The Impact of China’s National Modern Agricultural Industrial Parks on Fertilizer Use from the Perspective of Food Security

Achieving sustainable agricultural development necessitates a careful balance between the competing demands of environmental sustainability and food security. While extensive research has examined the economic impacts of agricultural parks, studies focusing on their environmental effects—particularly fertilizer usage—remain limited. Addressing this gap, this study investigates the impact of China’s National Modern Agricultural Industrial Parks (NMAIP) construction on fertilizer application using county-level panel data from 2014 to 2022. By leveraging the staggered establishment of these parks as a quasi-natural experiment, we apply a multi-period Difference-in-Differences (DID) approach. The results indicate that NMAIP construction led to a significant reduction in fertilizer use, a finding robust to a series of tests including parallel trends and placebo analyses. Mechanism analysis reveals that the reduction was primarily driven by enhanced agricultural labor and technology productivity. Heterogeneity analysis further shows that the effects were more pronounced in regions with high-level fertilizer consumption, in non-major grain-producing or wheat-producing areas, and in specialized or single-function parks. Importantly, this reduction in fertilizer use did not compromise grain output; instead, it was accompanied by stable or even increased production, thereby supporting food security. Our findings demonstrate that the NMAIP policy can achieve a “win-win” outcome by simultaneously promoting fertilizer reduction and safeguarding food security, offering a viable pathway toward sustainable agricultural development and food system resilience.