Guo Lili, Li Houjian, Cao Xuxin, Cao Andi, Huang Minjun
College of Economics, Sichuan Agricultural University, Wenjiang District, 611130, Chengdu, Sichuan Province, China.
J Environ Manage. 2021 Dec 1;299:113621. doi: 10.1016/j.jenvman.2021.113621. Epub 2021 Aug 27.
Agricultural subsidies lead to changes in the use of chemical fertilizer by farmers. Using data from a household survey conducted annually by the Rural Economy Research Center of the Ministry of Agriculture of China from 2014 to 2018, Control Function (CF) approach and Heteroskedasticity-based identification strategy were employed to analyze the impact of agricultural subsidies on chemical fertilizer use by rice farmers. After addressing the problem of endogeneity, we found that agricultural subsidies have a significantly negative impact on the use of chemical fertilizer. Precisely, every 100% increase in agricultural subsidies would result in an average decrease of 3.4% in chemical fertilizer use. In addition, results of heterogeneity analysis showed that agricultural subsidies had a stronger negative impact on fertilizer use as rice-planting experience increases. But the ability of rice-planting management and off-farm labor within household could reduce this negative impact. We also found that the effect of arable land productivity conservation subsidies policy was short-lived. Furthermore, based on the frame of structural equation model (SEM), the results of mediation analysis showed that agricultural machine and rice-planting area had partial mediation of 5.3% and 41%, respectively. It implied that agricultural subsidies reduced fertilizer use by promoting the adoption of agricultural techniques and expanding the planting area. In brief, agricultural subsidies had both technical effect and scale effect. But the mediating effect of household income was not significant. This study is intended to assist the concerned authority and agriculture sector to understand the positive role of agricultural subsidies in sustainable production, and provides some feasible policy proposals.
农业补贴导致农民化肥使用量发生变化。利用中国农业部农村经济研究中心2014年至2018年每年进行的一项家庭调查数据，采用控制函数（CF）方法和基于异方差的识别策略，分析农业补贴对稻农化肥使用的影响。在解决内生性问题后，我们发现农业补贴对化肥使用有显著的负面影响。具体而言，农业补贴每增加100%，化肥使用量平均将减少3.4%。此外，异质性分析结果表明，随着种稻经验的增加，农业补贴对化肥使用的负面影响更强。但家庭内部的种稻管理能力和非农劳动力可以减少这种负面影响。我们还发现耕地生产力保护补贴政策的效果是短期的。此外，基于结构方程模型（SEM）框架，中介效应分析结果表明，农业机械和种植面积的中介效应分别为5.3%和41%。这意味着农业补贴通过促进农业技术采用和扩大种植面积来减少化肥使用。简而言之，农业补贴具有技术效应和规模效应。但家庭收入的中介效应不显著。本研究旨在帮助相关部门和农业领域了解农业补贴在可持续生产中的积极作用，并提供一些可行的政策建议。
