Abstract
With a growing demand for crop products in China, a great deal of local resources and industrial inputs are consumed including agricultural machineries, chemical fertilizers, pesticides, and energies, which results in many environmental issues such as resource depletion, water pollution, soil erosion and contamination, and CO2 emissions. Thus, this study evaluated the trend of sustainability of China’s crop production from 1997 to 2016 in terms of emergy and further explored the driving forces using decomposition analysis methods. The results showed that the total emergy used (U) increased by 50% from 7.82 × 1023 in 1997 to 1.17 × 1024 solar emergy Joule (sej) in 2016. Meanwhile, the values of the emergy sustainability index (ESI) were all smaller than one with a declining trend year by year, indicating that China’s crop production system is undergoing an unsustainable development pattern. From the results of the ESI decomposition, the renewable resource factor (R/GDP) and land use factor (L/A) are two key factors impeding the sustainable development of the crop production system. Therefore, the increased capacity of renewable resources and enough labor forces engaged in crop production will be the key strategies for its sustainable development.
Highlights
As the largest component of agricultural production in China, crop production provides a material basis for the survival and development of Chinese people
It is of great importance to make a dynamic analysis of the sustainable level of China’s crop production and identify the key factors affecting its sustainability so that appropriate policies on sustainable crop production can be raised by considering Chinese realities
The values of emergy yield ratio (EYR) decreased by 8% with a fluctuating trend from 1.38 in 1997 to 1.27 in 2016, with an annual decline rate of 0.4% during the investigated period. It indicates that the ratio of (R + N)/F showed a decreasing trend (here, EYR can be further decomposed into EYR = (R + N + F)/F = (R + N)/F + 1) as a whole as the growth rate of F was further beyond (R + N)
Summary
As the largest component of agricultural production in China, crop production provides a material basis for the survival and development of Chinese people. The average application amount of fertilizers per thousand hectares of sown land has amounted to 357.3 tons (103 ha)−1 in China, which is 2.7 times more than the average global level in 2012 [2] Such a consumption has led to several environmental problems including water and soil erosion, biodiversity loss, water and soil contamination, greenhouse gas emissions, etc. The performance of the agricultural sector is crucial to the achievement of sustainable development and wellbeing worldwide by promoting the sustainable and equitable use of natural resources for all generations Under this circumstance, it is of great importance to make a dynamic analysis of the sustainable level of China’s crop production and identify the key factors affecting its sustainability so that appropriate policies on sustainable crop production can be raised by considering Chinese realities
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