ABSTRACT
In the past time, many researchers have pay attention to them respectively; less attention was paid on the problems related with both of them. Most of them focus on the destruction of land and water resources from the macro level. Linda, L.H (1982) has done an assessment of future economic tradeoffs between coal mining and agriculture in Illinois. Since the 1990s, Australia has been the major coal export country in the world, but as the expansion of coal industry, more and more people realize the destruction on the environment, they are thinking of trade-offs between coal mining and agriculture, particularly in Queensland and the Wales which are the two coal mining states (Andrew, F 2011). In South Africa people in Mpumalanga are also worrying about the loss of agriculture due to the expansion of coal mining. They are requiring the government to investigate and assess the impact on agriculture from coal mining. As shown in a recent report by the Food and Agriculture Policy Council in South Africa, the barley production has reduced 440,000 tons per year (AEDT 2013). Montana State in Canada is facing the same problem. (Harvest 2013). Based on the above description, we can draw a conclusion that many people consider the coal mining and agriculture can’t develop in the same time. Since 1990s, Chinese scholars have
1 INTRODUCTION
Coal has been, and will continually to be the main energy for the economic development in China. But the rapid growth of coal production also raises questions about sustainability. While it is often recognized that coal is a major threat to air quality and green gas emission in china, less understood is the impact on the other activity. The coal mining activity has come into direct competition with agriculture, Coal mining and agriculture are directly linked through agriculture’s dependence on the inputs of coal mining, water, land, labor and capital. Despite their linkages, the problems involved with both of them have not been extensively studied. What makes the thing worse is that the overlapped areas of coal reserve and cropland takes account more than 40% of the total cropland in China. In the last 20 years, the cropland areas destroyed by coal mining have reached 6.92*105 ha. (Hu, Z.Q et al. 2006). Some research shows that in the last 10 years, due to the coal mining activity, the cropland where is irrigated land changed into dry land has reached 2.67*105 ha in Shanxi province, the yield per ha decreased 250 kg. The annual loss has reached 117 million kg (Wang S.K et al. 2005). The coal production is related with the security of energy. In China, Due to the endowment of resources, the coal plays an important role in the economic development. However agriculture is
proposed the theory “thriving agriculture by coal” (Fan, L.H 1991, Zhao, Y.M 1995). The main idea is to support the agriculture by coal industry through the improvement of infrastructure and technology from the funds supported by coal industry. Some scholar also mentioned the theory “subsidizing agriculture by coal industry”. The main idea of this theory is to increase the investment on the rural construction and accelerate the development of agriculture and rural areas (Li, Q et al. 2009, Zhao 2011). Some of Chinese researchers has recognize the coal mining impact on the agriculture, but Most of research focus on the macro level (Hu, Z.Q 2008, Chen, J.J 2007, Wei, X.J 2008). However, the literature is silent on the micro level analysis on impact pathways which can help us to better understand the mechanism of coal mining impact on the agriculture. We analyze this from two aspects: the production means of contradictory between coal production and agriculture, farmers’ decision making based on household model.
