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Farmland transfer and esophageal cancer incidence rate: mediation of pollution-related agricultural input intensity

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Abstract

Cancer is a growing global health threat. Examining the determinants of cancer incidence can benefit for cancer treatment and prevention. Farmland transfer relates to the risk factors of esophageal cancer including environmental pollution, services access, and habits. This study characterizes the associations between farmland transfer and esophageal cancer incidence rate (ECI) that integrate mediated effect of pollution-related agricultural input intensity in Xiaoshan District, China. The state-space model is employed to quantify the relationships among farmland transfer, pollution-related agricultural input intensity, and ECI. The results showed that (1) Total effects of the proportion of transferred farmland (TFA) area cause a reduction in the ECI. Besides, the total positive effects of the proportion of transferred farmland cultivated non-grain crop (NGC) and proportion of farmland transferred to non-farmer users (NFU) show a downward trend. (2) The raise of TFA can result in the reduction of chemical fertilizer use intensity. Meanwhile, the raise of NGC and NFU can result in the growth of pollution-related agricultural input intensity. But these increasing effects generally show a downward trend. (3) Increasing chemical fertilizer use intensity and pesticide use intensity results in the rise of esophageal cancer incidence rate as a whole. (4) In general, farmland transfer has positive direct effects on esophageal cancer incidence rate. (5) The average proportions of mediated effects in all state-space models are larger than 10%. These findings can raise land reform policy designers’ awareness of the risk of public health since the land transfer markets are emerging rapidly in land reform in many developing countries to improve agricultural production.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research received financial support from the Zhejiang Provincial Philosophy and Social Science Planning Project of China (20NDJC127YB), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71874151), and the Zhejiang Provincial Natural Science Foundation of China (LZ22G030005).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Public Administration, Zhejiang University of Finance and Economics, Hangzhou, China

    Heyuan You, Jinrong Zhang, Shuyi Xia & Shenyan Wu

  2. Department of City and Regional Planning, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA

    Heyuan You

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  1. Heyuan You
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  2. Jinrong Zhang
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HY—execution of the experiments and initial draft of the manuscript, review, and editing of the manuscript.

JZ—methodology and analysis, review, and editing of the manuscript.

SX—methodology and analysis.

SW—methodology and analysis, interpretation of data.

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Correspondence to Heyuan You.

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You, H., Zhang, J., Xia, S. et al. Farmland transfer and esophageal cancer incidence rate: mediation of pollution-related agricultural input intensity. Environ Sci Pollut Res 29, 43826–43844 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-022-18921-9

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