smallholders in China

Box D.4, continued

reduced incentives to clear forest and extract products in upland areas. Annual forest clearing by upland households adjacent to the lowland irrigated area declined by 48 percent (Mcneely and Scherr 2003).

In Vietnam’s Mekong Delta region, efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions associated with rice are being increased through landscape-scale initiatives that also increase input use efficiency. Thus, collaboration among stakeholders such as farmers, conservationists or governments, and private companies can certainly lead to greener, more productive rice systems.

Additional sources: Abraham et al. 2014; cassou, Jaffee, and Ru 2017; chen et al. 2014; Dzung 2012; Huelgas, Templeton, and castanar 2008.

BOX D.5

Precision application of inputs: Innovations and challenges with smallholders in China

over the past decade, china’s Ministry of Agriculture has actively promoted several technologies to help farmers make more judicious use of chemical inputs. For example, since the early 2000s the Ministry of Agriculture has financed soil testing and promoted the diffusion of formula fertilizer based on soil testing results. In theory, this technology allows farmers to use tailor-mixed fertilizers that better align with their specific needs, considering local conditions and what they are growing. A World Bank project has promoted this technology in Guangdong province by competitively procuring fertilizers specially formulated based on soil testing and crop needs and creating incentives for farmers to use them. After three years of efforts to promote formula fertilizer, the market seems to have responded positively. As of 2017, multiple brands of formula fertilizer that have not been procured under the project have become available in agro-input shops in project areas.

Formula fertilizer is not a panacea, however. Various circumstances have limited the technology’s effectiveness in pollution control. Governmentsponsored soil testing is still limited (at one sample per 10–20 hectares), and soil testing results are not systematically made available to input suppliers. Furthermore, tailor formulating fertilizers to meet a wide range of smallholder needs remains cost prohibitive for most suppliers. Meanwhile, formula fertilizer does not address the issue of poor timing, a problem that is growing as increasing numbers of farmers seek off-farm employment.

Although new technologies and service models hold promise for addressing this major challenge, those that have emerged to date have a long way to go before they reach commercial viability. Since 2007, for example, the market for slow- and controlled-release fertilizers has been growing in china (Heffer 2016). In Guangdong province, however, adoption of such fertilizers is still limited because of concerns about cost and quality. one limitation of this technology is its current inability to provide a boost of nutrients as needed in a crop’s growth cycle.

In parallel, the development of professional pesticide application services has also faced challenges. Farmers often prefer to manage pests on their own when they do not have off-farm jobs. The development of pesticide application services has also been complicated by disputes over responsibility for pest outbreaks and partial participation by farmers in a given area. partial participation on the part of farmers undermines the quality of the service because a pest infestation in a nonparticipating plot can undermine the efficacy of the pesticide application service in the surrounding area.

Source: Cassou, Jaffee, and Ru 2017.