Do fertilizers and cropland influence the agricultural production value in the same way? Evidence using the autoregressive distributed lags approach of cointegration

Abstract

Cropland and fertilizers are two prominent and non-spared factors of agricultural sustainable production. This study mainly aimed to examine the response of crop production value to cropland used and chemical fertilizers supplied by using the Autoregressive Distributed Lags approach of cointegration over the period 1980 to 2016. The bound test and the error correction term showed that the amount of nitrogen (N), phosphorus (P) and potassium (K) consumed, the optimal ratio N-P-K applied, the amount of hectares cultivated for temporary and permanent crops are strongly linked to the growth of crop production value. The results may be analyzed following three ways: in the long-term, both cropland used and fertilizers ratio supplied appear greatly to induce a positive impact; in the short-term, the previous farming activity on a cropland might provide a positive influence; even though fertilizers' ratio supplied may not induce a substantial effect in the short-term, however, fertilizers nutrient supplied solely may impact the production value. In addition, the number of machines and the labor force are shown to foster the growth of crop production value in the long-term and short-term respectively. For the sake of agricultural sustainability, the findings support a farming system including a complementarity between multi-planting with high nitrogen nutrient requirements, trees plantation (agroforestry) and mechanization.