The impact of aging of the workforce on farmers’ production technical efficiency:A study based on rice production data from 1430 farmers

【Objective】To study the influences of the aging of the agricultural labor force,the agricultural management characteristics and regional factors on the efficiency of rice farmers' production technology,so as to provide a reference for the improvement in the efficiency of rice production.【Method】Rice planting data from 1430 farmers in 12 provinces(municipalities)of the Yangtze River basin was. A stochastic frontier production model and a efficiency loss model were employed to analyze the impact of aging of the agricultural workforce and other factors on the production technical efficiency of farmers.【Result】The aging of the rice planting workforce was a general phenomenon and there was a shortage of laborers during the busy season. The older laborers still had their own advantages in farming and their age had a positive influence on technical efficiency,which was relatively higher than the young laborers. Limited by the human resource of older laborers,their input of production factors were lower than that of the young. With the current age distribution in the workforce,increasing the input of labor production factors could not effectively increase the output. To compare other influencing factors,older laborers in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River had the highest technical efficiency,while in the middle area these had the most stable technical efficiency. This meant some farmers still had room to improve their technical efficiency. There were more older laborers in-flowed land than younger ones,but their future land transfer tendencies were lower than the young. Education,length of technical training,professional associations,green business operations and agricultural technology extension departments had significant positive impacts on technical efficiency,while being village cadres,land transfer,by-business,basic level information service stations and local government had obvious negative influence on technical efficiency.【Suggestion】The government should accept the aging tendency of the agricultural labor force and begin the introduction of preferential policies to attract the return of labor,strengthen agricultural skills training,improve the land transfer mechanism and improve the agricultural information release mechanism to improve the efficiency of rice farmers' production technology.