Overuse of agricultural chemicals on small farms in China harms environment

Beijing. June 22. Silkroadnews - The size of farms in China is a key factor in overuse of agricultural chemicals, and as a result, they may be too small to be environmentally sustainable, Science Daily writes.
A research, conducted by a team from the universities of Melbourne, Zhejiang, Fudan, Wuhan and Stanford, has been published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The study showed, agricultural chemicals are often used inefficiently on small farms, leading to financial losses and severe local, regional and global pollution, ranging from eutrophication (excess amounts of nutrients in water bodies often caused by run-off from the land) to air pollution and global warming.
According to Baojing Gu, University of Melbourne and Zhejiang researcher, China is the world’s largest consumer of agricultural chemicals, using more than 30 percent of global fertilizers and pesticides on only 9 percent of the world’s agricultural land.
“Our study sought to understand the reasons for overuse of agricultural chemicals, because addressing this is critical to the sustainable development of Chinese agriculture,” the agency quoted Gu saying.
The study used the national representative survey of rural households in China. It was possible to establish that the size of small farms strongly affects the intensity of the use of agricultural chemicals in China.
It was also found that a 1% increase in farm size is associated with a 0.3% and 0.5% decrease of fertilizer and pesticide consumption per hectare, respectively. This corresponded to almost 1% increase in labor productivity in agriculture and only a slight by 0.02% decrease in crop yield, the report reads.  
Professor of the University of Melbourne Deli Chen said: “In recent years, the Chinese government has made efforts to reduce excessive use of agricultural chemicals, but the effects have unfortunately been limited. While economic growth has been associated with increasing farm size in other countries, in China this relationship has been distorted by land and migration policies, leading to the persistence of small farm size.”
The authors of the research believe that eliminating these distortions would decrease the use of chemicals in agriculture by 30-50% and the impact of these chemicals on the environment by 50%, while doubling the total income of all farmers, including those who move to urban areas.