China Western Economic Research Center, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 610074, China.
Business School, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou 450001, China.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Oct 27;18(21):11268. doi: 10.3390/ijerph182111268.
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.
减少化肥使用量是遏制农业面源污染、保障食品安全的关键。土地流转使农民能够获得更适宜的生产规模，但它对化肥施用强度的影响在理论上并不确定。一方面，拥有更多土地的农民可能会采用更科学的生产方式，从而减少化肥的使用。另一方面，转入土地的土地受让人的短期行为可能会增加化肥的使用强度。本文试图从理论上阐明土地流转影响化肥施用强度的具体机制，并利用 2011-2014 年中国固定农村观测点的数据，采用固定效应模型和中介效应模型，验证两者之间的关系。本文得出以下结论：（1）土地流转显著降低了化肥施用强度；（2）土地流转增加了农户的土地规模并促进了机械的使用，但只有土地规模的增加才会进一步降低化肥施用强度；（3）土地流转对化肥施用强度的影响仅在粮食作物中显著，而在经济作物中不显著；（4）土地流转对化肥施用强度的影响在土地细碎化最严重的西部地区最为显著，而在农业现代化程度较高的东部地区则不显著。
