Study On The Non-Point Pollution Of The Agricultural Fertilizer Input In China

In recent years, water eutrophication and groundwater pollutions have spread through major lakes, rivers, coastal water in China with high frequency. At the same time, food safety incidents has intensified, especially the event of the emergence of blue algae in Taihu Lake which was the turning point that attracted widely concern on the agro-ecological environment. Excessive and unreasonable investment of fertilizers is one of the main sources that cause agricultural nonpoint source pollution. For a long time, along with rapid economic and social development, pressure on agricultural intensification continues to increase as well as the number of agricultural chemical fertilizer and the application of intensity. All those above have directly resulted in a more serious situation of the non-point pollution. And this situation may get continue to deteriorate in the future. While environmentalists and policy makers have recognized the negative impact of application of chemical fertilizer on agricultural damage to the environment and sustainable agricultural development, they still have not found effective method to control and manage these. Therefore, we have to master the driving mechanism, guide the farmers to adopt environmental-friendly fertilization technology to reduce levels of farmers’applying fertilizer to optimize the structure of fertilizer inputs, thus improving fertilizer use efficiency, reducing and resolving excessive fertilizer and unreasonable application and ultimately make sustainable development possible.Environmental issues and economic development are closely related. On one hand, economic growth affect environment issues by enlarging economic scales, changing the economic structure, improving the environment-friendly technology, etc. in other words, economic growth is the key factors that affects the change of environmental problems. On the other hand, agriculture is the basic industry of national economy, nonpoint source pollution caused by excessive and unreasonable use of chemical fertilizer can adversely affect the development of agriculture, and finally do harm to the macroeconomic development through amplification effect. Taking external costs of agriculture environmental pollution into consideration, the production function and the consumption function have an effect on the macro-economic growth. So in reality, what’s the relationship between the non-pollution and the economic growth? Does the non-point pollution in China caused by fertilizer input has already brought significant negative effects on macroeconomic? How to give a reasonable explanation to the relationship between these two in reality?Environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis indicate that economic growth produce a series of changes in the environment impact by changing the economic scale, economic structure, technological level, the elasticity of he public and government’s environments demand, promoting the government formulating and implementing appropriate environmental policies and eco-system, etc. Researchers hold the opinion that the relationship between economic growth and environmental quality is similar to that of economic development and income distribution, the inverted U shaped relationship. That is with the economic development and environmental pollution levels increased and then decreased showing the inverted U-curve variation. Then does the similar relationship between the Chinese nonpoint pollution caused by fertilizer input and the economic growth exist? If so, which stage is the point source pollution is in? Meanwhile, in order to analyze the existence regional differences of China Environmental Kuznets Curve fertilizer input, this paper will give in-depth analysis about the internal mechanism of the driving factors concerning how the non-point pollution is generated and changed during the procession of economic development. That is to sort out the drive factors of the fertilizer input non-point source pollution in China, and classify these factors working mechanism from the economic scale effect, structural effect, technological effect and regulatory policies effect is of great importance and practical significance to master the relationship with economic growth as well as to find the find policy instruments for pollution control.In order to achieve the environmental Kuznets curve turning point as soon as possible, appropriate policies and systems for guiding and regulating the peasants’producing activities are required to formulated and implemented. That is to explore micro policies that can control and mitigate Chinese fertilizer input non-point agricultural pollution. In essence, there are two aspects that result in the increasing non-point agricultural pollution. One is the over input fertilizers that was used in the agriculture production. The other is resulting in a large number of fertilizer nutrients excess and loss. The other is that farmer’s irrational structure of chemical fertilizer, makes very low fertilizer use efficiency in the agricultural production process. It is the farmers that should to be analyzed to solve the pollution. Guiding and limiting farmers’behavior is the key to reducing the quantity of fertilizers that used in production and optimize the structure of chemical fertilizer. As China’s main agricultural production is based on a number of scattered ultra-small scale farmers are unique, farmers’behavior, or their use of environment-friendly technology may directly determines the effectiveness of pollution control policies. Unless we clarify the relationship between agriculture fertilizer inputs and non-point pollution, while on the other hand limit and optimize farmers’behavior, can we fundamentally reduce the intensity and damage of non-point pollution.Therefore, with the theoretical explanation and empirical validation about the fertilizer input non-point pollution changes and is relationship with the economic growth, this study measure the non-point pollution and clarify the fertilizer inputs variation and character in china, using a list of surveys. Meanwhile, based on the environment-economic theory, this article firstly analyzed the binary relationship between theses two as well as its manifestations in the form theoretically and empirically. Then we text theoretically and empirically the environment Kuznets curve of chemical fertilizer input point source pollution. In order to clarify more intuitive EKC curve of fertilizer input non-point source pollution, this article will also analyze the drivers of spatial and temporal evolution and attempt to explore the main factors that affect farmers to make decisions and use environment friendly technology, with purpose provide a systematic framework on guiding farmers to reduce the use of fertilizer and change structure of fertilization.Based on the above analysis, combing the empirical analysis and normative analysis, the main conclusions of this research are as follows:1,Results from studying China’s