Abstract
This study aims to investigate the impact of the urban-rural income gap on fertilizer use intensity in China. A theoretical analysis of the relationship among per capita rural income, the urban-rural income gap, and fertilizer use intensity is developed, which is similar to the environmental Kuznets curve hypothesis. Both the Theil index and urban-rural income ratio are employed to measure the urban-rural income gap using a provincial-level panel dataset covering 25 provincial-level administrative regions over the period 1995–2017. The estimation results of the system Generalized Method of Moments show that the expansion of the urban-rural income gap significantly increases fertilizer use intensity. While an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between fertilizer use intensity and per capita rural income, the peak turning point is much higher than the actual per capita rural income of all provinces in China. This demonstrates that fertilizer use intensity would further increase with the growth of rural income over a period of time. In addition, a lower growth rate of the agricultural product price, larger total sown size, and technological progress are likely to reduce fertilizer use intensity. This study has several important policy implications for promoting the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas in China. Specifically, efforts must be made to narrow the urban-rural income gap, encourage agricultural research and extension, and promote land conversion and appropriately scaled-up agricultural business.
Highlights
China’s agricultural productivity has experienced sustainable growth largely due to the application of chemical fertilizers since the late 1970s [1,2,3]
In most of the provinces, an obviously positive relationship exists between fertilizer use intensity and the Theil index, which means that as the urban-rural income gap expands, there would be an increase in fertilizer use intensity
A large urban-rural income gap and excessive fertilizer use have challenged the sustainable development of agriculture and rural areas in China
Summary
China’s agricultural productivity has experienced sustainable growth largely due to the application of chemical fertilizers since the late 1970s [1,2,3]. Besides the institutional and technological changes, it has been well documented that the application of chemical fertilizers has contributed to the growth of agricultural productivity [3,5,6]. The total amount of chemical fertilizers in China’s agriculture has dramatically increased from 8.8 million tonnes in 1978 to 58.6 million tonnes in 2017 (Figure 1). Fertilizer use intensity has increased from 58.9 kg per hectare (kg/ha) to 363.5 kg/ha in 2014, followed by a mild decrease to 352.3 kg/ha in 2017 (Figure 1)
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