Farmland use intensity changes in response to rural transition in Zhejiang province, China

Abstract

Dynamic changes of farmland use intensity (FUI) have an important impact on the sustainable agricultural intensification in developing countries. This study characterizes the temporal changes of FUI in response to rural transition during 1990–2015 in Zhejiang province, China. In particular, the FUI is measured by using indicators that are integrated by three weight determination methods, including analytic hierarchy process, Delphi method and entropy method. The rural transition is described from three aspects, namely regional urbanization, agricultural industrialization and agricultural commercialization. The impacts of rural transition on the farmland use intensity are quantified by multivariate linear regression. Results show that urban population proportion (UPP) and supporting capability of agricultural production (SCAP) have the positive effect on input intensity (IPI). UPP, development of secondary and tertiary industries (DSTI) and urban-rural income gap (URIG) present positive relationships with output intensity (OPI), while grain-sown area proportion (GSAP) and proportion of cash crop yield (PCCY) present negative relationships with OPI. Agricultural science and technology service (ASTS) and GSAP are positive contributors to utilization degree (ULD), while Agricultural mechanization (AGM) is a negative contributor to ULD. Redundancy analysis shows that the individual influence of regional urbanization is higher than that of agricultural industrialization and agricultural commercialization. Meanwhile the joint influences of regional urbanization, agricultural industrialization and agricultural commercialization are the strongest. Based on the results, the policies should give specific guidance to the rural transition for achieving sustainable agricultural intensification.