Incentives for promoting agricultural clean production technologies in China

Since the start of this century Chinese agricultural priorities have greatly changed. Food security is no longer the sole target of agricultural development, and increased attention is now focused on environmental protection and stable growth of farmersʹ incomes. However, implementation of agricultural clean production practices has been slow, despite their official promotion, at least partly because of farmersʹ hesitancy to adopt them due to fears that they would lose income. In various countries subsidies have successfully countered such hesitation. Therefore, we have surveyed Chinese farmersʹ willingness to pay for environmental protection and accept compensation for potential losses of net income in relation to identified characteristics, subsidies and other incentives to encourage agricultural clean production in China. The results indicate that financial support from government at all levels is essential for its effective promotion in the long term, although farmers are willing to adopt environmental protection measures, and make some contribution to their costs as responsible citizens. Subsidizing farmers who voluntarily participate in agricultural insurance and adopt cleaner production practices is regarded as fair and equitable to avoid unacceptable reductions in their profits and life quality. The results also show that reasonable and targeted incentives could make broad contributions to cleaner agricultural production in China.