While chemical fertilizer is important for China’s crop production, recent studies have shown that there have been excessively high uses or overuses of N fertilizer by Chinese farmers. Despite great efforts have been made by scientists to improve the efficiency of fertilizer use, N fertilizer use continues to rise while its efficiency remains low, which has brought economists’ attention to the rationality of overusing N fertilizer.

In a new study published in the Journal of Soil and Water Conservation, Dr. HUANG Jikun, the director of Center for Chinese Agricultural Policy (CCAP), Institute of Geographic Sciences & Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (IGSNRR, CAS), XIANG Cheng, a doctoral student, and JIA Xiangping, a research fellow at CCAP published their recent findings of the impacts of knowledge training on farmers’ nitrogen fertilizer use.

The study experimented a knowledge training of Improved Nitrogen Management in maize production in Shandong in 2009. By comparing the trained and non-trained farmers, the researchers found that delivering information and knowledge on the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizer to farmers can significantly lower chemical N fertilizer use by 22 percent in maize production. Knowledge training indeed matters.

The findings of this study have important policy implication as 30 percent of agricultural Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions come from N fertilizer production and utilization and agriculture has accounted for about 18 percent of GHG in China in recent years. Reducing N fertilizer use in agriculture should be considered as a critical component of China’s low carbon agricultural initiative in the coming years.

The findings of this study received high evaluation from the editor.

This manuscript “should contribute significantly to readers understanding of nutrient management in crop systems in China, and contributes to the scientific literature in this topic area in which insufficient published research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals.”

The full citation of the paper is:

Jikun Huang, Cheng Xiang, Xiangping Jia*, Ruifa Hu. (2012) “Impacts of training on farmers' nitrogen use in maize production in Shandong, China” Journal of Soil and Water Conservation 67(4):321-327. doi:10.2489/jswc.67.4.321.