Abstract:

High-quality development of the planting industry is a fundamental support and key pathway for building an agricultural powerhouse in China. Assessing how agricultural water price reform influences the industry’s high-quality development can provide evidence to guide the further deepening and effective implementation of reform policies. From an input-output perspective, this study examines the effects and mechanisms of agricultural water price reform on the high-quality development of China’s planting industry and measures the level of high-quality development of planting industry. We construct an index to measure the level of high-quality development and employ a staggered difference-in-differences model to test the policy’s impacts, mechanisms, and regional heterogeneity. The results show that (1) From 2011 to 2022, the level of high-quality development in China’s planting industry increased overall, with clear spatial disparities: eastern coastal provinces and northern major grain-producing areas performed better, and a stepwise decline is observed from central to western regions. (2) The findings also suggest that agricultural water price reform significantly promotes high-quality development, but the effects vary across regions, with stronger effects in major grain-producing areas and southern regions. (3) The reform advances high-quality development by encouraging agricultural water conservation, optimizing cropping structures, and increasing the adoption of water-saving irrigation technologies; these mechanisms also exhibit marked regional heterogeneity. These findings suggest that future reforms should adopt a differentiated framework for deepening implementation, tailored to regional conditions, to better support high-quality development of the planting industry.

Key words: agricultural water price, comprehensive reform, high-quality development of planting industry, regional heterogeneity, staggered difference-in-differences