China faces health and environmental problems associated with the use of agricultural chemicals, including pesticides. While previous studies have found that risk aversion affects pesticide use in China, they have focused primarily on commercial cotton farmers. In this study, we consider the case of smaller, semisubsistence and subsistence farmers in a poor and landlocked province of China (Yunnan). We use a field experiment to measure risk aversion and collect detailed data on farm production and input use to specifically ask whether risk aversion affects pesticide use, and whether this effect differs for subsistence farmers producing exclusively for home consumption versus semisubsistence farmers who produce both for home and the market. We find that risk aversion significantly increases pesticide use, particularly for subsistence farmers and for market plots by semisubsistence farmers. Further, this effect of risk aversion significantly decreases with farm size for subsistence farmers, but not for semisubsistence farmers, implying that pesticide use may be used to ensure sufficient food supply for home consumption. Finally, we find barriers to the use of pesticides for subsistence farmers, both in terms of financial constraints and economies of scale. This finding implies that risk-mitigation strategies, such as crop insurance, may not target food security concerns of subsistence farmers. Given these different motivations for pesticide use, policymakers may wish to consider effective tools to support rural food security for farmers in the poorer regions of China in order to decrease pesticide use.JEL classifications: Q01, Q13, Q56
Present biodiversity conservation programmes in the remaining extensive forest blocks of the humid tropics are failing to achieve outcomes that will be viable in the medium to long term. Too much emphasis is given to what we term 'grand design'-ambitious and idealistic plans for conservation. Such plans implicitly oppose or restrict development and often attempt to block it by speculatively establishing paper parks. Insufficient recognition is given to the inevitable long term pressures for conversion to other land uses and to the weakness of local constituencies for conservation. Conservation institutions must build their capacity to engage with the process of change. They must constantly adapt to deal with a continuously unfolding set of challenges, opportunities and changing societal needs. This can be achieved by long term on-the-ground engagement and 'muddling through'. The range of conservation options must be enlarged to give more attention to biodiversity in managed landscapes and to mosaics composed of areas with differing intensities of use. The challenge is to build the human capacity and institutions to achieve this.
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