Abstract
Reducing fertilizer use is key to curbing agricultural pollution and ensuring food safety. Land transfer enables farmers to obtain a more appropriate production scale, but its effect on the intensity of fertilizer application is not theoretically certain. On one hand, farmers with more land may adopt more scientific production methods, thus reducing the use of chemical fertilizers. On the other hand, the short-term behavior of land grantees on transferred land may increase fertilizer use intensity. This paper attempts to theoretically elucidate the specific mechanisms by which land transfer affects the intensity of fertilizer application and to verify the relationship between the two using data from fixed rural observation sites across China from 2011–2014 with the fixed-effects model and the mediating effect model. This paper concludes that (1) land transfer significantly reduces the intensity of fertilizer use; (2) land transfer increases the land size and promotes the use of machinery by farmers, but only the increase in land size further reduces the intensity of fertilizer application; (3) the effect of land transfer on fertilizer application intensity is significant only for food crops and not for cash crops, and (4) the effect of land transfer on fertilizer application intensity is most pronounced in western China, where land fragmentation is the severest and insignificant in eastern China, where agricultural modernization is more advanced.
Highlights
Fertilizer is an important material input in agricultural production and plays a vital role in increasing crop yields
To examine the mechanism by which land transfer affects the intensity of fertilizer application, we set up the following mediating effect model with reference to Baron and IFA = θ1 + α1 ratio of transferred land (RTL) + β 1 X + ε 1 (2)
This paper focuses on the role played by the farmer’s land size and mechanization level as mediating variables in the relationship between land transfer and fertilizer application intensity
Summary
Fertilizer is an important material input in agricultural production and plays a vital role in increasing crop yields. Another reason why land transfer may increase the intensity of fertilizer application is that the significant shift in rural labor it brings will reduce agricultural labor This prompts farmers to use chemical fertilizers to replace organic fertilizers that require more labor [26]. The paper argues that the main reason for China’s failure to achieve land scale expansion through land transfer is the existence of the land system and the hukou system This implies that if the institutional distortions are removed, the intensity of fertilizer application in China will decrease with land size expansion. In view of the limitations of previous studies, this paper analyzes in detail the possible mechanisms by which land transfer affects fertilizer application intensity theoretically and empirically, using micro panel data from 2011–2014 from fixed observation sites in rural China to overcome the endogeneity and sample selection problems to verify the causal relationship between the two
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
