Journal article
Policy distortions, farm size, and the overuse of agricultural chemicals in China
Y Wu, X Xi, X Tang, D Luo, B Gu, SK Lam, PM Vitousek, D Chen
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America | NATL ACAD SCIENCES | Published : 2018
Abstract
Understanding the reasons for overuse of agricultural chemicals is critical to the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture. Using a nationally representative rural household survey from China, we found that farm size is a strong factor that affects the use intensity of agricultural chemicals across farms in China. Statistically, a 1% increase in farm size is associated with a 0.3% and 0.5% decrease in fertilizer and pesticide use per hectare (P < 0.001), respectively, and an almost 1% increase in agricultural labor productivity, while it only leads to a statistically insignificant 0.02% decrease in crop yields. The same pattern was also found using other independently collected data s..
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Awarded by Newton Fund
Funding Acknowledgements
This research uses data from the Chinese Family Database of Zhejiang University and China Household Finance Survey conducted by the Survey and Research Center for China Household Finance at the Southwestern University of Finance and Economics (China). This study was supported by the National Key Research and Development Project of China (2016YFC0207906), National Natural Science Foundation of China (41773068), Discovery Early Career Researcher Award by the Australian Research Council (DE170100423), the Ministry of Education Project of Key Research Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences at Universities (16JJD790052), and National Social Science Fund of China (15BJL051). This work contributes to the United Kingdom-China Virtual Joint Centre on Nitrogen "N-Circle" funded by the Newton Fund via United Kingdom Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council/Natural Environment Research Council (BB/N013484/1), "Towards International Nitrogen Management System" funded by the United Nations Environment Programme (Global Environment Facility Project ID 5400-01142), Australia-China Joint Research Centre "Healthy Soils for Sustainable Food Production and Environmental Quality" (ACSRF48165), and the Key Grant of Ministry of Education of China (16JJD790045).