Farmers Fertilization Behavior And Its Influencing Factors

"Food is the first necessity of the people". Food security is a matter of life and death for economic development and social stability. "A large population but not enough arable land" is China's basic national condition, which means that grain production is vital for China's economic and social sustainable development. As one of the agents of agricultural production, chemical fertilizer plays a key part in increasing grain production. However, with chemical fertilizer applied more and more extensively, its side-effect is emerging. China's agricultural development is confronted with the dual tasks of increasing grain production and protecting environment. With a large number of Chinese farmers scattered all over the vast country, the existing problems, such as low utilization efficiency of chemical fertilizer, excessive application etc, are very serious. Farmers can not fertilize scientifically and efficiently, which not only causes cost inflation, but also contaminates the atmosphere, water and soil. Besides, the ubiquity and randomicity of agricultural non-point source pollution make its end-of-pipe control more difficult. It is significant for policy-makers to introduce famers to scientific application of chemical fertilizer.Starting from the study of utility theory, the author researches the inflecting factors of famers' fertilizer application behaviors. Firstly, based on the commentary of literature, the theoretical framework is constructed. Secondly,on the base of the induction summarizes which is about the possible influencing factoris of the fertilizer application of the farmer household's behavior, the questionnaires are designed,we investigate the fertilizer situation about the winter wheat and the summer corn,which are the the planter grain crops planted by the 177 farmer households who live in the four villages and towns of the Xinxiang County of the Henan Province in 2007.Thirdly, according to the field survey data, the author researches the farmers' actual practice of fertilization and their cognition of chemical fertilizer pollution by means of descriptive statistics. Finally,this paper uses the methods of statistical method's factor analysis and correlation analytic and so on,as well as the general method multiply linear regression of econometric model to analyze empirically influencing factor of the quantity of farmer household's fertilizing application.The result shows that: a positive correlation is found between the amount of application of chemical fertilizer and some factors, such as farming hours, attitude towards risks, total family incomes and the proportion of agricultural labour and non-agriculturallabour. A negative correlation is found between the amount of application of chemical fertilizer and other factors, such as farmers' educational background, their cognition of chemical fertilizer, and the channel of information. The agricultural incomes and planting areas seem to be not notable inflecting factors.As an exploratory research, the author uses a Logistic Model to analyze the correlation between the will to reduce the application of nitrogen fertilizer and the main influencing factors. The result shows that: some factors, such as famers' educational background, fanning hours, attitude towards risks, the cognition of chemical fertilizer etc. affect farmers' will to reduce the application of nitrogen fertilizer, while the affection of other factors is hardly considered.In the end, the research brings forward a series of counter-measures aimed at the cunent situation. Firstly, the grass-roots agrotechnology popularization organs should be established to provide more ways for farmers' access to agricultural knowledge and popularize the awareness of scientific fertilization and environmental protection. Secondly, the practice that applying fertilizer according to "Soil testing and fertilizer recommendation" should be carried out. Lastly, the government should control and regulate the farmers' application of chemical fertilizer through environmental legislation and ecomonic means.