The Analysis Of Agricultural Trade Liberalization's Impact On Agricultural Environment

Since 1990s, China's foreign trade of agricultural products has got a fast development. Especially after its accession to WTO, the growth becomes much more obvious, and which catches world's eyes. The development of the foreign trade of agricultural products promoted China's agricultural economic growth. However, the use volume of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and so on is also increasing which imposes a larger pressure on ecological environment as the enlargement of China's agricultural trade scale. The impact of agricultural trade on our agricultural resources and agricultural environment has also aroused more concern. To research the relationship between agricultural trade and environment is useful.According to the continuous development of agricultural free trade and the status that agricultural environment is facing enormous pressure, it is necessary to explore the following issues: Will agricultural trade openness exacerbate the pollution of agricultural environment? How dose agricultural trade liberalization effect agricultural environment? And what is the relationship between of them? What can we do to keep balance of both sides' development? Using the data of agricultural trade, input fertilizer and pesticide, this study has a research and discuss on the problems above from both theoretical and empirical aspects.This paper divides into 7 parts: Chapter 1 is the preface. This chapter is talking about the background of the research, the problems to be solved and the framework of the paper. Chapter 2 begins with the debate between trade and environment, introduces the research findings about the impact of trade on environment at home and abroad by using the method of theoretic and empirical. Chapter 3 gives an analysis on the China's agricultural trade policy, the current situation about the trade of the agricultural products and the current situation about use of the agricultural chemicals. The author finds that as the agricultural trade policy is becoming more liberal, and the use volume of agricultural chemicals such as chemical fertilizers and pesticides is increasing, while the import and export of the agricultural products has gained. The increasing investment of the chemicals has formed higher stress to the agricultural environment. Chapter 4 analyzes about the impacts of agricultural products' trade liberalization on the agricultural environment. The author contains the primary reason that agricultural free trade affects agricultural environment is the existence of market failure, government failure and the character of agricultural production's anti-environment. The agricultural free trade has an impact onthe agricultural environment in 6 aspects——scale, structure, technique, income, controland trade, and all of them have an impact on the environment through many approaches. Chapter 5 has a co integration analysis, impulse analysis and variance analysis about the impact of the agricultural products' liberalization of trade on the agricultural environment with the time series data from 1990 to 2007. And we try to find out the dynamic mechanisms of the agricultural products' liberalization of trade on the agricultural environment. The research tells us that the export of the agricultural products can lead to the increase of the agricultural environmental pollutions, the import of the agricultural products and the direct investment of the agriculture from the foreign merchants can reduce the pressure of the agricultural environment. The cointegration analysis, impulse analysis and variance analysis show that their correlation may be fluctuate in a short term, but stable in a long term. Chapter 6 gives a panel analysis about the impact of the agricultural products' liberalization of trade on the agricultural environment using the cross-section data of the provinces in China from 2003 to 2006. Through the analysis, we find that agricultural trade liberalization have a negative impact on the environment, the improvement of dependence on foreign trade will increase the use volume of chemical fertilizers, and changes brought by per dependency increase from the eastern, central to the west. Income effect between rural per capita income and chemical fertilizer use volume behaves inverted U-curve characteristics, not only in eastern, but in central and western. Scale effect is negative, production expansion brought by agricultural trade liberalization increases pressures on environment. Chapter 7 sets forth suggestions on improving sustainable development of both agricultural trade and agricultural environment, which bases on the theoretic and empirical research findings and integrates with the real situation of China's agricultural trade.