Reforming smallholder farms to mitigate agricultural pollution

China's agriculture is dominated by smallholder farms, which have become major sources of negative environmental impacts including eutrophication, formation of haze, soil acidification and greenhouse gas emissions. To mitigate these environmental impacts, new fanning models including family fanning, cooperation fanning and industrial farming have emerged in recent years. However, whether these new fanning practices would improve the economic and environmental performance as compared to the current smallholder farming has yet to be verified on ground level. In this paper, by using pilot farming cases within the watershed of Tai Lake, we found that alternative fanning models produced 7% more crop yield, while using 8% less fertilizer, leading to a 28% decrease in pollutant emission per hectare. These alternative fanning models have a 17% higher fertilizer use efficiency and 50% higher profit per hectare. Compared to smallholder farming, these alternative fanning practices invest 27% more resources into agricultural facilities. including advanced machinery, and have a younger, better educated labor force as a consequence of a larger farm size and more specialization. These input changes substantially increase fertilizer use efficiency and reduce agricultural pollution. Policy arrangements to support and facilitate the uptake of these farming models will further promote the green development and sustainable intensification of agricultural production.

Automated summary

China's agriculture is mainly dominated by smallholder farms, but new collaborative farming models have emerged in recent years, showing better performance in crop yield and fertilizer use efficiency, while reducing environmental impacts.