Study On The Issues Of Agricultural Growth And Environmental Pollution In The Process Of Transition In China

Since the economic reform and opening-up, the development of China's agriculture and rural economy has being making substantial progress. Peasant's income per capita increases steadily, and total output and possession per capita of agricultural product increase greatly. Under the conditions of natural resource endowment that is not ideal, China has answered the question of "Who will feed China?" powerfully by successfully handling the food problem faced by 13 hundred million people mostly by himself. However, development of China's agriculture and rural economic proceed mostly at the cost of sacrificing the base of natural resources and environment. While continuously ensuring sufficient supply of agricultural product, China is facing the threat of deterioration of the natural environment day after day. Recently, in the process of agricultural modernization, environmental pollution made by agriculture has been aggravated by the regionalization, intensiveness and specialization of agricultural development. This brings about big challenge to agricultural sustainable development. Now, constraints of natural resource and environment have being the bottleneck to agricultural development, find a new way to the growth and development of agriculture, and make reality the harmonizing development of agriculture and environment are our high priority.On the background of economic transition in China, based on related principles of agricultural economics, development economics, natural resource and environmental economics, and human capital theory, with the method of theoretical and empirical analysis, this dissertation studies the relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution in China. Firstly, in line with the human capital theory, farmer's investment in human capital is divided into three categories: investment in education, investment in transfer and investment in health. Based on economic growth model including human capital and by adding other controlled variables, using regional panel data, this dissertation makes empirical analysis about the driving factors influencing agricultural economic growth, so that sources of agricultural growth can be identified. Secondly, this dissertation studies the contribution role that chemical inputs make to the increase of agricultural total output and value. Furthermore, environmental pollution caused by use of chemical inputs is analyzed. One point is to be clear that agricultural pollution will never be overlooked. Thirdly, according to Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis, empirical study is carried out on relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution to find out in which stage China's agricultural pollution is at present. Two further steps are adopted: the first step is to quantitatively study the macro-trend between agricultural growth and application of chemical inputs using traditional reduced form of EKC model and its extension types; the second step is to estimate the scale effect, composition effect and technique effect made by agricultural growth to environmental pollution using revisited structural model based on EKC models. Fourthly, reasons of agricultural pollution are given from angles of agricultural sector, society and government. The main results are as follows:Firstly, since the economic reform and opening-up, farmer has more and more attached importance to the investment in human capital. For farmers, invest in human capital is becoming an important part in their usual spending, because increase rate of investment is higher than income per capital. However, investment in human capital is hampered due to influences coming from slow improvement of personal income etc. Invest in human capital in future is potentially huge.Secondly, traditional factors and human capital are driven factors to agricultural economic growth and other factors have different influences. Physical capital, land and fertilizer input are the sources of agricultural growth, and land is the most important one. Education makes the biggest contribution to agricultural growth, and then is the investment in transfer, and contribution of investing in health is not significant. Others factors, such as economic structure, urbanization, foreign trade, agricultural financial support, government's involvement in economic activity, etc., make different impacts.Thirdly, chemical inputs have made great contribution to agricultural growth. But improper use or even abuse use of chemicals will give rise to environmental pollution. It may be great threat to human's survival. Agricultural pollution should never be overlooked.Fourthly, results of reduced and structural form of estimation model implied that environmental pollution will be even worse in the process of agricultural economic growth. Results from reduced form of model indicate that, use of fertilizer, pesticide and plastics are in the left part of EKC, intensity of all three inputs will increase as agricultural growth, which implies that environmental situation will be deteriorated. Results from structural form of model indicate that, scale effect of agricultural growth to environment is negative (as agricultural growth and scale is growing, intensity of chemical input will increase), technique effect is positive (as agricultural technique improves, intensity of chemical input will decrease), composition effect has different influence due to different chemicals. At present, the scale effect is the overwhelming factor; therefore, agricultural growth is accompanied by environmental deterioration. Consistent results are obtained using different models.Fifthly, from the micro-level, the driving force determining farms' choice of chemical input is the benefit, and environmental pollution caused by chemical application is not their primary concern. During the process of agricultural development, structural change of agricultural sector and inputs replacement in agricultural production are reasons of increasing use of chemical inputs. However, structural change and input replacement are exactly the main characteristics of involving process of traditional agricultural to modern agriculture. Therefore, deep reasons causing agricultural pollution is to be found from the macro-level of society and government. Specifically, analysis could be progressed as follows: food security guarantee and industrial policies, regional poverty, dual structural of urban-rural break-up, deficient system of agricultural technology diffusion, inadequate funds of agricultural pollution control, insufficient valley integrated management, conflicts of environmental pollution management system, separate of agricultural and environmental policies, lack of containment law of agricultural pollution and insufficient environmental education.The possible innovative points of this dissertation are as follows:Firstly, study is implemented on the relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution in a systematic frame work. Early studies have made scattered research: focus only on the driving factors to agricultural growth, or focus only on the ways and reasons of agricultural pollution. In this framework, study is made on the relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution systematically. To do so, two further steps are carried out. The first step, use recent panel data, empirical study is given to identify the sources of agricultural economic growth, and find out that China's agriculture is still in the traditional stage, characterized by high dependence on chemical inputs and land. The second step, by confirming great contribution that agricultural chemical inputs have made to agriculture, it points out that environmental pollution caused by chemical inputs should not be overlooked. Then, further analysis is given on relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution by empirical study so that we can know the stage that agricultural pollution is in. An integrated analysis relating agricultural growth to environmental pollution is attempted in the present study, which is also innovative in a manner of research perspective. Secondly, on the basis of main stream economic theory, quantitative analysis is implemented on the relationship between agricultural growth and environmental pollution. To do so, two further steps are required. The first step, according to related research, human capital investment by farmer is divided into investment in education, investment in transfer and investment in health. Then, based on economic growth model including human capital, empirical study is carried out to find out the sources of agricultural economic growth. The second step, with the application of EKC theory and its estimation method to agriculture field, study on the relationship between agricultural growth and chemical inputs is mad by using reduced form of estimation model. Moreover, revisited structural form of EKC estimation model is used to study the scale, composition and technique effect that agricultural growth makes to environmental pollution. After these two types of estimation are implemented, the stage in which China's agricultural pollution is in at present could be identified. Therefore, the second innovative point is also innovation on the application of empirical research method.Thirdly, a series of valuable conclusions have been obtained. A series of conclusions have been obtained based on theoretical and empirical study systematically: farmers value investment in human capital day after day, and investment in education is the most important one, investment in transfer is becoming more and more important, investment in health is relatively low, but has great potential; investment in education makes the greatest contribution to agricultural growth, investment in transfer makes the second best, the contribution made by investment in health in insignificant; urbanization, agricultural financial support, non-nationalization, government's involvement in economic activity, etc., have different impacts on agricultural growth; decrease of urban-rural income gap can be contributable to the decrease us chemical inputs and therefore helpful to the alleviation of pollution made by agriculture to environment, etc. According to estimation results, valuable policy implication is obtained and applicable measures are put forward, which will give theoretical and practical guiding to the further understanding of the relationship between agricultural growth and environment.