Can mechanized pesticide application help reduce pesticide use and increase crop yield? Evidence from rice farmers in Jiangsu province, China

ABSTRACT

This study is devoted to analyzing the effects of outsourcing machinery-intensive farming activities vis-à-vis using mechanized equipment in-house on pesticide use, utilizing cross-sectional data collected from rice farmers in Jiangsu province, China. The control function approach is utilized to address the endogeneity of the decision to outsource pesticide application or complete the task in-house. Our results suggest that outsourcing pesticide application decreases pesticide expenditure but in-house application using mechanized equipment increases it. Specifically, outsourcing pesticide application reduces pesticide expenditure by about 81 yuan per mu or around 0.18 yuan per kilogram of rice produced. In comparison, the in-house application using mechanized equipment increases pesticide expenditure by 118 yuan per mu or by 0.14 yuan per kilogram of rice output. We also find that both outsourcing and in-house pesticide applications increase rice yield.

KEYWORDS:

• Outsourcing
• in-house machinery use
• pesticide expenditure
• control function approach
• rice farmers
• China

JEL CODES:

• D13
• L64

Disclosure statement

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

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from Junpeng Li upon request.

Notes

1 No household in our sample rented equipment for pesticide application.

2 Introduction to Z-scores: https://statisticsbyjim.com/basics/outliers/

3 It is worth to noting here that, in China, almost all farmers have used different levels of pesticides in farm production. This is different from some African countries, where some farmers do not use pesticides in farm production (Abebaw & Haile, 2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China: [Grant Number 72103075]; Jiangsu Provincial Department of Education: [Grant Number 2020SJA1763].