ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Sustain. Food Syst.

Sec. Land, Livelihoods and Food Security

Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1600573

This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable Food Consumption and Production in the 21st Century: Volume IIView all articles

Assessment of the Effect of the Reward Policy for Major Grain-Producing Counties on County Governments' Incentives to Support Grain Production

Provisionally accepted
XZ  BAXZ BA1Xizhao  WangXizhao Wang1Xi  LuoXi Luo2Yu  ZhongYu Zhong1*
  • 1Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
  • 2Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

Counties are the key areas of grain production in China, and it is essential to incentivize county governments to focus on grain production efforts to ensure the country's food security. Using countylevel data from 2000 to 2021, the effect of the reward policy for major grain-producing counties (RPMGC) on county governments' incentives to support grain production (CGISGP) was assessed using the difference-in-differences method. The results indicate that the implementation of RPMGC has significantly in-creased CGISGP, and this result remains robust after conducting parallel trend, placebo, and robustness tests. Further analysis reveals that this effect emerged in the first year following the policy's implementation and gradually diminished by the fifth year, and that the policy's impact is not sustained in the long term. The effect was more pronounced in counties with high bonus distribution coefficients, a large proportion of the primary sector, and significant financial pressure. It is necessary to promptly adjust and improve the RPMGC, accelerate the implementation of horizontal grain interest compensation, and strengthen the "endogenous motivation" of grain-producing counties.

Keywords: RPMGC, CGISGP, Food security, Transfer payments, policy

Received: 26 Mar 2025; Accepted: 29 May 2025.

Copyright: © 2025 BA, Wang, Luo and Zhong. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

* Correspondence: Yu Zhong, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

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