Part-Time Farming, Diseases and Pest Control Delay and Its External Influence on Pesticide Use in China’s Rice Production

Abstract

The highly intensive use of pesticide is a big threat to environmental sustainability in China. This study explains the increase of rice pesticide use in China’s rapid urbanization process from the perspective of changes in the delay of pest control. Based on multi-stage random sampling, 20 villages of five counties in central Jiangsu were selected, and the production data of 430 paddy fields were surveyed. Logit model results show that living outside village of agricultural labors will increase the probability of delay in control of diseases and pest, while the increase of farm size and the development of outsourcing services and public monitoring and forecasting services will help reduce the probability of delay. The OLS model results show that the delay in rice diseases and pest control has negative externalities. The delays of other farmers in the village will significantly increase the frequency of pesticide use. These results highlight important policy implications for the development of large-scale farming to substitute part-time farming and the development of diseases and pest control services.

Do agricultural productive services alleviate farmland abandonment? Evidence from China rural household panel survey data

“…A large number of labour force migrants driven by economic interests and poor quality of cultivated land were abandoned (Xu et al, 2020). We find that APS could help farmers manage land in the context of labour scarcity and stimulate the labour substitution effect, which consistent with Belton et al (Belton et al, 2021) and Fang et al (Fang et al, 2022a). In our study, we analyze the intermediary role of land circulation in APS affecting the land abandonment of farmers and find that APS reduce land abandonment by promoting land transfer, which enriches the existing research.…”

Evaluation of Trichoderma atroviride and Trichoderma longibrachiatum as biocontrol agents in controlling red pepper anthracnose in Korea

“…Application synthetic fungicides is still practiced for controlling anthracnose diseases in Korea, and many synthetic fungicides, such as pyraclostrobin, tebuconazol, hexaconazole, propineb, and thiophanate-methyl are used for the control of anthracnose disease (Gao et al, 2021;Kim et al, 2021); however, the chemical method is not always effective to control the disease incidence. The continuous application of synthetic fungicides causes toxicity and side effects on humans and the environment, resulting in public concern and the need to search for ecofriendly methods to limit the adverse impact on human beings and the environment as well (Fang et al, 2022). Therefore, an alternative method is needed to address this issue, and safer agricultural policy necessitates the employment of biological control agents (BCAs) to control plant diseases.…”

Computational fluid dynamics simulation analysis of the effect of curved rice leaves on the deposition behaviour of droplets

“…Rice diseases, insects, and weeds have been increasing annually in recent years, so there is an urgent need for better disease and pest-prevention and control [ 1 , 2 ]. Currently, pesticides play an important role in the prevention and control of rice diseases and pests [ 3 , 4 ]. The use of pesticides can indeed reduce their prevalence and increase crop yield [ 5 , 6 ], but in the actual application process, only 20–30% of the pesticide is deposited on the rice leaves, and the remaining 70–80% is lost to the soil [ 7 ].…”