Abstract:

The middle basin of the Yangtze River is located in the subtropical monsoon climate zone，which is an important commodity grain and commodity oil producing area in our country.However，there is a large and long duration of rainfall in the harvest season of wheat/rapeseed (MayJune)，which seriously decreases the production and quality of wheat/rapeseed because the wheat/rapeseed could not get dry timely，and finally decreases the farmers income.Grain dryer is not restricted by time and weather，and could help farmers harvest grains at the correct harvesting time and increase crop yield through reducing the loss of drying period.However，at the main producing areas of wheat/rapeseed in southern China，the use of grain dryer is still not popular.In order to study the facility status，demand and willingness to pay for the small and mediumsized grain dryer for the farmers，we randomly surveyed 350 farmers in five cities of Hubei and Hunan provinces in the middle reach of the Yangtze River by household surveys，and analyzed the results by the contingent valuation method (CVM).Results showed the total of 350 respondents consisted of 566% male and 434% female，of which 128% was less than age of 40，383% was from age 40 to 50，and 489% was over age 50.And most respondents only had primary (444%) or junior secondary education (451%), and just a few (105%) had high school education.Working temporary jobs，farming and business were major source of household incomes for 594%，284% and 121% of respondents，respectively.Although 377% and 518% of responders had lost 10%50% of their production of wheat and rape respectively because of the bad weather in 2012，997% of responders still chose the sun exposure and natural air drying as drying method and only 03% of responders chose grain drier.And more than 821% of respondents did not want to pay for the cost of grain drier.When we suppose that all of the respondents had buying desire for the grain drier，837% of respondents could only bear the price less than 800 yuan.The multiple linear regression analysis showed that the willingness of respondents to pay was significantly decreased with the increase of the age of respondents (p=-0013)，and significant increased with the region economy development (p=0000)，educational level (p=0010) and family income (p=0009).Agricultural mechanization is the inevitable trend of modern agricultural.To generalize the use of grain drier，we should improve the farmers understanding of grain drier，reduce the cost of buying and running of grain drier，and improve the farmers educational level