Logical Construction,Evaluation and Dynamic Evolution of Socialized Agricultural Services in China
Improving agricultural socialized services is crucial in promoting the organic connection between smallholder farmers and modern agricultural development.Starting with analyzing the connota-tion of agricultural socialized service,this paper constructs an evaluation index system for the agricultural socialized service from three dimensions:infrastructure conditions,entities and environment,and effectiveness of agricultural socialized service development using the panel data of 31 Chinese prov-inces from 2000 to 2022.Entropy method,TOPSIS method,Theil index,kernel density estimation,and standard deviation ellipse are applied to measure agricultural socialized service level,regional differ-ences,time-spatial evolution and spatial correlation.The results show that:Firstly,China's agricultural socialized service level has been increasing year by year,but the overall level is low.The overall regional differences of agricultural socialized services have been narrowing and intra-regional differences are the main cause of the overall differences.Secondly,the level of agricultural socialized services varies significantly across the five economic regions and the three functional grain regions.The eastern region and main grain-producing areas have clear advantages in agricultural socialization serv-ices.Thirdly,although the regional gap in agricultural socialization services has widened,the polarization phenomenon has weakened over time,revealing a pattern of regional gradient evolution.Lastly,the level of agricultural socialized services shows a significant spatial positive correlation with the eastern region mostly exhibiting high-high and low-high clustering,while the western region mostly exhibiting low-low clustering.This pattern indicates a divergence in which"high-level development pole"coexist with"low-level development trap".