title: Chemical usage in production agriculture: do crop insurance and off-farm work play a part?
abstract: In recent years a growing body of literature in the agricultural policy arena has examined the association between crop insurance and off-farm employment. However, little is known about the extent to which these two activities may be related to environmental quality, in particular their impacts on fertilizer/chemical use of the farm. To fill this gap, this paper examines the effect of crop insurance and off-farm work on fertilizer/chemical expenses within the farm household framework. Quantile regression results from a national representative farm-level data show that off-farm work by the farm operator tends to decrease fertilizer/chemical expenses, and the effect is more pronounced at the higher percentiles of the distribution of fertilizer/chemical expense. In contrast, a positive effect of crop insurance on fertilizer/chemical expenses is evident, and the effect is robust across the entire distribution.
authors.affiliation: Department of Agricultural Economics, National Taiwan University, No. 1 Roosevelt Rd. Sec. 4, Taipei, Taiwan. hunghaochang@ntu.edu.tw
authors.forename: Hung-Hao
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.forename: Ashok K
authors.initials: AK
authors.lastname: Mishra
mesh_terms: D000383:Agriculture / Q000191:economics* / Q000379:methods*; D018556:Crops, Agricultural; D004651:Employment; D005191:Family Characteristics; D005308:Fertilizers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D007341:Insurance; D010575:Pesticides; D014481:United States
chemical_list: D005308:Fertilizers; D010575:Pesticides