Assessing the Ability of Agricultural Socialized Services to Promote the Protection of Cultivated Land among Farmers

Abstract

Protecting and improving the quality of cultivated land is important to agricultural modernization. Based on data from a survey of 706 rice-growing households in Hunan, Jiangxi and Jiangsu, this paper uses the Probit model, CMP method and Biprobit model to systematically analyze the impact of agricultural socialized services on farmers’ cultivated land quality protection behaviors. This study finds that agricultural socialized services have a significantly positive impact on the adoption of soil testing formulas and straw returning technology among farmers, which can improve both the probability and the degree of cultivated land quality protection. The heterogeneity test results suggest that agricultural socialized services provide a higher incentive for the older generation of farmers to adopt arable land quality protection. In addition, we found that agricultural socialized services are more conducive to the protection of contracted land than transferred land. Therefore, we recommend that policies on agricultural socialized services be further implemented, the supply of agricultural socialized services be optimized, and the role of service organizations in publicizing and promoting cultivated land protection techniques be brought into play. We also posit that the simultaneous encouragement of farmers in using agricultural socialized services would protect the quality of cultivated land. During this process, additional attention should be paid to the response differentiation of peasants with different characteristics.