The overuse of agrochemicals in greenhouse production system has aroused high concerns in China. Existing studies have investigated the status and determinants of agrochemicals overuse for greenhouse vegetables whereas little is known about whether the agrochemicals are allocated efficiently from economic perspective. We use a translog production function and the inputs and outputs data of vegetable production in 34 Chinese cities during 2004–2017 to calculate agrochemicals allocation efficiency for both open-field and greenhouse vegetables. We find that the agrochemicals are allocated inefficiently due to overuse for both open-field and greenhouse vegetables, whereas the overuse degree of chemical fertilizer used in greenhouse vegetables is lower than that of open-field vegetables during a growing duration. In addition, we also find that the application levels of agrochemicals for greenhouse vegetables per mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) are higher than those of open-field vegetables, but the application levels of agrochemicals for per kilogram greenhouse vegetables are significantly lower. We conclude that the overuse of agrochemicals in greenhouse production system may attribute to the year-round production of greenhouse vegetables induced by economic incentives. Therefore, reducing the number of production rotations may be an effective method to alleviate the overuse of agrochemicals in greenhouse vegetables.

Purpose: Overuse of chemical fertilizers and pesticides is a major policy concern for many countries. Chinese government has adopted many technologies and management practices to reduce their use. However, little is known about the effects of social-economic method such as short supply chain (SSC) participation. SSC is an important organizational innovation in fresh food supply chains aiming at directly connecting farmers and consumers. Closer relationships between farmers and consumers may result in production behavioral changes. Thus the purpose of this paper is to investigate the impacts of SSC participation on agrochemicals application.Design/methodology/approach: Based on the household level data collected from Jiangsu province in China, this paper employs an instrumental variable (IV) method to address the self-selection bias when we evaluate the effects of SSC participation on use of chemical fertilizer and pesticides. In addition, this paper also distinguishes between growth inputs and facilitating inputs in the production function when we calculate the marginal production values of chemical fertilizer and pesticides.Findings: The empirical results show that SSC participation significantly reduces chemical fertilizer use by 351 kg and pesticides costs by 1659 Yuan (RMB) per hectare, accounting for 43.4% of the average chemical fertilizer use and 49.4% of the average pesticide costs, respectively for Chinese vegetable farms. However, SSC participation still cannot improve the use efficiency of agrochemicals.Originality/value: This paper uses both application quantities and allocation efficiencies of chemical fertilizer and pesticides to comprehensively evaluate the effects of SSC participations. The results will reveal the core role of SSC played in promoting sustainable development of Chinese agricultural sector dominated by small-scale farmers.