Treating "chemical fertilizer dependency" cannot rely on farmers alone

Agricultural experts repeatedly say that excessive application of chemical fertilizers creates a vicious cycle of “the more fertilizer applied, the thinner the soil becomes,” leading to soil degradation, reduced grain yields, and non-point source pollution, seriously endangering our country's food security and affecting the sustainable development of our country's agriculture. However, these warnings have not been able to stop farmers from applying large amounts of chemical fertilizers or abusing them, and the amount of chemical fertilizer applied is still gradually increasing. Statistics show that our country's annual chemical fertilizer use is nearly 60 million tonnes, accounting for 35% of the world's total use, equivalent to the combined total of the United States and India.

Our country's agriculture has contracted a severe “chemical fertilizer dependency,” and the direct cause is that farmers do not understand scientific farming, lack the knowledge and techniques for scientific fertilization, and apply chemical fertilizers blindly. For example, many farmers often spread fertilizer directly on the soil surface when fertilizing, which not only reduces the crop's absorption rate but also easily causes fertilizer volatilization and loss.

However, farmers are also “rational economic actors.” Excessive application of chemical fertilizers ultimately works because the fertilizer itself can supplement soil nutrients, helping to stabilize and increase grain yields and raise income; this is individually rational behavior. On the one hand, for most farmers still farming in rural areas today, their children are almost certain not to continue farming as they do, so they do not worry about the consequences of excessive fertilizer application. On the other hand, farmers are not unaware that applying organic fertilizer is better than applying chemical fertilizer, but because a large rural labor force has gone to cities to work, fewer farmers raise pigs, chickens, and ducks, and the amount of farmyard manure produced in rural areas has greatly decreased, unable to meet the needs of farming, so they have no choice but to spend money on chemical fertilizers; otherwise grain yields would decline. Moreover, returning crop straw to the field and deep plowing and deep loosening are time-consuming and labor-intensive for farmers, and the farmers who are mainly the “38, 61, 99 troops” can no longer take on such farm work.

It can thus be seen that when agriculture contracts “chemical fertilizer dependency,” the blame cannot be placed solely on farmers. To treat “chemical fertilizer dependency,” we also cannot rely only on farmers; we must also rely on the government and on national policy. The government should vigorously publicize and promote green fertilizers, and provide financial subsidies for farmers to purchase and apply biological organic fertilizers, lower the price of biological organic fertilizers, guide farmers to use biological organic fertilizers to replace part of chemical fertilizers, and allow biological organic fertilizers and chemical fertilizers to be applied at the same time; for farmers purchasing organic fertilizer application machines, provide financial subsidies to reduce the cost of farmers replacing fertilization machines; grassroots agricultural technicians should stay grounded, go into the fields, use large grain growers as a link, and comprehensively promote and popularize scientific fertilization techniques such as soil testing and formula fertilization; for older farmers, they should provide hands-on fertilization guidance so that farmers truly use fertilizer scientifically.