Do Disease and Pest Control Outsourcing Services Reduce Arable Land Abandonment? Evidence from China

Xiaoheng Zhang; Guiquan Yan; Yucheng He; Hailong Yu

doi:10.3390/ijerph191811398

Do Disease and Pest Control Outsourcing Services Reduce Arable Land Abandonment? Evidence from China

Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2022 Sep 10;19(18):11398. doi: 10.3390/ijerph191811398.

Authors

Xiaoheng Zhang^{1

2}, Guiquan Yan³, Yucheng He³, Hailong Yu¹

Affiliations

¹ Circulation Industry Research Central of Chinese Capital, Beijing Technology and Business University, Beijing 100048, China.
² College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 211106, China.
³ College of Economics and Management, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China.

Abstract

Arable land abandonment has been occurring in China in recent years. Although an emerging number of studies have investigated the impacts of urbanization and labor migration on arable land abandonment, little is known about what roles agricultural outsourcing services play in reducing arable land abandonment. Based on the data from the China Labor-force Dynamics Survey (CLDS) in both 2014 and 2016, this study employs a two-stage least squares method to address the potential endogeneity issue and sheds some light on the impact of agricultural outsourcing services for controlling disease and pests in arable land abandonment in China. The empirical results show that disease and pest control outsourcing services (DPCOS) significantly decrease the size of household-level arable land abandonment by 6.59% on average. More specifically, DPCOS mainly reduce the arable land abandonment in regions with the labor shortages, while this does not lead to a significant decrease in arable land abandonment in regions characterized by poor soil quality and steep slopes. Therefore, we may conclude that DPCOS could contribute to the reuse of farmlands suitable for cultivation and the exit of farmlands unsuitable for cultivation.

Keywords: CLDS; China; DPCOS; arable land abandonment.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Agriculture
China
Outsourced Services*
Pest Control
Soil
Urbanization

Substances

Soil

Grants and funding

This research was funded by the Opening project of Capital Circulation Industry Research Central JD-KFKT–2020-002; the National Natural Science Foundation of China 72003074; the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central University NR2021005; the earmarked fund of China Agriculture Research System (CARS-21); and the China Scholarship Council 202106760018.