Research on Agricultural Insurance Discussed by Researchers at Anhui University (Agricultural Insurance and Agricultural Fertilizer Non-Point Source Pollution: Evidence from China’s Policy-Based Agricultural Insurance Pilot): Agriculture – Agricultural Insurance

2022 MAR 30 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at NewsRx Policy and Law Daily -- Investigators discuss new findings in agricultural insurance. According to news reporting out of Hefei, People’s Republic of China, by NewsRx editors, research stated, “For a long time, the relationship between agricultural insurance and the input of chemical fertilizer has been controversial.”

Our news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Anhui University: “Since the pilot of policy-based agricultural insurance in China, most scholars have only paid attention to the role of the policy in ensuring farmers’ income and reducing farmers’ poverty, but its possible negative impact on the agricultural ecological environment is often ignored. If the pilot of this policy motivates farmers to apply more chemical fertilizers, which in turn causes more serious environmental problems, this would be contrary to the goals of the policy itself. Using the panel data of 31 provinces from 2000 to 2020 in China, this paper regards the pilot of policy-based agricultural insurance as a quasi-natural experiment and uses a difference-in-difference model to evaluate the impact of policy-based agricultural insurance on agricultural fertilizer non-point source pollution. The research results show that the pilot of policy-based agricultural insurance has aggravated the non-point source pollution of agricultural fertilizers in China. After a series of robustness tests, the research conclusion is still valid. At the same time, the effect of policy-based agricultural insurance aggravating agricultural fertilizer non-point source pollution had a lasting impact for 4 years during the pilot period and did not disappear until the policy-based agricultural insurance was fully covered.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “In addition, the heterogeneity results show that farmers in eastern China and high-disaster areas have a higher probability of moral hazard with overuse after purchasing policy-based agricultural insurance.”

For more information on this research see: Agricultural Insurance and Agricultural Fertilizer Non-Point Source Pollution: Evidence from China’s Policy-Based Agricultural Insurance Pilot. Sustainability, 2022,14(2800):2800. (Sustainability - http://www.mdpi.com/journal/sustainability). The publisher for Sustainability is MDPI AG.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.3390/su14052800.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Ziheng Niu, Innovative Development Institute, Anhui University, Hefei 230039, People’s Republic of China. Additional authors for this research include Feng Yi, Chen Chen. Our reports deliver fact-based news of research and discoveries from around the world.