The Influence of Ecological Farming on Farmers' Income: An Example of Rice Growers in Jiangxi Province

Ecological farming is important for improving the effectiveness of farmland protection and ensuring the quality and safety of crops. A micro-survey data was obtained by interviewing 1 488 rice growers in 47 counties (districts) of 11 prefecture-level cities in Jiangxi Province. The OLS regression model and Heckman regression model were used to measure the overall impact of ecological farming on farmers' income. Furthermore, the quantile regression model was introduced to deeply analyze the income effect of ecological farming on farmers at different income levels. The research results show that:(1) Adopting ecological farming helps farm households to increase production return per capita farmland, while it will have different effects due to different income levels of farmers. (2) Ecological farming has a positive impact on production return per capita farmland for very low/low income farmers, a negative impact on middle and above middle income farmers, and only has a significant impact on the production return per capita farmland of high income farmers. (3) Two control variables, including livelihood differentiation and proportion of farmland income, have a significant impact on production return per capita farmland. The paper puts forward some policy suggestions, such as increasing support for low-income farmers' ecological farming policies, actively guiding the non-agricultural employment of middle and high-income farmers, and practically strengthening the moderate scale operation of farmland.