The Assessment Of Environmental、Economic Benefit And Social Acceptance In Environmental-friendly Technology Practices

With the fast development of intensive agriculture in China, the non-point source pollution causedby agriculture is increasingly serious. It not only affects the sustainable development of agriculture, alsobecomes a threat to living environment and human health. To prevent or alleviate the non-point sourcepollution from agriculture, series of environmental-friendly agricultural technologies are developed andverified with better effect on production and environment protection. However, whether thesetechnologies could be popularized and spreaded on a large scale in practice will be still restricted bymany factors, such as regional adaption, the attitude and acceptance of farmers to techonoloies. It ishigh time to take effort to assess the environmental, economic and social benefit of theseenvironmental-friendly agricultural technolog practices so that strong technical support could beproposed to governments at all levels in creating promotion plans and incentive measures for attractingfarmers adopting the technologies and further mitigating agricutlrual non-point source pollution.In the paper, a MODAM model method （Multi-Objective Decision Support System forAgroecosystem Management）was used here to evaluate the corresponding effects of the farmer chosenfarm management practices. It integrates three aspects of environmental, economic, social benefit otherthan previous separate assessment.The data of the study was based on the survey which was carried outin XinXiang, a county of high grain production in Henan Privince.150farmers and10agriculturaltechnical extension specialists were investigated face to face with stratification sampling way. Thequestionnaire was designed to collect information regarding the cost and benefit of agriculturalproduction, the importance of the factors affecting farmers’ acceptance of environmental friendlyagricultural practices and their environmental consciousness. In this study, three indicators of soilerosion, nitrate leakage risk and N2O fluxes were used to evaluate the environment benefit. Ecomonicbenefit was assessed by cost-benenfit analysis method. Social benefit was reflected by farmer’sacceptance of various environmentally friendly agricultural technology pranctices.The main results from our study are as follows:（1）The soil erosion of Xinxiang county was assessed by the equation of USLE（Universal SoilLoss Equation），the result showed that the extend of soil erosion in Xinxiang county was very low, over90%of the areas was micro soil erosion.（2）The method of fuzzy logic was used to assess nitrate leakage risk of the five surveyedtechnology practices. The amount and times of fertilizer application were evaluation parameters. Thefindings showed that different technology pracitices had different nitrate leakage risks under the similarweather and soil conditions in the study area. Compared with conventional production, a rankingranging from low to high risk of nitrate leakage among five environmentally friendly agriclutralpractices were as follows: formulated fertilization <organic and inorganic fertilizers combinedapplication <Minimum-Tillage and No-Tillage <crop straw-returning field application <slow-releasefertilizer applicaton. （3）As to N2O emission fluxes, it was mitigated in the rest of four technology practices exceptfor crop straw-returning field application with higher emission flux compared to the control. A rankingof N2O mitigation effect from high to low level among the four environmentally friendly agriculturalpractices were as follows: formulated fertilization>organic and inorganic fertilizers combinedapplication> Minimum-Tillage and No-Tillage>slow-release fertilizer application.（4）Based on the cost-benefit analysis, the two first ranked environmentally friendly agriculturaltechnology practices were Minimum-Tillage and No-Tillage, and formulated fertilization with theincrease600-750yuan per hectar on average in income.（5）Social acceptance of various environmentally friendly agricultural technology practices wascalculated by a formula deduced by the theory of technology innovation diffusion. Minimum-Tillageand No-Tillage, crop straw-returning field application and formulated fertilization showed a high indexof acceptance due to their low risk and stable yield and income. The applicaton of slow-release fertilizerranked last among the surveyed five practices because of unstable nutrient use efficiency in farmershabitual thinking although reduced time.（6）Regarding the integrated assement for each environmentally friendly agricultural technologypractices through merging the environmental, economic, and social acceptance indices into an overallindex of sustainability, Minimum-Tillage and No-Tillage, formulated fertilization and organic andinorganic fertilizers combined applications showed better scores than both slow-release fertilizerapplication and crop straw-returning field application. It meant that the former three were more suitableto be popularized in Xinxiang County and the later two may need extra incentive strategies to encouragethe farmers to adopt in future practices.