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More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application

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 adop...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wu, Junqian, Wen, Xin, Qi, Xiulin, Fang, Shile, Xu, Chenxi
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2021
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583344/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769786
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111268
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author Wu, Junqian
Wen, Xin
Qi, Xiulin
Fang, Shile
Xu, Chenxi
author_facet Wu, Junqian
Wen, Xin
Qi, Xiulin
Fang, Shile
Xu, Chenxi
author_sort Wu, Junqian
collection PubMed
description 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.
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spelling pubmed-85833442021-11-12 More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application Wu, Junqian Wen, Xin Qi, Xiulin Fang, Shile Xu, Chenxi Int J Environ Res Public Health Article 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. MDPI 2021-10-27 /pmc/articles/PMC8583344/ /pubmed/34769786 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111268 Text en © 2021 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
spellingShingle Article
Wu, Junqian
Wen, Xin
Qi, Xiulin
Fang, Shile
Xu, Chenxi
More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title_full More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title_fullStr More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title_full_unstemmed More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title_short More Land, Less Pollution? How Land Transfer Affects Fertilizer Application
title_sort more land, less pollution? how land transfer affects fertilizer application
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8583344/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34769786
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/ijerph182111268
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