Evaluation of sustainable intensification of cultivated land use according to farming households’ livelihood types

Abstract

The sustainable intensification of cultivated land use (SICLU) is required to coordinate the contradiction between growing food demand and resource and environmental constraints. Farming households' livelihood transition directly influences the direction of cultivated land use transformation. Based on a theoretical analysis, we used the data of 359 questionnaires of farming households in Qufu County, China to evaluate SICLU according to households' livelihood types, in order to provide a reference for understanding the process law of SICLU on a micro perspective. The objectives are to: (i) quantitatively evaluate the SICLU level using the emergy analysis and (ii) explore the differences in SICLU between different farming households' livelihood types. The results show that: (1) Auxiliary inputs were the main inputs in the process of cultivated land use, renewable environment inputs were mainly from rainwater chemical and earth rotation, and the non-renewable net loss of topsoil was relatively rare. (2) 14% of farming households' cultivated land use was non-sustainable intensification (SI), 52% was low-SI, 30% was medium-SI, and 4% was high-SI. (3) Among the different livelihood types identified, the SICLU level of the agricultural-professional farming households was the highest, followed by traditional agricultural farming households, agricultural mainly part-time farming households, non-agricultural mainly part-time farming households, and non-agricultural farming households. The conclusions are as follows: (1) The purpose of the SICLU is not to maximize the ecological benefit, economic benefit, and social benefit, but to pursue an optimal solution that maintains a dynamic balance in order to realize the compound benefits generated by cultivated land use. (2) The SICLU level of the sample farming households was relatively low, and the characteristics of the livelihood types varied.