Abstract
The adoption of sustainable manure treatment technologies (SMTTs) in livestock production helps to reduce agricultural contamination. As such, understanding what determines farmers’ adoption of SMTTs is an essential prerequisite for the administrative handling of livestock pollution. Applying a multivariate probit model on a cross-sectional data set of 686 pig farmers in Poyang Lake Region in China, this study discovered that two key factors influencing farmers’ decisions to adopt multiple SMTTs are off-farm labor and environmental awareness. In other words, households with a higher share of off-farm labor are less likely to adopt SMTTs. Farmers with higher environmental awareness are more likely to adopt SMTTs. The results also revealed that because of the inappropriateness of government subsidy and insufficient technical training, the impact of Chinese government subsidy on the adoption of biogas technology is negligible, but the subsidy on composting greatly helps to promote the adoption of composting technology. We also found a substitution effect and complementary effects between different SMTTs. These findings can improve policymakers’ understanding of farmers’ joint adoption decisions. It also helps policymakers to optimize subsidy strategies to encourage farmers’ adoption of SMTTs in rural China.
Highlights
With the increasingly rapid industrialization and urbanization progress, as well as the growing demand for livestock products, livestock production in China has developed rapidly in recent years [1]
Education plays a negative role in the adoption of Discard and Returning, while a significant positive impact of education is found on biogas technology (Biogas) and Sale
These results indicate that education can promote the adoption of sustainable manure treatment technologies (SMTTs), which is in accordance with the conclusion of previous studies [15]
Summary
With the increasingly rapid industrialization and urbanization progress, as well as the growing demand for livestock products, livestock production in China has developed rapidly in recent years [1]. The gross output value of livestock production in 2018 in China is RMB 28,697 billion ($4159 billion), which is 137 times more than the value in 1978. China is the world’s largest producer of livestock products [2]. The continued increase in livestock production has generated a large amount of manure. It is estimated that the Chinese livestock industry produces approximately 3.8 billion tons of manure each year [3]. If treated appropriately, this amount of manure can produce 3.68 million tons of organic fertilizers with a total value of RMB 262 billion ($38 billion) annually [3]
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