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Pesticide overuse has been an increasing concern in China. Digital technology, such as smartphone access, is considered an effective way to promote proper use of pesticides. Using the Chinese Extended Family Database (2015, 2017, and 2019), this study empirically examines the impact of smartphone access on pesticide use intensity among Chinese farmers. The results show a “double-edged sword” effect of smartphone access on pesticide use intensity. In rural areas with a low level of digital economy, greater smartphone access led to higher pesticide use intensity. In rural areas with a high digital economy level, smartphone access reduced pesticide use intensity. The study results show that reducing pesticide use intensity through digital technology is not a linear process but a complicated one that involves social and engineering integration, including an increase in access to smartphones, development of a regional digital economy, reconstruction of agricultural extension systems, and enhancement of the capacity of digital technology.
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A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides
Abstract The global pesticide complex has transformed over the past two decades, but social science research has not kept pace. The rise of an enormous generics sector, shifts in geographies of pesticide production, and dynamics of agrarian change have led to more pesticide use, expanding to farm systems that hitherto used few such inputs. Declining effectiveness due to pesticide resistance and anemic institutional support for non-chemical alternatives also have driven intensification in conventional systems. As an inter-disciplinary network of pesticide scholars, we seek to renew the social science research agenda on pesticides to better understand this suite of contemporary changes. To identify research priorities, challenges, and opportunities, we develop the pesticide complex as a heuristic device to highlight the reciprocal and iterative interactions among agricultural practice, the agrochemical industry, civil society-shaped regulatory actions, and contested knowledge of toxicity. Ultimately, collaborations among social scientists and across the social and biophysical sciences can illuminate recent transformations and their uneven socioecological effects. A reinvigorated critical scholarship that embraces the multifaceted nature of pesticides can identify the social and ecological constraints that drive pesticide use and support alternatives to chemically driven industrial agriculture.
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- Award ID(s):
- 2026088
- PAR ID:
- 10441801
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Agriculture and Human Values
- ISSN:
- 0889-048X
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-023-10492-w
