| China is a civilized farming country with a long history, which has maintained a natural agricultural mode in terms of low-input, low-output and low-polluting since the ancient agrarian times. From the second half of the 19th century, the rise of petrochemical and adventure of artificial synthetic ammonia have promoted agriculture to enter a new agricultural growth mode with high input, high output, high energy consumption and also high pollution. The fertilizer is introduced into China in 1906 by Western businessmen, and spread rapidly in the 1980s, becoming an important means to obtain high yield of modern agricultural production and make a significant contribution to the increased production of crops. However, with the increasing amount of chemical fertilizer, the marginal effect of fertilizers on crop yield is constantly decreasing, mainly due to over use of fertilizer, and unreasonable NPK fertilizer application rates, resulting in low fertilizer utilization in China. The large loss of fertilizer and nutrients (mainly N and P) has lead to many environmental problems, such as soil salinization, eutrophication, nitrate superscalar of groundwater and so on. To solve these problems, the governments design and implement a number of policies to reduce the use amount of chemical fertilizer and increase fertilizer use efficiency, for example, to encourage the development of ecological agriculture, agricultural waste recycling and so on. In which, Ministry of Agriculture has implemented a fertilizer reduction policy called formula fertilization by soil testing project since 2005, which is the largest investment and most widely coverage project. The central government has regarded this project as a major agricultural technological measure continuously written to the Central Document No.1, and determined to be a long-term, fundamental and welfare important work subsidized increase year by year.Throughout the relevant literatures, the researches regarding to formula fertilization by soil testing technology are mainly, on one hand, focuses on R & D of decision-making system for fertilizer with appropriate nutrient proportion, on the other hand, on the evaluation of this new fertilization technology on crop growth through field experiment. However, it’s few of references assess its environment and economic effects from the perspective of stakeholders during the technology to extension. Especially the farmers, who are in real practical application of formula fertilization by soil testing technology, to study the driving factors of new technology adoption and assess technology adoption’s environmental and economic impact has theoretical and practical significance for agricultural production and farmers’ income increase as well as rural ecological environment improvement. Taking into account that it is more serious to excess fertilization leading more serious environmental problems in economically developed regions, this research would take Taihu Basin as an example; firstly build a framework including three main parts as followed, macro evaluation, microscopic evaluation and policy simulation; and then take empirical researches, respectively, applying econometric methods and mathematical planning method, in order to give policy recommendations for effective promotion of environment-friendly technologies such as formula fertilization by soil testing technology and simultaneously achieve the goals of agricultural productivity growth, farmers’ income increase and rural ecological environment improvement.In macroscopic evaluation, the thesis evaluated the impacts of formula fertilization by soil testing project on regional environment and economy. We constructed the environmental and economic impact assessment models based on DID model combing EKC model, C-D model and output-supply model, and made a empirical study using socio-economic data from 52 counties or county-level cities in Jiangsu Province from 2004 to 2006. The results show that:(1) Keeping others constant, implementation of the project of formula fertilization by soil testing technology could significantly increase the GDP of arable sector of the sample counties (cities), and the effect increases year by year. (2) While the environmental effect of the project is not significant. From the impact symbols involved in formula fertilization by soil testing project the first year is positive, but the second year began to appear negative effect on the use of chemical fertilizer per unit farmland. Possible explanation is that the principle of formula fertilization in Jiangsu Province is to increase potassium fertilizer but reduce nitrogen fertilizer, that is, the promotion of the project may change fertilizer application structure, covering the real effect of the project. (3) From the EKC hypothesis validation perspective, the fertilizer input intensity and economic development show a typical inverted U-shaped relationship in Jiangsu Province, and the turning point is at GDP per capita 16,615 yuan (2004a=100). With economic development, the fertilizer input intensity firstly increases and then decreases in Jiangsu Province.The microscopic evaluation analyzed farmers’ adoption behavior of formula fertilization by soil testing and assessed its environmental and economic impact. Based on the data collected from 221 rice producing households located in the upper reaches of Taihu Basin, this thesis firstly analyzed factors that affect the farm households’ adoption of formula fertilization by soil testing technology using the Probit model, and then evaluated their environmental and economic effects by estimating input demand and output supply functions, respectively. Research results indicate that:(1) Younger households and households with better durable asset conditions and contacting more frequently with extension staffs are more likely to adopt formula fertilization by soil testing technology. However, less and highly educated households are reluctant to adopt this technology. (2) Formula fertilization by soil testing technology can indeed reduce chemical fertilizer