Policy-supported rice insurance and high-quality rice cultivation by professional grain farmers: evidence from China

Promoting high-quality rice cultivation is pivotal for ensuring national food security and advancing agricultural modernization. Given the mounting pressures of rising production costs, fluctuating grain prices, and increased natural disasters, it is crucial to examine whether policy-supported rice insurance promotes high-quality rice cultivation by professional grain farmers. This study focuses on the perspective of professional grain farmers, a micro-level entity in rice management. Using survey data from 511 professional grain farmers across 17 counties in Jiangxi Province, China, this study employs Tobit regression, mediation effect, and moderation effect models to examine how policy-supported rice insurance influences high-quality rice cultivation by professional grain farmers. Our results demonstrate that policy-supported rice insurance significantly promotes the adoption of high-quality rice cultivation among professional grain farmers. When other factors remain unchanged, for every one-unit increase in the level of policy-supported rice insurance, the proportion of high-quality rice planted by farmers will increase by 0.339 units. Mediation analysis reveals that policy-supported rice insurance facilitates high-quality rice cultivation by increasing farmers’ hired labor level. Moderation analysis shows that government subsidies negatively moderate the relationship between insurance and cultivation practices, suggesting a potential substitution effect between the two policy instruments. Heterogeneity analysis shows that the promoting effect of policy-supported rice insurance on high-quality rice cultivation is more significant among professional grain farmers with higher degrees of land contiguity and more years of rice cultivation. These findings have policy implications for increasing the coverage level of policy-supported rice insurance and farmers’ enrollment, introducing differentiated insurance schemes, improving the matching mechanism in the rural labor market, and strengthening coordination between policy-supported rice insurance and other subsidy policies.