Smallholder rice farming practices across livelihood strategies: A case study of the Poyang Lake Plain, China
Smallholder rice farming practices across livelihood strategies: A case study of the Poyang Lake Plain, China
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跨生计策略的小农稻作实践：以中国鄱阳湖平原为例
DOI：
10.1016/j.jrurstud.2021.12.001
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发表时间：
2021
影响因子：
5.1
通讯作者：
Mingjun Ding
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Le Zhang;Juxiang Song;Xiaobo Hua;Xiaojian Li;Dingguo Ma;Mingjun Ding
在过去的40年里，中国小农户的谋生战略日益多样化和个性化，因此，他们的水稻种植实践也出现了差异。然而，很少有研究确定水稻种植习惯如何随着生计战略的变化而变化。为了应对这一挑战，本研究采用综合小农生计战略框架，使用2018年横断面数据，覆盖了中国南部鄱阳湖平原10个村庄的90户250户小农户。研究结果表明，基于劳动力投入分配的生计策略可分为五类，以水稻为主的农户区别于其他农户的因素包括年龄、性别、教育程度、健康状况、年收入、家电数量和土地面积。与那些把大部分时间花在非农业企业上的农民相比，严重依赖水稻种植的农民种植了更大的稻田面积，单位面积投入更多，使用的农用化学品种类更多，获得了更高的单位产量。然而，由于种植水稻的回报较低，前者的收入远远低于后者。在不同的生计战略中，农用化学品的施用量没有显著差异，这意味着不严重依赖水稻种植的农民过度使用无法有效提高水稻产量的农用化学品。基于这些发现，我们建议政府实施措施，大幅增加水稻种植的回报，并教育水稻种植者，使他们在使用农用化学品时采取更环保的做法。
In the past four decades, the livelihood strategies of Chinese smallholder farmers have become increasingly diversified and individualized, and consequently, their rice growing practices have diverged. However, few studies have identified how rice growing practices change with livelihood strategies. To address this challenge, this study employs an integrated smallholder livelihood strategy framework and uses crosssectional data in 2018 covering 250 smallholder farmers who belonging to 90 households in 10 villages in the Poyang Lake Plain, southern China. The results show that livelihood strategies were grouped into five categories based on the allocation of labor input, and the factors that differentiate the farmers adopting rice farming-dominated livelihoods from other farmers include age, sex, education level, health, annual income, the number of appliances and land area. Farmers who relied heavily on rice growing for their livelihoods grew larger area of rice paddy, invested more per unit area, applied more types of agrochemicals and obtained higher unit yields than those farmers spending most of their time on off-farm enterprises. However, the income of the former was much lower than that of the latter due to the low return of rice farming. There is no significant difference in the application weight of agrochemicals across livelihood strategies, which implies that farmers who do not heavily depend on rice growing excessively apply agrochemicals that cannot effectively increase rice yields. Based on these findings, we suggest that the government should implement measures to substantially increase the return of rice growing and educate rice farmers so they will adopt more environmentally friendly practices for applying agrochemicals.