The Economic Impact Of Surafce Ozone Pollution On The Grain Production In China

Due to the rapid development of industrialization and urbanization,China consumed substantial fossil fuel and chemical fertilizer,causing the surface ozone concentrations are increasing rapidly.Biological studies demonstrated that the surface ozone would reduce crop yield when the concentrations exceeded the threshold of 60 ppb.Specifically,surface ozone levels in rural areas are proved to be higher than those in urban areas in China,thus wheat,rice and com are the crops those are sensitive to ozone pollution.It is likely that surface ozone pollution will impact the grain production,grain profit,farmers' behavior,grain price and social welfare,and these impacts are closely related to the food security.Hence,surface ozone pollution is not ouly an environment problem,but also a tricky agricultural econonics problem.Agriculture is characterized by the interweaving of natural reproduction and economic reproduction.It is no doubt that the environmental pollution will affect the agricultural priduction economic system.The impact of surface ozone pollution on grain production should be studied from the perspective of economic,meteorology and ecology interdisciplinary.However,researches about ozone pollution at present are mainly confined to the ecology area,establishing the exposure-response function that relates a quantifiable ozone-exposure indicator to yield reduction generated from the laboratory or field experiment.However,the experimental ozone concentration is great higher than that in real world,thus ecology experiments usually ignore farmers' adaptive behaviors,regional characterials and other social economic factors.This may mis-estimate the adverse effect of ozone pollution.Hence,to quantify the impact of ozone pollution on grain production accurately,the natural and economic factors should be combined into the uniform analytical framework from the perspective of economic,meteorology and ecology interdisciplinary,considering the impact of market price,factor input,technical progress,regional characterials,climate change and ozone pollution on the grain yield comprehensively.Thus,farmers may change the factor input to adapt the adverse effect of ozone pollution on the grain production.So during the real grain production,how will the ozone pollution affect the factor input?Do the farmers increase or decrease the factor input?Will ozone pollution also have a significant effect on the grain profit by impacting the yield and input?Thirdly,how is the influence degree of ozone pollution on the grain production?Does this influence have regional characterials?Studying and answering these questions can help us understand the impact of ozone pollution on grain production in China comprehensively from the perspective of economics.To answer the above questions,this paper firstly constructs an "economic-ozone"model to analyze empricially the impact of ozone pollution on rice and com yield based on the traditional C-D production theory.The results show that the increment of surface ozone concentration during the ozone-senstive period is harmful to the yield by using EIV(errors-in-variables)regression method and a series of robust check.Particularly,as considering the farmers' adaptive behaviors and other social economic factors,the regression results are greater than those obtained from ecology experiments.Ceteris paribus,the total production of rice and corn will reduce 1.21?1.55 million tonne and 0.86?1.64 million tonne,respectively,when ozone level increases 1 unit.Thus,the drought can mitigate the adverse effects of ozone on rice and com,and airborne particles can also mitigate the adverse effect of ozone on corn,but the mitigation effect is less than the reduction from particle pollution.Secondly,this paper analyzes empricially the impact of ozone pollution on the grain profit and factor inputs based on the theory of translog production.The results demonstrate that the increment of surface ozone concentration during the ozone-senstive period has a significant adverse effect on the profit.In addition,the concentration of surface ozone during the ozone-senstive period could also decrease the labor and chemical fertilizer input significantly.Therefore,we can deduce that the negative impact of ozone pollution on the grain production is composed by two aspects,one is the direct impact on the grain growth,and the other one is the indirect effect resulting from the reduced factor input.This also explains the reason why the regressed reduction degrees are greater than those from the ecology experiments,and further illustrates the importance and necessary of studying the impact of ozone pollution on the grain production from the perspective of agricultural economics.Finally,this paper simulates the total grain production and social welfare arising from the potential alterations in surface ozone levels by the price-endogenous and acreage-endogenous Chinese Agricultural Sector Model.The results show that the total productions of grains are increased as reduced ozone levels would improve the grain yields.When Ml reaches the reference level(25ppb),the total productions can be increased by 122.95 million tones,accouting for 19.78%of the production in the basis year.Meanwhile,the rice,wheat and com will be increased by 68.07,9.49 and 45.39 million tones,respectively.Hence,controlling the emissions of ozone pollutants can be seen an effective way to maintain the food security in China.In addition,the impacts of ozone pollution on the grain production show regional characteristics.When ozone levels decrease by 10%,the production of Central China,East China,Northeast China,North China gain the most.Meanwhile,North China,Central China and Northwest China will benefit the most in the wheat production,gaining 2.26 million tones.Regarding rice,East China and Central China will benefit the greatest,increasing by 5.46 million tones.Similarly,the North China and Northeast China can benefit by 4.33 million tones com.Finally,this paper put forward some policies and proposals for address the adverse impact of ozone pollution on grain production in light of the above conclusion,which is mainly in two aspects:the first is the policy to mitigate surface ozone concentration,and second is about the policy proposal of adapting the ozone pollution.