ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Agricultural and Food Economics
Volume 9 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fsufs.2025.1587677
This article is part of the Research TopicClimate Change and Sustainable Food Security: Prospects and Challenges of Feeding 9 Billion PeopleView all 4 articles
Analysis of the Impact of Price Incentives and Precipitation Fluctuations on Maize Planting Area and Yield
Provisionally accepted
- 1Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
- 2Agricultural Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Haidian, Beijing, China
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Against the backdrop of intensifying climate change, maize, as a critical global food and feed crop, plays a pivotal role in ensuring food security and promoting sustainable agricultural development. This study utilizes panel data from 116 prefecture-level cities across nine provinces in China from 2003 to 2019 to analyze the dynamic impacts of maize prices, fertilizer price indices, and monthly precipitation on maize planting area and yield, employing fixed-effects models and the GMM estimation method. The empirical model incorporates key variables such as the previous year' s maize price, fertilizer price index, precipitation from March to May (affecting planting area), and monthly precipitation from April to September (affecting yield), while also accounting for control variables including urban population density, effective irrigation rate, industrial structure, and mechanization level. The results indicate that the previous year's maize price and fertilizer price index exert significant positive effects on yield, while the fertilizer price index positively influences planting area, and maize price shows a significant negative effect on planting area. The impact of precipitation varies by month: precipitation in July and August enhances yield, whereas precipitation in April and September negatively affects yield. Additionally, March precipitation has a significant negative effect on planting area, while April precipitation positively affects planting area. Robustness tests further confirm the reliability of these findings. Moreover, the study identifies a diminishing marginal effect of agricultural technological progress and proposes policy recommendations, including optimizing irrigation infrastructure, promoting stress-resistant crop varieties, and fostering technological innovation. These findings provide theoretical insights and empirical support for improving maize production efficiency and ensuring food security.
Keywords: Maize production, Maize price fluctuations, Fertilizer price index, Precipitation impacts, Agricultural policy
Received: 05 Mar 2025; Accepted: 12 May 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Hao, Cao, Hu, Zhang, Cai, Zhou and Jiang. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Hui Zhou, Institute of Agricultural Economics and Development, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China
Changyi Jiang, Agricultural Information Institute, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Haidian, 100081, Beijing, China
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