Abstract: Agricultural machinery operation service is a special industry pattern which has been explored in the process of agricultural mechanization in China. This pattern can fundamentally overcome the contradiction between “the small-scale farmer households and the demand of high power machinery”, so as to promote the rapid development of China’s agricultural mechanization. Based on this, from the point of social division of labor, it can be seen that the emergence of agricultural machinery operation service industry has its internal economic reasons. The results of this study show that, firstly, under the joint drive of the rising labor costs and the subsidy policy, the relative cost of labor and machinery is becoming higher and higher, which also induce farmers’ strong demand to use agricultural machinery; secondly, being limited by small scale farming resource conditions and lower farming income financial conditions, the farmers of single household cannot bear the burden of the purchase costs of agricultural machinery; thirdly, the social division of labor has brought into existence of agricultural machinery operation service industry, which is helpful for farmers to share the high costs of agricultural machinery, so that it is an effective way to solve the contradictions between high demand of agricultural machinery and low purchasing power of the farmers.

Key words: demand of agricultural machinery; social division of labor; cost allocation; agricultural machinery operation service