Does off-farm employment affect farmers’ adoption of green control techniques?

Abstract

Abstract Actively encouraging farmers to adopt green control techniques (GCT) is an important measure for achieving sustainable agricultural development and ensuring global food security. Based on microsurvey data covering 912 households in Henan and Shandong Provinces, this paper uses a binary probit model to explore the effect of off-farm employment on the adoption behavior of farmers’ GCT and the mechanism of the effect. The study finds that off-farm employment has a capacity accumulation (CAP) effect and a crowding-out (CROWD) effect on farmers’ GCT adoption behavior. Additionally, the CROWD effect generally exceeds the CAP effect, making off-farm employment unfavorable for farmers’ adoption of GCT. Further analysis finds that off-farm employment has a positive effect on the adoption of GCT by farmers based on agricultural income, and as the distance from off-farm employment increases, the positive effect is greater. In contrast, off-farm employment has a negative effect on rural households whose main income is nonagricultural income, and with the increase in the distance from off-farm employment, its negative effect gradually increases. On this basis, to promote green prevention and control techniques for diseases and insect pests, we should focus on farmers whose main income is agricultural, enhance their CAP effect, and guide farmers whose main income is nonagricultural to transfer out of their land. While enriching research on GCT, this paper also provides an empirical basis and policy reference for how to better promote GCT during the period of rapid development of off-farm employment.