影響台灣農民參與農業專區之因素

Abstract

近年來，受到自由開放的市場影響，加上台灣以小農為主的農業型態，農政單位針對此變化推行了許多政策措施，目的不僅為擴大農民的農地規模與提升其收入，也致力於提升農民面對此開放浪潮的適應力，改善整體農業經營的結構，而在過去幾年內政府推行的政策措施中，尤以設立許多農作物的產銷專區為主要施行政策之一，然而，此政策措施是否適合所有農民以及是否達到預期的效果仍需加以了解，因此本研究目的在於透過問卷調查資料，研究農民參加農業專區的影響因素並了解參加的效果。 本研究藉由受訪者的基本統計量，了解不同地區、年齡、經營規模之農民參加農業專區的情形，接著進一步運用Rosenbaum與Rubin (1983)提出的傾向分數配對法，解決農民參加農業專區之效果估算的自我選擇問題，探討農民參加農業專區的影響因素並估算是否參加農業專區之農業總收入、經營面積及總補貼金額等之差距，即平均處理效果(average treatment effect for the treated, ATT)。實證結果顯示，年齡與家庭人數對於參加農業專區呈現顯著負向影響，而是否為農場管理者、農業總收入及經營面積對於參加農業專區存在顯著正向影響；參加農業專區平均而言使農民的農業總收入增加約35.7萬元，並使農民的經營面積擴大0.75公頃。另外，本研究亦發現平均而言參加農業專區農民的經營面積愈大，農業總收入也愈大，且經營面積介於0.5-2公頃的農民最為顯著；而在不同年齡層方面，發現平均而言50歲以下的農民參加農業專區使其農業總收入提升31.3萬元，61歲以上的農民提升30.5萬，而51-60歲的農民提升37.4萬元並增加經營面積約0.74公頃。

Due to the freedom and openness of the economic markets as well as the type of agriculture focusing on smallholder family farming, the Department of Agriculture in Taiwan has developed and implemented a number of measures against the change in recent years. The objects of the measures are not only to expand the scale of the farmland but also to enhance farmers’ income. Furthermore, the government is dedicated to enhancing the adaptability of the farmers to the trend, and improving the overall structure of agricultural operations. Setting up numerous production and marketing areas for various crops has been one of the main measures implemented by the government over the past few years. However, whether this measure is suitable for all farmers and whether it can achieve the expected benefit are worth to be further discussed. Therefore, the purpose of this thesis is to analyze the influencing factors and the effects of farmers' participation in Special Agricultural Zone through the survey data. In this thesis, we obtain the data of farmers participating in special areas of agriculture in Taiwan in terms of region, age, and scale of operations by the descriptive statistics of the respondents. Then, we apply the propensity score matching methods proposed by Rosenbaum and Rubin (1983) to solve the self-selection problem incurred by the estimates of the effect that farmers participate in the special areas of agriculture. We investigate the factors that affect the farmer’s willingness to participate in the special areas of agriculture and evaluate the differences in total agricultural income, operating area, and total subsidy between participation and nonparticipation, namely average treatment effect for the treated (ATT). The empirical results show that age and number of family members have significant negative influence on participating in the special areas of agriculture; however, whether farmer is a farm manager, total agricultural income, and operating area have significant positive influence on participating in the special areas of agriculture. Participating in the special areas of agriculture results in an increase of NT$357,000 on average in farmers’ total agricultural income and an increase of 0.75 hectare in operating area. Moreover, the thesis also reveal that the larger the average operating area that a farmer participating in the special areas of agriculture possesses, the greater his total agricultural income is, which has the most significant effect on farmers with an operating area between 0.5 and 2 hectares. As regards age, farmers under the age of 50 participating in the special areas of agriculture increase their total agricultural income by NT$313,000 on average, while those more than 61 years old increase their total agricultural income by NT$305,000 and those from 51 to 60 years of age increase their total agricultural income by NT$374,000 and operating area by 0.74 hectare.