Abstract
The excessive use of fertilizer has resulted in serious environmental degradation and a high health cost in China. Understanding the reasons for the overuse of fertilizer is critical to the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture, and large-scale operation is considered as one of the measures to deal with the excessive fertilizer use. Under the premise of fully considering the resource endowment and heterogeneity of large-scale farmers and small-scale farmers in production and management, different production decision-making frameworks were constructed. Based on the 300 large-scale farmers and 480 small-scale farmers in eight provinces of northern China wheat region, we analyzed the optimal fertilizer use amount and its deviation as well as the influencing factors of small-scale and large-scale farmers, then further clarified whether the development of scale management could solve the problem of excessive fertilizer use. The empirical results show that: (1) both small-scale farmers and large-scale farmers deviated from the optimal fertilizer application amount, where the deviation degree of optimal fertilizer application of small-scale farmers is significantly higher than that of large-scale farmers, with a deviation degree of 35.43% and 23.69% for small and large scale farmers, respectively; (2) not all wheat growers in North China had the problem of excessive use of chemical fertilizer, as the optimal level of chemical fertilizer application in Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia are 346.5 kgha−1 and 335.25 kgha−1, while the actual fertilizer use amount was 337.2 kgha−1 and 324.6 kgha−1, respectively; and (3) the higher the risk aversion level, farmers tended to apply more fertilizer to ensure grain output. Therefore, increasing farm size should be integrated into actions such as improving technological innovation and providing better information transfer to achieve the goal of zero-increase in Chinese fertilizer use.
Highlights
Feeding a growing and increasing wealthy population is a major challenge
In order to promote food supply and ensure food security, the “high-input-high-output” agricultural production model has been adopted by many regions and popularized on a large scale, as the main feature of this model is to increase the input of chemical fertilizers to achieve high output [5]
According to the above analysis, this paper proposes the following research hypotheses regarding the effect of scales and risks on fertilizer application and its deviation: Hypothesis 1: Since small-scale households pursue maximum utility in grain production, compared with large-scale grain production households, small-scale households have a greater deviation from the optimal fertilizer application
Summary
Feeding a growing and increasing wealthy population is a major challenge. Since 2003, China’s grain production has made great achievements in the twelfth consecutive increase under the stimulation of economic development, population explosion, technological progress, and policy support [1,2,3]. The traditional dual structure of urban and rural areas in China has brought about the reduction of cultivated land area and the transfer of the rural labor force, resulting in the shortage of cultivated land resources and rural labor forces [3,4] In this context, in order to promote food supply and ensure food security, the “high-input-high-output” agricultural production model has been adopted by many regions and popularized on a large scale, as the main feature of this model is to increase the input of chemical fertilizers to achieve high output [5].
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