog cost function, separately, does not generally yield identical estimates of the Allen elasticities of substitutions. Solving the first problem in simple, but the second suggests that estimation should proceed on the basis of the objective function the researcher deems most appropriate. Therefore, if output maximization is more plausible than cost minimization an indirect production function should be used.

The plan of the paper is as follows. We first outline the theoretical developments necessary to our approach (included are conditions necessary for consistent aggregation over firms). We then present estimates of an indirect production function and use these estimates to investigate the plausibility of various restrictions on the technology, consistency in aggregation, substitution possibilities in agricultural production, and the effect of expenditure on agricultural input utilization. The paper closes with a discussion of the results and suggestions for future research.     

Ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture

Agricultural ecosystems are actively managed by humans to optimize the provision of food, fiber, and fuel. These ecosystem services from agriculture, classified as provisioning services by the recent Millennium Ecosystem Assessment, depend in turn upon a web of supporting and regulating services as inputs to production (e.g., soil fertility and pollination). Agriculture also receives ecosystem dis-services that reduce productivity or increase production costs (e.g., herbivory and competition for water and nutrients by undesired species). The flows of these services and dis-services directly depend on how agricultural ecosystems are managed and upon the diversity, composition, and functioning of remaining natural ecosystems in the landscape. Managing agricultural landscapes to provide sufficient supporting and regulating ecosystem services and fewer dis-services will require research that is policy-relevant, multidisciplinary and collaborative. This paper focuses on how ecosystem services contribute to agricultural productivity and how ecosystem dis-services detract from it. We first describe the major services and dis-services as well as their key mediators. We then explore the importance of scale and economic externalities for the management of ecosystem service provision to agriculture. Finally, we discuss outstanding issues in regard to improving the management of ecosystem services and dis-services to agriculture.