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Roles of land-scale expansion and household labor allocation in nitrogen fertilizer use in Chinese croplands

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Abstract

The roles of land scale and household labor allocation have always been a hot button in nitrogen (N) fertilizer use. Rural part-time farming is the main form of household labor allocation in China. This study aimed to quantify the N fertilizer use responses to land-scale expansion and rural part-time farming with different degrees and types in Chinese croplands. Using data on 1159 households extracted from a rural household survey in three great agricultural plains, China, we applied Ordinary Least Squares and Tobit model to yield the consistent results. The results showed that N fertilizer use significantly decreases by 2.23 kg/ha with per unit increase in land scale (p < 0.1), while rural part-time farming degree significantly increases N fertilizer use by 29.72 kg/ha (p < 0.01). Particularly, different effects are detected on the different types of part-time farming households. PTF II (part-time farming degree ranges from 50% to 80%) and OFH (degree higher than 80%) types are proved to be responsible for increasing N fertilizer use of 25.41 kg/ha (p < 0.01) and 22.86 kg/ha (p < 0.05), respectively. These findings imply that the government should encourage part-time farming households to transfer agricultural croplands, thereby expanding land scale so as to reduce N fertilizer use.

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Data availability

The datasets used and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the first author on reasonable request.

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Funding

This research was financially supported by the youth fund of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 71704172 and 41701562) and the Key Deployment Project of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. ZDBS-SSW-DQC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Land Surface Pattern and Simulation, Key Laboratory of Ecosystem Network Observation and Modeling, Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100101, China

    Yali Zhang & Yunli Bai

  2. School of Environment and Energy, Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School, Shenzhen, 518055, China

    Yihan Wang

  3. State Key Laboratory of Environmental Criteria and Risk Assessment, Chinese Research Academy of Environmental Sciences, Beijing, 100012, China

    Lei Wang

Authors
  1. Yali Zhang
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  2. Yunli Bai
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  3. Yihan Wang
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  4. Lei Wang
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Contributions

Y.Z. conceived, designed, and supervised the research. Y.B. curated the data. Y.Z. and Y.W. conducted the survey. Y.Z. and Y.B. analyzed the data. Y.Z. and L.W. drafted the manuscript. All authors revised the manuscript. All authors read and approved the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Lei Wang.

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Zhang, Y., Bai, Y., Wang, Y. et al. Roles of land-scale expansion and household labor allocation in nitrogen fertilizer use in Chinese croplands. Environ Sci Pollut Res 28, 51879–51887 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13951-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11356-021-13951-1

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