Abstract
Recently, improving technical efficiency is an effective way to enhance the quality of grass-based livestock husbandry production and promote an increase in the income of herdsmen, especially in the background of a continuing intensification of climate change processes. This paper, based on the survey data, constructs a stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model, incorporates net primary productivity (NPP) into the production function as an ecological variable, refines it to the herdsman scale to investigate grassland quality and production capacity, and quantitatively evaluates the technical efficiency of grass-based livestock husbandry and identifies the key influencing factors. The results show that the maximum value of technical efficiency was up to 0.90, and the average value was around 0.53; the herdsmen’s production gap was large and the overall level was relatively low. Additionally, the lack of forage caused by drought was the key factor restricting the current grass-based livestock husbandry production level, and the herdsmen’s adaptive measures, mainly represented as “purchasing forage” and “selling livestock”, had a positive significance for improving technical efficiency. Based on this, expanding the planting area of artificial grassland, improving the efficiency of resource utilization, and enhancing the supply capacity of livestock products while ensuring the ecological security of grassland are effective ways to increase the production level of grass-based livestock husbandry in Hulun Buir.
Highlights
Grassland is the largest terrestrial ecosystem and an important green ecological barrier in China
The results show that the variance expansion factors of each variable were less than 8, which indicated there was no strong correlation between the independent variables and no multicollinearity problem in the model
We constructed an stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) model based on survey data while incorporating net primary productivity (NPP) into the production function as an ecological variable to investigate grassland quality and production capacity and refine it to the herdsmen scale
Summary
Grassland is the largest terrestrial ecosystem and an important green ecological barrier in China. Ecological function is always on the top of China’s list, and the crucial role of the grassland ecosystem in maintaining national ecological security has become increasingly prominent [1,2,3]. In terms of water conservation, grassland accounts for nearly 40% of China’s water conservation functional area; the grassland’s ability to conserve water is 40–100 times that of cultivated land and 0.5–3 times that of woodland, the ability to block runoff is 58.5% higher than that of woodland, and the ability to reduce sand content is 88.5% higher than that of woodland [4,5]. It is of great significance to carry out scientific and effective eco-management so as to achieve sustainable development of grassland resources
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