Abstract: Abstract：There has a drastic change in structures of agricultural production and rural economy in China over the recent years.Pollution induced by agrochemical applications, livestock and poultry breeding, straw incineration in agricultural productionhas been increasing, and agricultural pollution has overtaken industrial pollution becoming the main water pollution source inChina. However, efforts to ameliorate these pollutions are difficult to implement because of a lack of understanding of theirassociated costs. This is one reason why agricultural pollution control is still regulation-based rather than market-based as hasbeen widely used in controlling industrial pollution. Shadow price of agricultural pollutant is a key to help policy-makestrategies to remediate agricultural pollutants. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue by taking agricultural datameasured from 1978 to 2017 at provincial scale in China as an example. We estimated the quadratic directional distancefunction, revenue function and the costs of pollution in agricultural production. The results showed that the shadow prices oftotal nitrogen (TN), total phosphorus (TP) and COD had reduced by 26.8%, 35.9% and 59.7%, respectively, from 1978 to2017, having undergone through free development stage, reform promotion stage, market regulation stage and policy incentivestage. Because of the difference in natural and socio-economic conditions between the provinces, there was a noticeablespatial variation in shadow prices of agricultural pollutants in them. In the northwest China, the shadow price of TN was thelowest, while in the southwest China, the shadow price of TN and TP was the highest and the price of COD was the lowest. Ineast China the shadow price of TP was the lowest and the price of COD was the highest. The average annual costs of pollutionin agricultural production was 76.06 billion Yuan per year, accounting for 10.8% of the value of the total agriculturalproduction. In particular, the costs of pollution in Ningxia, Guizhou, Hebei, and Shandong accounted for more than 14% of thevalue of their total annual agricultural production. The long-term change in shadow price of agricultural pollutants and thecosts of agricultural pollution in China indicated that agricultural production was complex and affected by individual andcombined natural, social-economic and political factors. Agricultural policies should be made based on the requirement of the"two-oriented agriculture" development by reforming agricultural supply structure to improve quality and efficiency of theagricultural supply to avoid falling into the "profit pursuing policy" trap. Transformation of agricultural production shouldfocus on improving land productivity and resource and labor use efficiency, along with reducing dependence onpetrochemicals and remediating non-point agricultural pollutant. It also needs to consider resource conservation andenvironmental protection by developing circular, and ecological-friendly intensive agriculture.