Study On The Estimation And Drivers Of Agricultural Nitrogen Pollution Embodied In China Trade

In recent years,environmental protection has become more important as a global issue and people have payed more efforts in reducing the waste of resources.Agriculture is the main source of nitrogen pollution,which makes agricultural nitrogen pollution embodied in agricultural products trade become new concerns.This dissertation estimates the agricultural nitrogen pollution embodied in agricultural products trades between China and the major trading partners,including EU(27 countries),Asia(Japan,Korea,India and Hong Kong)and North America(USA,Canada,Mexico),as well as the nitrogen flow.And on the basis of this,we analyze agricultural nitrogen pollution embodied in agricultural products trade via the multiple regression model from the agricultural trade exports,energy consumption and levels of economic development.Firstly,this paper introduces the trade-related theory of the environment.Secondly,It quantifies the nitrogen flow embodied in agricultural products trade between China and major trading partners,the results show that the total implied nitrogen trade volume is 40.023 million tons in 2015 between China and the EU,Asia and North America,an increase of 13.828 million tons compared with 1993.Large flow of nutrients between China and its trading partners will bring and highlight environmental problems for the local areas.As the center of nitrogen pool,China increases the input of fertilizer in exchange for the high output of agricultural products,increasing the accumulation of soil nutrients,bringing about regional eutrophication,air pollution and other environmental problems,but also leading to farmland non-point source pollution as a result of massive fertilizer inputs.In the case of animal food trade,China changes from an exporting countries to importing countries,indicating that China’s demanding for animal food is increasing,while that of plant food trade is small.Thirdly,from the perspective of environment,as time goes by,China’s excessive fertilizer inputs gradually exceeded the environmental load capacity,and the nitrogen load per ha arable land seriously exceeded.Due to the pressure of economic development and population growth,China still developed featuring on high input and low efficiency with the nitrogen load per unit arable land gradually increasing and on the intersection of agricultural production and environmental pollution.According to the amount of nitrogen fertilizer,during 1992-2015,the nitrogen load per unit arable land increased from 186.97kgN/ha to 221.79kgN/ha,and the nitrogen load per unit of arable land changed from 217.22kgN/ha to 254.93kgN/ha,according to all the agricultural products nitrogen(including fertilizer nitrogen),far more than the carrying capacity of the environment,which will have a negative impact on agricultural production and human health.Then,we use the multiple regression model to analyze the driving factors of nitrogen pollution embodied in agricultural products trade.With the increase of the exports of Chinese agricultural products,the embodied nitrogen pollution augmented;As the increase of the imports of fertilizer,the embodied nitrogen pollution strengened;the levels of economic development of trade partners or regions aggravated the the embodied nitrogen pollution.Finally,based on the experience and the empirical results,this paper gives the policy suggestions about alleviating nitrogen pollution embodied in agricultural trade from domestic and foreign levels.