Factors analysis for the decoupling of grain production and carbon emissions from crop planting in China: A discussion on the regulating effects of planting scale and technological progress

Abstract

Judging the carbon emissions of various agricultural inputs in crop planting and clarifying the decoupling level between grain production and carbon emissions from crop planting can provide data support and policy references for agricultural carbon emission reduction. Considering six carbon emission sources (plowing, irrigation, fertilizer, pesticide, agricultural film (agrifilm), and diesel fuel (diefuel)). This research accounted the carbon emissions from crop planting in 31 provinces in China from 2000 to 2021. Using the Tapio model to explore the relationship between grain production and carbon emissions from different types of agricultural inputs. The regulating effects of planting scale, technological progress, and their covariates on carbon emission reduction were explored using two-way fixed-effect regression. The results showed that the growth rate of carbon emissions from crop planting in China had a fluctuating declining trend from 2000 to 2021, and it was weakly decoupled from grain production in most years, and that an overall strong decoupling was achieved in 2021. A 1% increase in planting scale leads to 1.0%, 0.68%, and 0.31% increases in carbon emissions from plowing, irrigation, and diefuel, respectively. The synergistic effect of the planting scale and technological progress can significantly reduce the carbon emissions of crop planting, and thus promote the decoupling of grain production and carbon emissions of crop planting. This study provides valuable references for policy formulation in economies to promote synergy between grain production and carbon reduction targets to a greater extent.