An empirical analysis on comparative advantage of economic crops in Wuwei, Gansu

In recent years, Wuwei has been exploring ample local agricultural resources and developing economic crops development in order to increase farmers’ income and develop into a well-off society. Guided under the direction of water saving and high efficiency, the city has grown some major agricultural sectors, including vegetable, melon, potato, cotton, fruit, beer raw materials, seed production, and traditional Chinese medicine. There has been also some significant improvement in production specialization, scale economy, standardization, systematization and socialization. This paper calculated scale economy index, efficiency index, and comprehensive advantage index to analyze Wuwei’s economic crop production in different areas from 2008 to 2012. The result indicated that the economic crop with comparative advantage in Liangzhou was vegetable, in Minqin these included melon, Chinese herbal medicine, cotton, fruit and sunflowers, in Gulang they were potato, medicine herbs, oil crop, sugar beet, barley beer and fruit, and in Tianzhu crops with comparative advantages were vegetable and potato. Such differences can be attributed to the soil condition and climate diversity. Using the principle of comparative advantage to reasonably arrange agricultural production is an effective way to improve resource allocation, enhance economic crop production efficiency, and further foster the growth of economic crops has obvious comparative advantage and competitive advantage.