Impact of economic growth and population on agrochemical use: evidence from post-liberalization India

Amarendra Singh and Krishnan Narayanan ()

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, 2015, vol. 17, issue 6, 1509-1525

Abstract: This paper analyzes the impact of population and per capita income on agrochemical use in India. Traditionally, few researchers have used I = PAT equation in its original form to study the impact of population and per capita income on agrochemical use. In this paper, a variant of I = PAT is used which relates per capita income and per hectare population with per hectare agrochemical use. The sample covers the period 1990–2008 for 25 Indian states. Our results suggest that per capita income has a nonlinear relationship with per hectare agrochemical use. Observed negative relationship between pesticide use per hectare and persons per hectare is indicative of public awareness regarding harms related with intensive use of pesticides; however, a positive relationship between fartilizer consumption per hectare and population pressure, found here, reiterates importance of fertilizers for food security. An examination into dematerialization of agriculture is also carried out at all India level which indicates that declining intensity of fertilizer and pesticide use in post-1990 period is mainly attributed to structural change in the economy. In summary, the paper concludes that India needs environment friendly agriculture policies and rural infrastructure to manage agriculture-related environmental problems. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2015

Keywords: Agrochemicals; I = PAT; Driscoll–Kraay estimator; Integrated pest management; India (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10668-015-9618-1 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:endesu:v:17:y:2015:i:6:p:1509-1525

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/economics/journal/10668

DOI: 10.1007/s10668-015-9618-1

Access Statistics for this article

Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development is currently edited by Luc Hens

More articles in Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().