Popularization of plant protection UAVs and farmers’ income increases: a quasinatural experiment

ABSTRACT

The long-term stability of a developing country hinges on the imperative to increase farmers’ incomes. Based on county-level data from China from 2009 to 2019, we use the implementation of a pilot policy that subsidizes plant protection unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as a quasinatural experiment to examine the impact of popularizing plant protection UAVs on farmers’ incomes. The results show that the popularization of plant protection UAVs may significantly increase farmers’ incomes via mechanisms that include not only labor transfer and agricultural productivity improvements but also unique mechanisms related to green agricultural development. The marginal income-increasing effect of the popularization of plant protection UAVs is higher in counties with farmers with high incomes, in major grain-producing areas and in areas with plains. In addition, the popularization of plant protection UAVs has a significant positive spatial spillover effect on farmers’ incomes in neighboring counties. We provide not only an empirical reference for the popularization of plant protection UAVs in China but also new ideas for compensating for the shortcomings of China’s agricultural mechanization and realizing the strategy of increasing farmers’ incomes and rural revitalization. More importantly, we provide Chinese wisdom for promoting agricultural development and farmers’ incomes in other developing countries.

KEYWORDS:

• Subsidies for plant protection UAVs
• farmers’ income increases
• spatial spillover effect
• green agricultural development
• multitime point difference-in-differences model

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Lili Yu: Conceptualization, Methodology, Investigation, Formal analysis, Data curation, Project administration, Writing-original draft, Resources, Funding acquisition, Supervision, Writing-review & editing, Software, Validation.

Yaqi Wang: Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing, Software, Validation.

Xue Yao: Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing, Software, Validation. Yang Gao: Methodology, Writing-original draft, Writing-review & editing, Software, Validation.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China [22BGL164].