Chinese farmers are often accused of overusing pesticides that play a crucial role in enhancing crop yield by reducing losses to crop pests. Pesticide overuse has caused a series of negative health and environmental e...Chinese farmers are often accused of overusing pesticides that play a crucial role in enhancing crop yield by reducing losses to crop pests. Pesticide overuse has caused a series of negative health and environmental externalities. This paper quantiifes the productivity effect and the optimal amount of pesticides in rice, cotton and maize production in China from the economic perspective. Using survey data col ected in 2012 and 2013, both Cobb-Douglas and Weibul damage control speciifcations are used to estimate the production function. Results show that pesticides have statistical y signiifcant pro-ductivity effect on crop yield. On the condition of Weibul damage control speciifcations, the marginal products of 1 kg of the active ingredients of pesticides for rice, cotton and maize are 71.06, 22.73 and 98.45 kg, respectively. However, 57, 64 and 17%of the actual amount of pesticides are overused for rice, cotton and maize, respectively. Moreover, the productivity effect of pesticides would be overestimated using Cobb-Douglas speciifcation without incorporating a damage control agent.展开更多
基金financial support from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (71173014 and 71210004)the China Scholarship Council (201306030053)
文摘Chinese farmers are often accused of overusing pesticides that play a crucial role in enhancing crop yield by reducing losses to crop pests. Pesticide overuse has caused a series of negative health and environmental externalities. This paper quantiifes the productivity effect and the optimal amount of pesticides in rice, cotton and maize production in China from the economic perspective. Using survey data col ected in 2012 and 2013, both Cobb-Douglas and Weibul damage control speciifcations are used to estimate the production function. Results show that pesticides have statistical y signiifcant pro-ductivity effect on crop yield. On the condition of Weibul damage control speciifcations, the marginal products of 1 kg of the active ingredients of pesticides for rice, cotton and maize are 71.06, 22.73 and 98.45 kg, respectively. However, 57, 64 and 17%of the actual amount of pesticides are overused for rice, cotton and maize, respectively. Moreover, the productivity effect of pesticides would be overestimated using Cobb-Douglas speciifcation without incorporating a damage control agent.
