Policy options for Agriculture Green Development by farmers in China

Abstract

Farmers are the key agents who manage land and water. Agriculture Green Development (AGD) requires a transformation in farming from high resource consumption and environmental cost to sustainable intensification with high productivity, high resource use efficiency and low environmental risk. This paper analyzes the public policy challenge of AGD and makes the case for a location-sensitive policy mix made up of regulation, advice provision, voluntarism and targeted incentives. The public agricultural extension service in China is a key resource, but one that requires reorientation and reform with the aim of better balancing high farm productivity with environmental protection.

Keywords

agriculture / environment / development / incentives / policy / regulation

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Compliance with ethics guidelines

Laurence E. D. Smith declares that he has no conflicts of interest or financial conflicts to disclose.

This article does not contain any studies with human or animal subjects performed by the author.

RIGHTS & PERMISSIONS

The Author(s) 2019. Published by Higher Education Press. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)