Embodied Cultivated Land Use in the Urbanization Process within Guangdong Province

Abstract

Urbanization has put forward a higher request for the cultivated land protection in China. Interprovincial virtual cultivated land circulation embodied in interregional trade plays an important role in achieving interregional cultivated land demand-supply equilibrium. As an important trade province, Guangdong is selected as a case to systematically reveal the impacts of interregional trade on cultivated land distributions based on a multiregional input-output model. This paper measures the embodied cultivated land flows hidden in regional consumption and interregional trade in Guangdong province and locates the cultivated land transfer from resource-intensive places to consumption-intensive places. The results show that Agriculture Sector and Food Processing Sector are the two main drivers of cultivated land embodied in consumption to meet the increasing food demand in Guangdong. With respect to regional responsibility transfer, Guizhou, Guangxi, Hebei, Hubei and Hunan contribute most to Guangdong’s rapid urbanization at the expense of their own cultivated land resources. Meanwhile, Guangdong should take more responsibility as a net importer of cultivated land resources and consider the ecological impact in its own regional trade policy.