服务外包、农业投资及其替代效应——兼论农户是否必然是农业的投资主体

不同于以往从农户主体角度讨论诱导农业生产性投资的传统思路,文章从分工理论的视角出发,分析农业服务外包与生产性投资之间可能存在的替代关系,试图为中国小农引入现代生产要素及其投资选择提供一种新思路。基于广东阳山县的农户跟踪调查数据,选用Probit和Tobit模型的分析结果表明:农业服务外包与农户生产性投资行为之间存在显著的替代效应。具体而言,农业服务外包水平增加10%,农户进行生产性投资的概率降低3.21%,生产性投资总额降低29.24%。采用工具变量法再次验证了这一替代效应。异质性分析显示,该替代关系会随着种植规模的增大而减弱。文章的政策含义是:充分发挥农业服务外包市场的迂回投资功能,以外部投资替代农户的直接投资行为,从而将小农融入现代农业发展。为此,有必要反思和调整农村信贷政策,并适时制定面向新型农业服务经营主体发展的金融支持策略。

The Substitution Effect Between Service Outsourcing and Agricultural Investment: And Discussion about the Subject of Agricultural Investment

This article differs from the traditional idea of inducing agricultural investment from the perspective of farmers, but starts from division theory to analyze the possible substitution relationship between agricultural service outsourcing and farmers' productive investment. We try to provide a new solution for bringing China's small-scale farmers into investment decisions of modern agricultural production factors. Based on the followed-up survey data of farmers in Yangshan County, Guangdong province, our estimation through the Probit and Tobit model shows that agricultural service outsourcing rate increases by 10%, and the probability and total amount of productive investment of farmers decrease by 3.21% and 29.24% respectively, which indicates a significant substitution effect between agricultural service outsourcing and farmers' productive investment. This substitution effect is also verified through the IV estimation. Heterogeneity analysis reveals that the substitution between agricultural service outsourcing and productive investment by farmers will weaken as the planting scale increases. The policy implications are as follows. We should utilize the indirect investment effect of agricultural service outsourcing market and introduce external investment to replace the direct investment of farmers, so as to integrate small-scale farmers into modern agriculture. Therefore, it is necessary to rethink and adjust the current rural credit policy and timely formulate financial support policy for the development of the rising agricultural service operator.