Environmentally-friendly agricultural practices and their acceptance by smallholder farmers in China-A case study in Xinxiang County, Henan Province

Intensive agriculture with high inputs has resulted in rapid development of crop production in China, accompanied by negative environmental effects such as serious non-point source agricultural pollution. Implementation of environmentally-friendly agricultural practices can effectively prevent such pollution. However, the acceptance and adoption of such practices are related not only to associated risks and potential benefits, but also to farmers' attitudes to and knowledge of scientifically validated practices. In the presented study we surveyed views of a stratified sample of 150 smallholder farmers and 10 extension service experts from Xinxiang, a high grain-producing county in Henan Province, China. Their opinions were explored in personal interviews using a questionnaire with three sections. The first section mainly sought informationpn surveyed farmers' demographic characteristics like gender, age and education. The second section concemed their awareness of the environmental problems and losses of yields associated with customary over-fertilization practices, and their main concerns about new practices. The third section addressed farmers' attitudes to, and the extension service experts' professional evaluations of, five selected practices in terms of the importance of seven factors (time demands, costs, risks, compatibility, complexity, trialability and observability). Acceptance indices were calculated from the responses to rank farmers' willingness to accept the five environmentally-friendly agricultural practices, and thus identify the most appropriate to promote in the study area. The results show that costs, followed by risks and observability, are the more important factors affecting farmers' decisions to adopt a practice. The results also indicate that no or minimum tillage and returning straw to the field are the most appropriate practices to promote initially at large scale in Xinxiang. The others could be popularized gradually after providing effective incentives and training. The finding that cost is the main factor influencing Chinese farmer contrasts with reports that EU farmers rank risk and observability as most important, possibly due to differences in income. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.