current situation and problems of fertilizer input show that:Overall speaking, the total amount of fertilizer application in China continues to increase, the average intensity of fertilizer application has far exceeded the ceiling made by developed countries, namely,225kg/hm2. Simultaneously, the Chinese increase effect of grain yield based on chemical fertilizer is more and more inconspicuous, It is not workable enough as before to increase food production relying solely on increasing fertilizer inputs; Although fertilizer application structure optimizes, but is still unreasonable, concrete manifestation for chemical fertilizer investment diazonium phosphorus, but the light potassium, causes the chemical fertilizer use efficiency to be somewhat low; Looking from regional differences, in 1990, most provinces and cities of chemical fertilizer unit acreage strength is under 225 kg/ha,, however, intensity of chemical fertilizer application in most all provinces had beyond this standard by 2008, especially that in eastern coastal provinces and cities was more than 500 kg/ha. Meanwhile, like gradient pattern of economic development, China’s chemical fertilizer input intensity in the eastern, central and western regions showing a step reduction phenomenon.Results from measuring China’s chemical fertilizer input non-point source pollution show that:There is an increasing trend in China’s chemical fertilizer input non-point source pollution. Among them, non-point source pollution resulting from using chemical fertilizer in developed eastern provinces and cities generally showed the phenomenon of the first increased and then decreased, while that in the majority of central and western provinces and cities has been in the increasing stage, which requires government carries on the balance between the economic development and the environmental protection.2, Results from empirical analysis about relation between economic growth and fertilizer input non-point source pollution show that:on the one hand, economic growth is the key factor influencing produce and changes of China’s chemical fertilizer input non-point source pollution; on the other hand, as a result of the limitation of Chinese peasant household’s ultra-small scale management and consumer phase, as well as the fault of government chemical fertilize environmental policy, our country lacks the foundation to take internal effects of, non-point source pollution caused by he excessive and unreasonable application of fertilizer generated, which makes effect in China’s chemical fertilizer input non-point source pollution on the macro-economic growth insignificant.3, China-point source pollution inputs of fertilizer EKC curve simulation results show that:the chemical fertilizer input point source pollution and economic growth exists between the typical inverted U-curve relationship, that with economic development, the Chinese fertilizer into surface source pollution into increased and then decreased along the trend curve for the early realization of low EKC beyond the need to improve the environmental needs of the residents at the same time, and increase government pro-environmental policy development and implementation of strength and pro-environmental fertilization efforts to promote technology development. This is also the process of economic development, point source pollution of agricultural fertilizer input driver of a theoretical and empirical analysis, research findings show that income levels and increased levels of environmental needs, to improve the agricultural environment can form a strong binding help to reduce pollution in the agricultural environment; In recent years, farmers continue to improve the level of non-agricultural employment and the growing non-agricultural income of farmers increase investment in China’s chemical fertilizer-point source pollution; urban-rural dual economic structure and system of environmental management policies, increased point source inputs of agricultural fertilizer pollution levels; in recent years, such as vegetables and melons substantial increase acreage of cash crops, making the unit of fertilizer input intensity of the cultivated area increasing at the same time rapidly increased pollution of the environment; cropping increasing investment in agricultural fertilizers increased the pressure-point source pollution is one of the important reasons; general, technological advances in agriculture is conducive to reducing China’s chemical fertilizer input point source pollution, but China-based ultra-small scale farmers and agricultural science and technology research and development, low level of promotion and application of the reality, making the environmental effects of technological advances in agriculture have not been fully realized.4, Results from farmers fertilizer inputs and non-point source pollution analysis show that:farmers environmental risk perception on chemical fertilizer, formula fertilization by soil testing, land fragmentation, family land scale, farmers land suffered from natural disasters or not have a significant impact on farmer fertilization decision-making and agricultural chemical inputs into the point source pollution. At the same time, government support and enforcement of environmental policies are important reasons which affect agricultural fertilizer input non-point source pollution. Whether or not the farmers to participate in scientific and technical fertilization training and had bought low-quality fertilizer are insignificant, but these factors should be paid attention to. Because the effect is consistent with the expected direction, if the farmers have participated in the training of scientific fertilization, they will reduce fertilizer inputs, thus reducing fertilizer input non-point source pollution.Empirical results from farmers pro-environmental behavior of chemical fertilizer technology and non-point source pollution show that:the age of household head, family size of arable land management, ways to purchase fertilizer, non-farm employment status, whether to accept the scientific fertilization technology training, whether to buy low-quality fertilizer, the Government support for farmers and environmental policies has a significant impact on the adoption of pro-environmental fertilization and the effect changes in point source pollution.According to the above conclusions, this study puts forward to following suggestion: Our government should develop and improve environmental management policies aimed at coordinating intensive management of agriculture and controlling fertilizer inputs non-point source pollution, and then enhance environmental awareness of farmers planting propaganda and education for encouraging farmers to use scientific fertilization strengthen the environment protection awareness of household to further promote the development of appropriate scale farmers, innovative new approaches and take greater efforts to promote fertilizer by soil testing technology, and improve the rate of household adoption of pro-environmental fertilization.