Abstract
Pesticide overuse is still prevalent in many developing countries. And improving farmers’ pest control ability is considered to be the key to achieve pesticide reduction. Based on the survey data of 822 rice farmers from Hubei, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang provinces in the Yangtze River Basin, we demonstrated the impact of pest control ability and technical guidance on farmers’ pesticide overuse. We find that rice farmers’ insufficient pest control ability does not necessarily lead to pesticide overuse, which depends on whether there is external technical guidance. The technical guidance of government agrotechnical stations and pesticide retailers can weaken pesticide overuse caused by lack of personal ability. In terms of sample, variable and method substitution, the above estimated results are still robust. In addition, we find that different subjects and links of pesticide technical guidance will bring different impacts. The technical guidance of agrotechnical stations mainly plays a role in the time and type of pesticide application, while the pesticide retailers mainly play a role in the time and dosage of pesticide application. This paper emphasizes that strengthening the guidance and regulation of pesticide technology guidance subject is also an efficient way of pesticide reduction. This will help to improve the effect of agricultural extension and accelerate the realization of pesticide reduction target in China.
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Data availability
The use of data sets, questionnaires, and analysis results in this study can be obtained from the corresponding authors according to reasonable requirements.
Notes
Data from China Agricultural Yearbook. http://data.cnki.net/yearbook/Single/N2019120061
Data from China Rural Statistical Yearbook 2019, http://data.cnki.net/yearbook/Single/N2019120190.
China’s Ministry of Agriculture issues “key points of green development of agriculture and rural areas in 2020,” http://www.moa.gov.cn/nybgb/2020/202003/202004/t20200416_6341669.htm.
FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Specifications, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations & World Health Organization. (2010). Manual on development and use of FAO and WHO specifications for pesticides/prepared by the FAO/WHO Joint Meeting on Pesticide Specifications(JMPS), 1st ed., second revision. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations. https://apps.who.int/iris/handle/10665/44527.
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Funding
This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (72073048); the National Social Science Foundation of China (20AZD091); and the Ministry of agriculture soft science project (202007).
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YH: Conceptualization, methodology, validation, investigation, writing—review and editing. XL: Funding acquisition, project administration, resources, conceptualization, writing—review and editing. DL: Investigation, data curation, formal analysis, visualization, writing—original draft. SD: Investigation, data curation, formal analysis, visualization. AY: Investigation, data curation, formal analysis, visualization. LT: Investigation, data curation, formal analysis, visualization.
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Huang, Y., Luo, X., Liu, D. et al. Pest control ability, technical guidance, and pesticide overuse: evidence from rice farmers in rural China. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 39587–39597 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13607-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13607-0