Abstract
Ensuring food security and curbing agricultural carbon emissions are both global policy goals. The evaluation of the relationship between grain production and agricultural carbon emissions is important for carbon emission reduction policymaking. This paper took Heilongjiang province, the largest grain-producing province in China, as a case study, estimated its grain production-induced carbon emissions, and examined the nexus between grain production and agricultural carbon emissions from 2000 to 2018, using decoupling and decomposition analyses. The results of decoupling analysis showed that weak decoupling occurred for half of the study period; however, the decoupling state and coupling state occurred alternately, and there was no definite evolving path from coupling to decoupling. Using the log mean Divisia index (LMDI) method, we decomposed the changes in agricultural carbon emissions into four factors: agricultural economy, agricultural carbon emission intensity, agricultural structure, and agricultural labor force effects. The results showed that the agricultural economic effect was the most significant driving factor for increasing agricultural carbon emissions, while the agricultural carbon emission intensity effect played a key inhibiting role. Further integrating decoupling analysis with decomposition analysis, we found that a low-carbon grain production mode began to take shape in Heilongjiang province after 2008, and the existing environmental policies had strong timeliness and weak persistence, probably due to the lack of long-term incentives for farmers. Finally, we suggested that formulating environmental policy should encourage farmers to adopt environmentally friendly production modes and technologies through taxation, subsidies, and other economic means to achieve low-carbon agricultural goals in China.
Highlights
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralGlobal climate change is a key issue concerning the sustainable political, economic, social, and ecological development of governments
We found that the inhibiting power of ∆CCI exceeded the driving power of ∆CAE in agricultural carbon emissions in the same period, which proved the key inhibiting role of the agricultural carbon emission intensity effect (∆CCI ) in neutralizing agricultural carbon emissions driven by the agricultural economic effect (∆CAE )
We adopted decoupling and decomposition analysis to examine the relationship between grain production and agricultural carbon emissions in Heilongjiang province during 2000–2018
Summary
Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutralGlobal climate change is a key issue concerning the sustainable political, economic, social, and ecological development of governments. Greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) are an important influencing factor of global warming [1]. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, agricultural carbon emissions accounted for 20% of global GHG emissions (in CO2 equivalents) in 2017, including emissions from livestock production and changes in land use patterns caused by the expansion of farming [2]. According to the Paris Agreement signed in 2016, a target of zero net carbon emissions and no more than 1.5 ◦ C of warming by 2050 will be achieved. The total global use of chemical fertilizer has increased by nearly four times in the past 50 years, and large-scale carbon emissions caused by the increase in fossil energy consumption in agriculture are a key factor [3,4,5,6]. If traditional agricultural activity remains at current levels, the use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer will increase by about 2.7–3.4 times, and nitrogen fertilizer use alone will lead to an annual equivalent emission of 3 billion with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations
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