Impact of fertilizer and pesticide reductions on land use in China based on crop-land integrated model

Abstract

While chemical fertilizers and pesticides have significantly enhanced crop productivity per unit of land in China, the excessive utilization of these chemicals has led to a range of environmental issues that are not conducive to the sustainable development of China’s agriculture. Controlling the use of fertilizers and pesticides in crop cultivation is therefore necessary and has been adopted as an action plan since 2015 in China. However, the effects of fertilizer and pesticide reductions have not been systematically investigated. This paper explores how yields and land use for rice, wheat, corn, and soybean cultivation shift when reducing their fertilizer and pesticide inputs using China’s provincial crop-land integrated partial equilibrium model (the CPMCL model). Simulation results for different scenarios show that, among the studied crops, rice and wheat exhibit greater adaptability than corn and soybeans. Reducing the use of fertilizers and pesticides within the interval from 0% to 3.5% may increase the total demand of land resources for crop production from 0.220% to 4.21%. Limited land resources will be allocated to more profitable crops to maximize output, which means the land use for wheat production may increase over 20% while for rice, corn and soybean may decrease around 4% under the shock of fertilizer and pesticide reductions. Merely reducing fertilizer and pesticide inputs in crop cultivation may exacerbate the conflict between crop production and land resource conservation in China, which means the technology and efficiency of fertilizer and pesticide use needs to be improved. The findings of this paper can help formulate more province-specific and crop-targeted plans to properly reduce fertilizer and pesticide use, thus promoting sustainable land use while ensuring food security and protecting the environment.