use (especially N fertilizer application), keeping others constant,1% growth of the new fertilization technology adoption rate may results in 0.09% reduction of chemical fertilize amount (0.45kg/hm2). (3) Formula fertilization by soil testing technology can indeed increase rice yield, keeping others constant,1% growth of the new fertilization technology adoption rate may results in 0.04% increase of rice yield (2.91kg/hm2). (4) In our research area, if all the households can apply this technology (100% adoption rate), the use of chemical fertilizer will reduce 34.91 kg/hm2 and the yield of rice will increase 223.98kg/hm2, indicating large potential for economic and environmental effects.Policy simulation part mainly prior evaluated the incentive impacts of agricultural and environmental policies on farmers’ environment-friendly technology adoption and analyzed possible economic, social and environmental effects. Based on the data collected from 268 households located in the upper reaches of Taihu Basin, this thesis firstly clustered the samples into four farm typologies (farm type 1 to 3 are small-scale farmers, but with increasing off-farm income, while farm type 4 is scale management farmer with low off-farm income as farm type 1) according to their land management scale and off-farm income. Secondly, we simulated various farm types’land use behavior including planting structure and environment-friendly technology adoption behaviors, and its economic, social and environmental effects under different agricultural and environmental policies scenarios. Finally, the impacts of transplanting subsidies, fluctuations in crop prices and subsidies for scale management on farmers land use decision-making and their input-output situation. The main simulation results are as follows:(1) in business as usual scenario (BLY scenario), the environmental indicators overall improvement, but the economic and social indicators overall deteriorated. That is because the large number of labor migration suffers a serious loss of labor force in rural areas, and results in the double cropping shift to single cropping, reducing the total planting area and total production. (2) All the agricultural and environmental policies can achieve economic, social and environmental sustainability by changing the planting structure and increase environmentally friendly technologies adoption rate. In which, incentive role of economic incentives policies for the adoption of environment-friendly technologies significantly stronger than the means of training and education, but the latter can also be effective in inducing farmers to adopt environment-friendly technology such as site-specific nutrient management. The incentives of agriculture and environment policies can not only improve environmental performance, but also significantly increase farmers’income and ensure food security. (3) Various farm types have different agricultural operations and are differently sensitive to the policies. The more rely on agriculture of the farm type is, the more sensitive to the policy. From the management situation, the scale management farm type can get the highest operating efficiency, and then followed by small scale household with lowest off-farm income. From the policy responses, the farm types who are higher part-time and more rely on agriculture, farm type 1 and 4 for example, are more sensitive to agricultural and environmental policies. (4) The allocation of farmers’labor time is diverse, therefore, scale management is more conducive to reducing the cost of supervision to promote environment-friendly technologies. (5) The subsidies special for the large scale farm is indeed able to mobilize farmers’ enthusiasm to grow grain and improve farmers’ income.Based on the above research, the thesis provides the following ideas to solve how to deeply promote environment-friendly technologies, guide the rational fertilization of farmers, control the agricultural non-point source pollution from the source, and ensure regional sustainable development:(1) Upgrade the technology system, and improve the basic promotion staff for formula fertilization by soil testing technology. Recruit professional technicians and software systems development talent, and form a perfect extension system including government, various departments and enterprises, effectively promote the formula fertilization by soil testing technology. (2) Expand publicity, strengthen agricultural training, and standardize the implementation of formula fertilization by soil testing technology. In particular, the farmers who are young, with middle level of education, and mainly rely on agriculture should be regarded as the key training targets In addition, we should make good use of the demonstration households. (3) Make some incentives policies to fully mobilize the farmers’ initiative to adopt formula fertilization by soil testing technology. The subsidies range of formula fertilization by soil testing technology should be expanded to reduce the price of formula fertilization by soil testing, which the farmers financial subsidy policy should gradually tilted to the agro-ecological environment protection. (4) Accurately position the policy target groups, and implement differentiated management policy. For the small-scale farmers but mainly rely on off-farm employment, encourage them to break away from agriculture; for the small-scale farmers but mainly rely on agriculture, enhance their ability to increase income using science and technology; while for the scale management farmers, give them support from all aspects, and make them become major force for agricultural operation. (5) Develop appropriate scale management reducing the supervision cost of the promotion of environment-friendly technologies. In addition, the Government should pay more attention to the project of improving soil fertility, encourage the farmers improve the soil fertility by organic manure, straw and reasonable rotation to achieve a sustained and stable growth for crop. |
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