Wang Jiawei, Yuan Zihui, Wu Zhihua, Kuang Xia, Ye Feng
School of Economics, Management and Law, Jiangxi Normal University of Science and Technology, Nanchang, China.
Digital Faculty of Economics, Jiangxi Open University, Nanchang, China.
Front Nutr. 2025 Aug 20;12:1636296. doi: 10.3389/fnut.2025.1636296. eCollection 2025.
The ongoing decline in staple crop acreage and the accelerating trend of "non-grain" cultivation pose structural risks to China's food security. Agricultural insurance, beyond its traditional role in risk mitigation, may serve as a structural policy tool to influence farmers' planting decisions and guide cropping structures toward staple grains. However, empirical evidence on this guiding function remains limited.
Drawing on data from the 2020 China Rural Revitalization Survey (CRRS), this study employs a two-limit Tobit model to examine the impact pathways and moderating mechanisms through which agricultural insurance affects farmers' cropping structure adjustment. The analysis addresses endogeneity issues and explores heterogeneous effects across different farmer groups.
Agricultural insurance significantly increases the proportion of staple crops in total cultivated area, with findings robust to both robustness checks and endogeneity tests. Mechanism analysis shows that digital technology training significantly strengthens the incentive effect by improving farmers' ability to access and interpret policy information. The marginal effect also rises with greater distance from the administrative center, indicating higher responsiveness in institutionally underserved areas. Heterogeneity analysis reveals stronger effects among highly educated farmers, small-scale operators, residents in pilot regions, those in non-plain terrains, and farmers in eastern provinces.
These results confirm the effectiveness of agricultural insurance as a policy instrument for guiding cropping structure adjustments. Strengthening policy communication, expanding service coverage-especially in remote areas-and improving coverage levels can further enhance its contribution to national food security strategies and the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
主要农作物种植面积持续下降以及“非粮化”种植加速的趋势，给中国粮食安全带来了结构性风险。农业保险除了在风险缓解方面发挥传统作用外，还可作为一种结构性政策工具，影响农民的种植决策，并引导种植结构向主粮倾斜。然而，关于这一引导功能的实证证据仍然有限。
本研究利用2020年中国农村振兴调查（CRRS）的数据，采用双限托宾模型来检验农业保险影响农民种植结构调整的影响路径和调节机制。该分析解决了内生性问题，并探讨了不同农民群体的异质性影响。
农业保险显著提高了主粮作物在总种植面积中的比例，稳健性检验和内生性检验的结果均支持这一发现。机制分析表明，数字技术培训通过提高农民获取和解读政策信息的能力，显著增强了激励效果。边际效应也随着与行政中心距离的增加而上升，表明在制度服务不足的地区反应更为灵敏。异质性分析显示，在受教育程度高的农民、小规模经营者、试点地区居民、非平原地区居民以及东部省份的农民中，影响更为显著。
这些结果证实了农业保险作为引导种植结构调整的政策工具的有效性。加强政策沟通、扩大服务覆盖范围（特别是在偏远地区）以及提高覆盖水平，可以进一步增强其对国家粮食安全战略和可持续发展目标（SDGs）的贡献。
